2017: An okay year for birds, part 1

It would be hard to beat 2016 as a year for new life birds, without making extensive new travel plans, and that we did not do in 2017.

We returned to Boynton Beach, Florida in late January, and discovered that it wasn't nearly as birdy as late February 2016 had been. It was disappointing, but we still had a wonderful time and managed to scrape up a few more life birds apiece. Knowing more about the region this time, we were determined to visit all three of the local wetlands within easy driving distance. (Not that we were dong the driving. Our wonderful friend Adam Castro did the driving.)

Loxahatchee wetlands is a tiny slice of the Everglades, a National Wildlife Refuge with a lovely nature center, lots of alligators, and a chunk of nearly-extinct cypress forest, all alongside encroaching farms. Just driving there, I was extremely lucky to spot a Crested Caracara flying across the road in front of us. Alas, no picture. Alas, Ed did not also see it. But the bird was utterly unmistakable in flight, with its short wings with a big white flash, its black-and-white head. Mind you, I'd never seen one. But I had memorized the image from the bird books, and I had zero doubt what I saw and shouted out as soon as I saw it.

There were Loggerhead Shrikes on the wires. No photos from either of us, but there's no mistaking their silhouettes. Definitely birds we want to see more closely in the future. [Spoiler Alert: WE DID, but 2 years later.]

Another bird we came to see was not a disappointment. Our first ever Pileated Woodpecker! We heard him before we saw him, as we traveled on the cypress forest boardwalk. You better believe we RAN towards the sound -- it was like someone hitting a big tree with a smaller tree. And there he was, in his pileated glory! Of course he flew off after we got only a few shots...

I hadn't been feeling well, so I stayed behind while Ed and Adam went chasing after gators. There is a nice deck with shaded benches behind the nature center, facing into the cypress forest. I sat and found a few warblers and gnatcatchers, which made me happy.

Then this happened. One of Florida's ubiquitous Turkey Vultures landed on the railing only a few yards away from me.

Then a few more showed up. And performed an aerial ballet in the wide clearing in the cypress forest that was right in front of me. I had seen one up close before, but not so many. Not like this. 

They are BEAUTIFUL. They are made of bronze and sunshine. 

They spent a good fifteen minutes lazily circling and drifting about in the clearing. A couple of them drifted away, a couple others landed to enjoy the sun. If I hadn't been feeling unwell, I'd have missed the show. Turkey vultures. Damn.

After Spouse and friend failed to find alligators, we departed and visited Wakodahatchee. Like Green Cay, this is another "artificial" wetland created for purposes of water treatment, surrounded by developments and shopping centers. The birds don't seem to mind.

The special thing about Wakodahatchee is how close you can get to LARGE BIRDS and their extremely um, adorable babies. Great Blue Herons and Wood Storks really are extremely large, and it's extremely startling to realize their nests are sometimes just a few feet away from the boardwalk.

There was a system to the mixed flocks in the low, broad trees. Great Blue Herons had the top of each tree -- one or even three pairs. Then Storks and Great Egrets below. Then Snowy Egrets, Cattle Egrets, Anhingas and Gulls crowding into whatever branches happen to be left over. Cormorants seemed to have their own trees to themselves. Wood Storks mostly had their own trees too. Iguanas hung out on the lowest branches nearest the water, not doing much.

We'd never seen colony nests like these before.

I'd also never seen a Great Blue Heron try to swallow a duck before.

And I hope never to see that again, anytime soon.
(For the record, he gave up, a turtle made off with the carcass, and then he tried again...at which point we got on with our lives and departed.)

Cormorants were everywhere, flying and swimming and diving and hanging out. One of them was another lifer, a Neotropic Cormorant. Yay!

It pays to pay attention to even common looking birds. You never know.

Alas, there was only one Roseate Spoonbill. Dat spoon, dat spoon, dat spoonbill.

We visited Green Cay again the next day, to witness what we already thought of as The Usual Assortment of wetland waders and swimmers. Lots of Anhingas, Common Gallinules, Blue-winged Teals, Great Egrets, Little Blue Herons, Tricolor Herons, Pied-billed Grebes, Gray-necked Moorhens, Green Herons, various swallows, Red-winged Blackbirds, Boat-tailed Grackles, Limpkins, White Ibises, Glossy Ibises, etc.(Pretty much the same birds as Wakodahatchee, but in different blends.)

Any visit to Green Cay is a good one, though.

