Exotic Valentine Day

For Valentine Day I bought a Phalaenopsis for my wife. No, it's not a pet dinosaur it's an orchid. An ORCHID! You must be thinking I am nuts and saying, 'Valentines give beautiful roses to their lovers, not some prehistoric sounding orchid!' Now hold on it's no ordinary orchid in fact it's really exotic. The sales girl told me so. Ok ,she said it came from Holland. Now that is exotic, imagine orchids from the land of tulips what could be more exotic than that. I mean shouldn't orchids come from Malaysia or some exotic rainforest? Mind you it was not only the name and origin that was exotic it even looks exotic. It has this creamy white pastel flowers with tinges of scalet and large round petals. The sales girl say it looks like a 'moth'! I must diagree with her on this point. I think it more like pretty butterflies . Some salesgirl she turn out to be. Does she want to sell it or not? I mean it does come with an exotic price tag rm.108 that's USD 29.70. Then she started talking my language something that man understands it's call practicality. 'You only need to water it once a week and the bloom will last a month or more!' Wow, what gardener wouldn't die for plants like that. Low mileage and low maintainance plants. She continued, 'It is an indoor plant and do not need direct sunlight even indoor lights will do'. Now she is talking. I have always believed that beautiful plants should be accessible anywhere. Why should we have to slap on sun tan lotions just because we want to admire some plants? It's hot sweaty work to do gardening under the tropical sun. Now here is a plant that has jump the evolutionary grapevine and decided to stay indoors like all civilised human beings, now that is what I call a house train plant. My wife will simply love it!

My wife did love it. She said ' If I were you I would not buy it it is simply too expensive.' My romantic reply was 'Nothing is too expensive for you dear.' Noting that a dozen roses would have set me back USD 40 but that is not why I did not not buy roses. How can we say 'My love for you is forever', when the roses you give her will wilt and die in 3 days! I cannot understand that type of love.

I google for Phalaenopsis and printed a set of instructions for her http://www.orchidflowerhq.com/phalaenopsiscare.php.

That's when I found out it was not so exotic but rather common in certain countries.

'Phalaenopsis orchids are among the most popular orchids world wide and can be found in numerous homes, offices and hotels. These orchids are native to Asia and northern Australia. In Asia, they grow from the Himalayan Mountains to the Philippine Islands.'

Anyway she loves plants and it's a novelty to have a plant that 'hates to get it's feet wet'.

Isaac Lim

Happy Valentine.