What about the orchids...?

I knew this lady, Mary Elizabeth. She was the youngest of seven, the only girl from an Iowa farm. She got tired of the tricks boys will play on their younger sister, and decided she wanted off the farm. Her ticket out was a nursing degree, and after earning her RN, she decided she wanted to see something of the world. She joined the Public Health Service and was assigned to the Panama Canal Zone. This was back in 1928, the time of the flappers, just before the Stock Market Crash.

There was a circle of people in the Canal Zone that consisted of the doctors and nurses of the Public Health Service, the Army Officers, Foreign Officers and delegate to Panama, and Canal Zone Engineers. Mary Elizabeth met and married a U.S. Army Psychiatrist, originally from Minnesota, Robert Paul. Another friend in the circle was a man named Harry Dunn, an engineer that liked to trek into the jungles to find and collect orchids. Harry had a lathe house in which he kept and raised his collection, which included several examples of Peristeria elata, the Dove or Holy Ghost orchid, the national flower of Panama.

Mary Elizabeth and Robert Paul were my grandparents. Her eldest daughter, Elizabeth Jean, was my mother. In 1972, my grandmother, my mother, and I took a trip to St. Petersburg, FL. While there, I met and listened to Harry Dunn's stories of collecting and raising orchids, in Panama in the '30's and '40's, and other Central and South American countries to which his career took him. Mr. Dunn gave me my first orchid, a dark reddish-purple Cattleya that was in bud and which opened about 4 weeks later.

When I got back to San Antonio, I wanted to learn more about orchids. I found an orchid nursery less than a mile from my house, Worth Orchids, and I asked the owner, Nicklaus Worth for a job. He gave me my first job, working in his greenhouses. I learned about different orchid varieties, their temperature, water, humidity, lighting and fertilizer requirements. At 15, I received a course in operating an orchid nursery.

Since then, whenever my lifestyle permits, I have raised and enjoyed the beauty of orchids. At first, it was a Cattleya or two. Phaleonopsis became popular, and I tried one in a window. In high school, every girl wanted a cymbidium corsage and I tried growing a big cymbidium on the porch. Eventually I learned to choose orchids to fit the climate/microclimate that I could offer. Over the past several years I have acquired a number or orchids which I have struggled to maintain despite living in an apartment and traveling frequently for work. Fortunately I have discovered some varieties that adapted to my conditions, and I have never shied away from experimenting.

Here are some photos of my orchids in my new home:

In my Kitchen

Up on my mantle

A lady slipper: Paphiopedilium americium "Gold Cup x Paph. concolor '#1'

Ondontocidium Sunlight "Pesky Panther'

Aliceria Stellar 'Hoku'

Aliceria Hilo Ablaze 'Hilo Gold'

An equitant: Tolumnia Jairak Flyer 'Fantastic'

The famous green Cattleya type: Blc. Ports of Paradise 'Emerald Isle' FCC/AOS

Lysudamuloa (lycaste) Red Jewel

One of the best white Catts: Cattleya Bob Betts

And yes, I have a Peristeria elata that I am trying to bloom, in memory of Harry Dunn and my grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Carney Hargreaves, 1903 - 1993.