Catasetum Fever

I really like Catasetums. I really like most of the species and many of the hybrids. They've fascinated me since the days of my first Jones and Scully orchid catalogues back in 1984. The images of Cstm. Orchidglade made my mouth water. But it was years before I actually grew a Catasetum. I ended up with two that were smallish and, as a bonus, semi-reliable bloomers. I was happy for many years.

Clowesetum Raymond Lerner

Ctsm atratum (I still think)

But then Fred Clarke and Sunset Valley Orchids came on the scene, and I longed for more. I hesitated. Most of those hybrid plants eventually become HUGE, especially the Ctsm pileatum hybrids. I don't have overhead space for plants that get even a foot tall. I continued to hesitate. Then the ever-inventive Mr. Clarke decided to try breeding MINI Catasetums. Oh no. I got one. It bloomed! (It's not doing so great right now, but I have hopes for its revival.)

Ctsm Karen Armstrong (Susan Fuchs x denticulatum) is a building block hybrid for the new minis SVO is creating. And creating, and creating. There are a lot of new hybrids available, and some are kind of meh and others are really exciting.

This spring, SVO had a big sale on their unbloomed seedlings in 3-inch pots. So I went in on a group order with friends, and I somehow (hah) ended up with five new Catasetum plants. Well, actually 4, since I ended up with two of one cross. Group orders tend to include surprises, after all. Some sell-outs, some extras.

Ctsm. Double Down (Ctsm. Chuck Taylor 'Wow' x Ctsm. kleberianum 'SVO) (2)

Ctsm.(Ctsm. gladiatorium 'SVO 35' x Ctsm. barbatum 'SVO' HCC/AOS)

Fredclarkeara (Mo. Painted Desert 'SVO' HCC/AOS x Ctsm. Alexa 'Good One')

Fredclarkeara (Mo. Painted Desert 'SVO' HCC/AOS x Ctsm. Karen Armstrong 'SVO')

Here they are, fresh out of the box.
And already sprouting!

Most of these babies were already developing new roots on the new shoots. Because I am an indoor grower with lousy humidity levels, I began watering them right away. Older pseudobulbs should not shrivel as the new growth expands, and if you don't water them enough that will happen. The plants won't grow as heartily as they should.

The popular wisdom is to keep these sprouting plants dry so their roots will hungrily seek moisture and grow rapidly, while the sprout lives off the water stored in the older bulbs. A very humid atmosphere helps keep the plants going. But honestly, in their native deciduous forests, substantial amounts of morning dew often soak the plants at this stage so I say the hell with pop wisdom and just water the damn things. Especially since I popped them out of their pots to check root growth, and I saw no issues, just lots of nice healthy white roots.

I did wait just a tad too long to actually repot them, but they didn't seem to mind.

The old tiny pots were completely packed with roots by now, and so I just popped them into bigger pots and filled in with seedling mix. Once they go dormant and the roots die back, I'll clean them up and repot them properly. Probably.

The first one to spike and bloom was this (gladiatorium x barbatum):

It's got spots and a fringy lip from both parents, not quite best of both (which are very similar) but pretty nice. It's a great flower count for a first-bloom seedling!

Two other people also had this cross bloom first. So it's a great choice for even beginners with this group of hybrids! That same plant pictured now has a second spike filled with buds. I'm seriously thrilled with it.

I'm curious to see if the Fredclarkeara hybrids will wait to spike until they've dropped their foliage, the way Mormodes species usually do. (I won't have long to wait for two of them, since uh, they were fiercely attacked by spider mites and my battle waged didn't prevent premature leaf drop.) 

I'm happy to have these plants doing fairly well...this summer has been a bummer for my plants overall. Mostly my fault, not watering sufficiently even though I started out well feeding and misting. I'm trying to make amends and see what the rest of summer holds.

Southern African Epiphytic Orchids, by John S. Ball

At one point I obsessed over collecting rare or unusual orchid books, aided and abetted by several friends who also delighted in used bookstore finds or eagerly and impatiently awaited new publications. Magpie, you know. I was so eager to expand my knowledge of ALL types of orchid I'd read pretty much anything. I honestly don't remember how this wonderful old book ended up in my collection, it might have been a gift or a lucky purchase.

Epiphytic Orchids of Southern Africa is a treasure. The paintings by Patricia van de Ruit are exceptional, made life-size for the oversize pages. The book was published in 1976 after Ball's death, from his detailed notes, and edited by his sister, Jane Browning, with the assistance of Peter Ashton.

