Last weekend, just before the snow moved in, I slipped away on an exotic escape – no passport required. A short drive to Hyannis brought my friends and me to the Cape and Islands Orchid Society Show, where winter vanished the moment we stepped into the Emerald Conference Center. Suddenly, it was warm, lush, and anything but January.

            Stepping into the show felt like crossing into another world. The inside of a rainforest: earthy, humid, and slightly mysterious. Amid the dense vegetation spilling across the tables, buds and blooms of delicate orchids gazed outward. Some shy, others brazen – meeting the curious eyes fixed upon them. Concentrating my gaze on a single flower, I was transfixed, like a plant hunter scouring the forest for the perfect bloom.

            That thought barely lingered as we moved through the show, swept along by the sheer profusion of flowers and the inventively designed tableaux. Orchids possess a distinct voluptuousness – a wordless “hey there” that seems to radiate from every bloom. Surrounded by what is the most diverse group of plants in the world, my head was nearly spinning.

            The sheer abundance, paired with the seemingly endless variety of perfect specimens, was all-consuming. Orchids, especially Phalaenopsis, Zygopetalum, and Cymbidium, display markings worthy of modern art: stippled, striped, speckled. These patterns create effects that range from delicate to bold, even constellation-like, while the color and textural combinations, sometimes layered in surprising ways, can leave you literally breathless.

            Surrounded by so many vibrant, intricate, and unapologetically showy plants, I was reminded of past shows and of a familiar truth: Orchids en masse can be a little overwhelming.

            “Check out the ones from Ecuador!” an off-Cape friend advised us as we crossed into one of the nether ballrooms where plants were on sale. Each of the ladies from this group had succumbed to the temptation and were bearing their purchases with a plastic sheath over them for protection.

            The show’s central theme, Orchids at Play, wove the blooms into a whimsical, playground-like setting, complete with a kiddie pool, slide, gazebo, and merry-go-round – an imaginative world utterly at odds with the winter scene outside.

            During our tour, I thought of the book The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean: a narrative non-fiction work investigating a bizarre legal case surrounding stolen rare ghost orchids in Florida, driven by themes of obsession, passion, and unique subcultures. The film “Adaptation” is based on the book, and the author herself praised the film for capturing the “spirit” and themes of her book, despite wild divergences from the original material.

            A show-goer mentioned another must-read: Orchid Fever: A Horticultural Tale of Love, Lust, and Lunacy by Eric Hansen. The book is described as a “humorous and adventurous non-fiction book that explores the obsessive world of orchids, from the jungles of Borneo to European nurseries, featuring smugglers, eccentric breeders, and bizarre plant politics.”

            One indispensable book on orchid cultivation is William Cullina’s Understanding Orchids: An Uncomplicated Guide to Growing the World’s Most Exotic Plants. This comprehensive guide for all levels of growers covers everything from basic care to advanced topics like propagation and hybridization.

            A little bit about orchids… Cymbidiums are among the easier orchids to collect. They like a temperature between 50 to 55 degrees and can even go to 48 degrees. Bud initiation occurs when it is exposed to the sun. There’s not much you can do wrong after that. The plants are agreeable to being put out in summer. Ideally, you want plenty of sun on the top but cooler roots. Clay pots heat up and too much exposure to the sun will dry out or burn the roots. It is best to put them in a group, often surrounding them with other plants to shade the pots.

            These are hungry feeders, and an expert once told me it is recommended to administer fertilizer every two weeks in summer. It’s good also to finish out the summer with a blossom booster fertilizer (lower in nitrogen and higher in phosphorus and potash) two to three times at the end of the summer and early fall to “get the thickness and fullness of blossom.” Watering is also key as these plants grow in a medium of bark. They also like being sprayed over – it cools the tops and reduces red spiders.

            Another good “starter” orchid is the Oncidium. This is an extraordinarily large and diverse New World genus with an equally diverse number of habitats. Oncidiums may originate anywhere from sea level in the tropics to the high elevations of the Andes. Light, temperatures and water requirements vary depending on the species. I ended up purchasing one called Wild Willie “Pacific Bingo” which bears a strong resemblance to “Dancing Lady” in habit and appearance. It has a dancing lady-esque appearance with long, arching, and often branching spikes that hold many flowers. I hope I can keep it alive!

            The Cape & Islands Orchid Society, an affiliate of the American Orchid Society, is a non-profit organization dedicated to the enjoyment of orchids and spreading understanding of their culture. The annual show is always timed perfectly as we endure the blahs of winter.

