New Pots

During my visit home to LA I decided to repot my mother's plants. Those are hardy beings--those plants. They managed to survive a couple of years without any TLC. It's either natural selection or stubbornness that kept them around so long. I'm sure they haven't been watered regularly--they've just been sitting out there waiting for the next rain. Anyhow. She kept wonderful cymbidiums, orchid flowers that blossom spectacularly in the spring time. That first year they bloomed with a vengeance, but I don't know if they did so well last year. I repotted what was left of her collection, and hope for the best:

But there are spikes of hope. That baby right there is going to be a string of blossoms:

She also had shelves of what I think are called "Christmas Cactus." These are orchids that bloom in furious and bright shades of fuchsia and violet during the holidays. There was no sight of blossom when I was there, but perhaps with new soil and a generous watering, they'll come back. They have mean, nasty thorns that break off into very fine tendrils that just grab onto your skin with the slightest touch and hold on like false eyelashes wherever you brush by them. The thorns are almost invisible, and they sting. I actually dug into an old, spidery pile of work gloves and chased out any inhabitants of the fingers in order to get some sort of protection against the thorns. At one point, as I was tweezing out the thorns, I asked myself, is this worth it? But it was. Here are her shelves, renewed:

And I also took home a few cuttings I hope to grow into all their former glory. That one on the bottom is the tiniest nubbin of Christmas cactus that was poking up from the soil in an overflowing pot. It has great potential and promise. If I can get a blossom out of that someday then all this will be totally worth it.

That circle of ceramic men are my Dad's. They get to stay home with him in their strange, naked football huddle of a dance. Or whatever it is they're doing.