The plants depicted include a number of species even now only rarely seen in cultivation in the US. Thanks to people like Fred Hillerman back in the 60s, 70s and 80s whole tribes of Angraecums, Aerangises and related genera were introduced to our collections, and my friends in New York in the 80s included several fanatics who had to have all the plants and all the books. Nowadays many of the species are somewhat easier to come by, and many are raised from seed. This book is still a great place to learn more about them.

I'd love to get his other posthumously published book Terrestrial African Orchids. To quote the blurb on Lulu.com, "The 128 orchids illustrated in this work were collected from the wild in many localities by the late John S. Ball, mainly during the early 1950s when he worked as a forester in the Melsetter area close to the Chimanimani Mountains in Zimbabwe. Many of the species from this area are recorded to the North in the Flora of Tropical East Africa floristic region and to the South in the Republic of South Africa, particularly in KwaZulu-Natal. In 1978 John Ball's work on epiphytic orchids from this region was published in the book Southern African Epiphytic Orchids. The present work is edited by Jane Browning (John Ball’s sister) assisted by Esmé Hennessy."

Ball was one of those obscure but vital people in science, Born in 1926 in Rhodesia, he was also a Rhodes scholar, and then returned to Africa to work in forestry. He died in a car accident in 1976. It's a pity he never got to see his books published and enjoyed.

2016: A GREAT Year for Life Birds, Part 2

Not a bird. My apologies.

In mid-February 2016 we went to Florida, with intentions of birding at Loxahatchie and Green Cay reserves near the Everglades. We visited a friend whose home is on the shore of a small lake and surrounded by a moat, and he likes to post photos of white ibis gazing into his living room windows while the indoor cats lose their minds. Well, it was all true.

Good times started with lunch at My Big Fat Greek Restaurant on Griffin Road, between Ft. Lauderdale and Boynton Beach. They have a friendly male Boat-tailed Grackle that likes to steal sugar packets from the outdoor patio tables, and enjoys snacks of fried calamari. Anhingas swim and fish in the canal alongside. I have seen both species before in previous trips to Florida, but never bothered to enter them on a life list before. Likewise the earnest Muscovy Ducks also enjoying the water, and the Cattle Egrets on every roadside greensward. Boom!

The word anhinga comes from the Brazilian Tupi language and means devil bird or snake bird.
Wikipedia says so.

Come morning, the White Ibises in the canal by the hotel, and in the parking lot, kind of put things in perspective. Big birds are just part of the suburban landscape in that part of Florida. If you look up you'll see Turkey Vultures, gulls, terns, egrets and herons drifting by. If you're lucky, you'll see a Double-crested Cormorant trying to perch on a power line like an enormous pigeon wearing swim fins. (I wish I had a picture of that.)

We only made it to Green Cay that weekend, with a couple of friends along to make the experience even more fun. One friend spends most of the winter in a nearby community and visits the place several times a week. She knew all the good places to keep one's eyes peeled, and helped spot two alligators. Another birding friend who lives in the region also kept pointing out good things. We really hit the jackpot there for new life birds. Best birdy afternoon ever!

First thing we saw gallinules, wood storks, egrets, herons and ibises. Like all at once, right near the nature center and boardwalk. Considering how much trouble we go through in New York to get good views of herons and egrets, it seemed almost unfair!

Wood storks are clearly dinosaur throwbacks.

Purple Gallinules aren't common, like the Common Gallinule, but were among the first birds we saw there. Gray-headed Swamphens, an introduced species, were only seen further along the trek.

One is purple. One is common. One is neither.

Tricolored Herons were abundant. They seem to find the boardwalk railings a congenial place from which to watch humans pass by.

I walked right around this one. No reaction.

Little Blue Herons and Green Herons stalked about everywhere. I could only recall all the trouble I'd had seeing my first Green Heron in Central Park a few years earlier. Gah.

I had the completely mistaken impression that a Limpkin had to be an exotic and elusive creature.

It's not.

As a special treat, a normally elusive American Bittern was hanging out right alongside the boardwalk, basically right under our feet. It didn't seem to care how many camera lenses were pointed at it.

Not pretending to be reeds.

I also never expected to be thisclose to a Pied-billed Grebe. I can throw away all my long-distance shots from the Central Park Reservoir birds.