            “Beauty can be painfully tantalizing, but orchids are not simply beautiful. Many are strange-looking or bizarre, and all of them are ugly when they aren’t flowering. They are ancient, intricate living things that have adapted to every environment on earth. They have outlived dinosaurs; they might outlive human beings. They can be hybridized, mutated, crossbred, and cloned. They are at once architectural and fanciful and tough and dainty, a jewel of a flower on a haystack of a plant.” – from “The Orchid Thief” by Susan Orlean

The Seaside Gardener

By Laura McLean

While I sit here by the fire embraced by a case of cabin fever, I am gazing out my front window at 10 feet of frozen snow (I exaggerate) the result of “Fern,” a bomb cyclone storm, that dropped too much snow on the South Coast. My memory… what’s left of it… hearkens back to the giant, infamous Blizzard of 1978. They didn’t name snowstorms back then, only hurricanes, so the weather prognosticators settled on an old-fashioned blizzard, though Connecticut called it “Larry.” Mother Nature was in a bad mood that February, dropping nearly 3 feet on southern New England over three days, only two weeks after a 24-inch nor’easter deposited 24 inches of the white stuff, a total of 5 feet destined for the record books.

            I recall cross-country skiing off the top railing of our back deck into the woods behind our house. We were living away from the hustle and bustle of winter in Mattapoisett. My bride was pregnant with our first child and I worked from home, thankfully because shortly after then Governor Dukakis declared a state of emergency, shutting down the entire state for a week. Businesses were ordered to close except for essential services. Everyone was told to stay home. (Dukakis, who later ran for President on the tails of his storm leadership and lost, became a professor at Northeastern University. On my morning commute to teach at a nearby college, I would see Dukakis… who lived in Brookline… walking carrying a briefcase, a plastic bag, and a stick with a nail in it picking up litter along his route. A near president picking up litter! You can’t make this stuff up.)

            Despite the order, nobody stayed home. Private vehicles were not allowed on the streets, but nothing stopped the populous from coming out in droves to experience life in this unusual winter wonderland.

            We lived about 2 miles from the village where the only grocery store remained open. The entire neighborhood grabbed their galoshes, snowshoes and backpacks, and ventured out on foot to get whatever provisions were available for a week of isolation.

            The main road from our house to the village was a steep downhill offering a pleasant walk and fun rides on sleds and toboggans. The trip back, not so much… uphill… with those sleds and toboggans loaded down with available can goods, bread and gallons of milk.

            It took me three days to shovel our driveway. I was young and strong and too poor to own a snowblower. On TV we saw cars stacked in the snow as if a bunch of Legos had been dropped into a box of cotton. It took weeks for the roads to be cleared and those drivers to retrieve their cars. Eventually life returned to a semblance of normal.

            Our little bouncing baby boy, born a few months after the historic storm, is now a grown man nearing 50 and works in the entertainment industry. A second child came along, a girl, two and one half later years (the snow had melted). My bride and I are in our eightieth year! Who would have thunk it.

            Mattapoisett resident Dick Morgado is an artist and happily retired writer. His newspaper columns appeared for many years in daily newspapers around Boston.

By Dick Morgado

No. Sorry, but not quite yet. The yearly sighting of the famed polar vortex is here for a little longer, which is also primarily to blame for the nor’easter a couple weeks ago.

            Temperatures across the Tri-Town look to peak midweek at just around freezing temperature and then take a dive again over the weekend. Since the start of the new year, we’ve received nearly 2 feet of snow. This weekend also has a bit of snow predicted, but currently no more than an inch, so just a dusting over the white mountain on the corner of your driveway. No, we are not yet entirely sure how they time these things to happen exclusively on weekends.

            Luckly, the National Weather Service forecasts temperatures to breach freezing temperature and climb mightily into the high-30s, subtly diminishing the grandeur of the previously mentioned white mountain. However, and I am sorry for this, The Weather Channel is predicting the warmer weather will bring rain, ice, and snow starting Friday, February 13 and maintaining stormy weather on and off for a number of days after. Though, as we all know by now, forecasts like these are difficult to predict and vary wildly as the day approaches.

            Be safe and have fun from us at The Wanderer. If you wish to curse the weather, direct your aim towards that groundhog in Philly. The first day of spring, the vernal equinox, will be on March 20.

By Sam Bishop