Mottled Ducks and Blue-winged Teals were the dominant waterfowl. Both were often found right around the boardwalk. Both are very nice to see up close.

Sleepy Mottled Ducks. Sleeeeeepy.

Plump, stately Teals.

White Ibis and Glossy Ibis are quite handsome birds. (I actually didn't realize Glossy Ibis also live in New York City, at Jamaica Bay, as part of their invasion force in the US.)

Sentinel.

Roseate Spoonbills are among my favorite dino-birds. I've seen them quite close up in zoos, the better to appreciate their bony faces, but seeing them in the wild is quite another experience.

A farther-away experience, mostly.

Didn't get any good photos, but before the day was over I'd also added Caspian Tern, Royal Tern, Northern Harrier, Red-shouldered Hawk to my life list. 

There were also plenty of Coots, Lesser Scaups, Great Egrets, Snowy Egrets, Great Blue Herons, Brown-headed Cowbirds, White-winged Doves. Prairie Warblers and Palm Warblers and other species familiar from elsewhere. Also Painted Buntings in abundance at the bird feeders right at the entrance...just two months after we hunted one down in Brooklyn!

Also this Sora, more cooperative than expected. 

Green Cay is just a terrific place to BE, never mind spot birds. The boardwalks are comfortable (I could wish for a few more shaded gazebos but oh well). The nature center is well-organized and informative, and I love the tote bag I bought. The writer friend we were visiting was happy to learn of the place, as it's ten minutes from his house and gives him a great place to take exercise walks.

Green Cay is also a great place to see lots of bird butts.

We returned in January 2017. That's another post.

2016, A GREAT Year for Life Birds, Part 1

[I'm more than a bit behind in my posting! Here's where I finally catch up on all my bird posts that should've been made in 2016 but weren't.]

As of the first week of February 2016, I already added 7 new birds to my life list -- as many as I added in all of 2015.

The last Saturday in January, I finally saw a Common Merganser on the Central Park Reservoir. It was definitely bigger than the more usual Red-breasted Mergansers,

On the last Sunday in January, we enjoyed an Audubon Society Eco-cruise of New York Harbor. It was a picture-perfect day of bright sunshine, blue skies, calm water, near 50 degrees. The 2-hour cruise took us past the shores of Brooklyn, Governor's Island, Ellis Island, Liberty Island and Bayonne, and down to Hoffman and Swinburne Islands, two small man-made islands on the eastern shore of Staten Island. There are ducks out there, ducks and loons and gulls that don't come inland to the Central Park Reservoir and only occasionally visit the East River or Hudson River for easy viewing.

Clangula hyemalis. Accept no substitutes.

Lots and lots of gulls and cormorants all over the place.

Familiar Herring Gulls, Ring-billed Gulls, Greater Black-backed Gulls, Double-crested Cormorants, Mallards, Black Ducks, Buffleheads and Red-breasted Mergansers were abundant along the shores. Spotting the unfamiliar Bonaparte's Gulls and Common Loons was the challenge!

There are seals too! Harbor seals like to sun themselves on the rocks and sandbars around Swinburne Island. They tend to hit the water when the boats come close, and stared at us from the waves.

So freaking cute.

So on one cruise I got Long-tailed Ducks, Common Goldeneye, Great Cormorant, Bonaparte's Gull, Red-throated Loon, and this Surf Scoter that was an unexpected bonus bird:

That is totally a Surf Scoter. Yay!

It hardly bothered me that my erstwhile spouse had already seen several of these birds elsewhere around New York City waters. I'm just not as eager to go chasing a critter that might have flown off by the time I got there. I figure I'll get them eventually...and often do.

In mid-February we went to Florida, with intentions of birding at Laxahatchie and Green Cay reserves near the Everglades. We visited a friend whose home is on the shore of a small lake and surrounded by a moat, and he likes to post photos of white ibis and wood storks gazing into his living room windows while the indoor cats lose their minds. Well, it was all true.

That's in the next post.

Habenaria rhodochila, Superstar

I love love love love love terrestrial orchids. I've been growing several kinds for many years now. While it seems silly to "waste" precious indoor light garden space on plants that vanish entirely for half the year, it's not much sillier than growing other species that bloom sparingly. And for that half year underground, they're no trouble at all!

My pink Habenaria rhodochila has been very happy for the past six years, but I've never been thrilled by the flowers. They're wimpy. The color isn't bad, but the shape is blah -- too open, compared to others I've seen And no matter how close to the lights I put the developing new shoots each year, the plants end up stretched out. But it still blooms like crazy! And this year, the ever-growing tuber put up a whopping seven new growths, five of which bloomed! I really can't help but love the darn thing, even if those flowers only last a week. A WEEK. Well, having five spikes stretched the flowering period to about a month. But really.

Being nevertheless eager to expand my collection, I was happy to win a tiny plant of the orange form of the species at auction. It came from my friend Ron Midgett at New Earth Orchids, who has excellent taste in Habenarias. I figured it was a good bet the flowers  would be decent, but didn't expect any until 2016.

Surprise! The tiny plant grew and grew over the summer, and soon put up a spike with several buds. It took a long time for those buds to develop. Good? Bad? Neither? The stem is really straight, really sturdy. Then the buds started to open...

This plant's flowers aren't wimpy. They're amazing. And they've been open over two weeks already. I took the plant to work in a cereal box wrapped in plastic bags, then on an express bus for a trip to the Greater NY Orchid Society show table, and wow, not one sign of wilting yet. I hope they make it to the Manhattan Orchid Society show table next week!

Everyone wants to see it next year, when the plant is bigger. I just hope like all hell I don't somehow manage to kill it this winter...I'll be VERY careful once it settles in for its seasonal nap.

ADDENDUM: The flowers ended up lasting FIVE WEEKS. The plant is now (very early January) thinking about going dormant.

Catasetum Karen Armstrong FLOWERS YAY OMG!!

Fred Clarke of Sunset Valley Orchids rules the orchid universe. Well, at least parts of it. The Catasetum part, certainly. He has an eye for parent plants and a knack for making incredible crosses that are new things to the eyes of the world. After all, he made an orchid so very near black -- Fredclarkeara After Dark -- that digital cameras have a hard time revealing details and many of the images are just sort of blobby. (Really good photographers are able to overcome this challenge. Not so most of us.)

I've had a couple of Catasetums for years now, and itched for another from SVO. One of Fred's pioneering efforts is to create "mini" hybrids in this group, using species known to stay small and keep their offspring small as well. Well, that fits my plans, and my light garden, mighty well! So when Fred was speaking in New Jersey last year, a friend picked out a near-blooming-size Catasetum Karen Armstrong for me. It seemed pretty much ideal for my light garden conditions based on its parentage. I took good care of the plant through its brief dormancy, and was rewarded with an enormous new growth. And was further rewarded with a spike!

Catasetum Karen Armstrong is the hybrid of Ctsm. Susan Fuchs (expansum x Orchidglade) and Ctsm. denticulatum, so it combines "old style" mega-Catasetums with the species most notably being used to create the "mini" Catasetum hybrids. CKA is a great building block parent, but it's also a great plant in its own right. I wuv it. Trouble is now I want more...

Dendrobium faciferum

As an orchid grower with limited space, I end up torn between wanting to stick to a (rather nebulous) wish list for orchid purchasing, and taking joy in serendipity. Attending at least 3 or 4 orchid shows/sales per year ensures a bit of both: I'll always find at least one thing I actually know I want, and several things I had no idea I wanted until I saw them.

Dendrobiums are so varied, so wondrously diverse, it's impossible to make blanket statements about them. I know several people who are sworn dendrobium fanatics for that very reason. You can experience such a variety of types of orchid all within one genus swarm! Monstrous things that resemble garden shrubs, tough little mats of nubby succulent leaves clinging to rocks, masses of slender leaves like bunches of upside-down onions, flowers that last for nearly a year, flowers that last for a mere hours, hardy beasts needing frost to provoke flowering, dainties that suffer the merest hint of cold...

Dend. faciferum was a happy happenstance purchase at a show just over a year ago, and kinda had me worried for a while that it didn't like me. This sweetie supposedly likes warm to hot temperatures and plenty of water (allowed to dry a bit between waterings though), which is no problem for me; I worried the light wasn't bright enough at the ends of the T-12 tubes. But once I switched to T-8 fluorescent tubes above it, the plant was clearly happier. Flowers commenced! Two growths made these lovely bunches of glowing orange flowers, which make quite pleasing contrast with the deep green ovary stems. They last about 10 days, so far.

Hoping for new growth soon -- repotting seems in order as the plant is a bit too deep in its current tiny pot and a couple of older growths recently yellowed and popped right off the clump.

Angraecum didieri

Mini Angraecums are a peculiar addiction that has affected all too many of my friends. Surely such small plants could hardly be a problem...and then you have twenty of them, all of costly, several needing Special Conditions or at the very least a bit of coddling. In return, you may or may not get lovely fragrant white flowers in varying quantities, for varying periods of time. Sounds fair to me!

My personal forays into the Angraecoids were mostly limited to Aerangises, which have performed poorly for me. Or I let them down. Either way, I decided to give up. But lo! Last year Cal-Orchid released a large selection of Angraecum didieri, multiple growths, in spike or just blooming size. I had to have one.

I flowered it, and then nearly killed it. What the hell! Yellowed and then browned leaves, bottom to top. The crowns barely hung on. I suspected thrips and washed the plant. I doused with cinnamon. I watered, spritzed, shifted to another spot. It sulked. It did nothing at all but remain alive. I suspected I'd overwatered and cut back a bit. The mix seemed OK, so I didn't mess with that.

So naturally I got another one this spring, when opportunity arose. And...

Well, it sort of sat there for a month, which wasn't surprising, really. Tentatively, it made a leaf from one of the two growths. Extended a few root tips. Sat there some more. The two tantalizing spikes did nothing. It got watered with everything else, with both plain water and MSU fertilizer (at irregular intervals). Then I decided to finally open the bottle of MegaThrive I got late last year, and spray it all over everything, twice a week.

Buds and flowers on EVERYTHING. Well, not everything. But the newer Ang. didieri burst into bloom literally within ten days of being sprayed. One of the tantalizing spikes evolved nearly overnight. One more tantalizing spike remains...

The older plant, meanwhile, remains alive. It now clearly needs repotting, along with a couple dozen other plants, so hope springs eternal.

Maxillaria uncata

I have a deep love for miniature orchids, going back to my very first orchid explorations. Something about a complete organism being so small, so lovely, is absolutely irresistible. My first Maxillaria uncata was a tiny plant, a division of a friend's vigorous specimen. It bloomed several times before I managed to kill it. I got another, kinda small, and killed that too.

After over 20 years, I finally got another one! A huge mounted beast from Tom Nasser, sure to survive even my wonky conditions. I dealt with the issue of it being mounted by sticking the base in a decorative glass bowl on a hanging chain, and then hanging the whole business fairly close to the end of my tube lights.

I water it by half-filling the bowl; the tree-fern slab is soon saturated, and the moss around the root mass wicks moisture to the lowest growths which then drip daintily onto the sleeping terrestrials in a tray below. Not a great ecosystem, but it seems to work. Eventually those lowest growths rotted a few leaves, but the upper growths put out so many it hardly mattered. Being close to the lights, the plant stays warm, even in winter when the windows are open a bit or the steam heat fails to keep up with the changing seasons.

The adorable stripy flowers are pretty large, by my estimation.

Now if only Mystery Maxillaria (from a GNYOS raffle) would bloom...I would be 3 for 3 for blooming this genus in just one year!

Maxillaria schunkeana

I got this plant in February from Ecuagenera -- a nice big healthy bare-root specimen. My previous experience with the species was with a rather smaller one five years ago. Alas, that one barely survived two months in my light garden; I think I rotted it out, after planting it in sphagnum. 

The species comes from relatively low elevations in Brazil, so I reckon my fairly warm conditions suit it fine. I stuck this one into a coconut-fir bark-perlite mix, medium grade plus some finer bits. I placed it on the middle shelf, just past the middle of the 4-foot fluorescent tubes; it's getting some light from the T-12s and some from the T-8s. Plenty of water, since the mix drains well, and it gets fed with MSU fertilizer, along with everything else in active growth, roughly once a week. 

A few weeks ago, I noticed one of the new growths looked a bit peaky, with some browning at the tip of one leaf, so I was preparing to boost the light level a bit by shifting it closer to the T-8s. Surprise! A flower! And evidence of one other dried-up flower that I evidently overlooked because it's DARK and the base of the plant is shadowed by another plant. Well, that flower only lasted a couple of days, but I was over the moon it existed at all! A couple of days ago I realized there were FOUR flowers and three buds -- one ready to open, one still tight, one just emerging.

HAPPY DANCE!!!

Since I actually have to re-arrange the entire middle light garden shelf very soon -- should've done it weeks ago really -- I'll have to be extra attentive to this little darling....