The Orchid Thief

One night per month, or shall I say every twenty eight days, I have insomnia that's not related to stress or work or exciting ideas; instead it's related to my uterus. "Something weird is in the air," I complained to DD.
"Like what?" he asked, sleepily. "An earthquake?"
"Never mind," I said. "I'll get up and read."

I'm currently reading The Orchid Thief, by Susan Orlean. It's been around some seven years or so. it's kind of like one long super-interesting feature article about the history of the development of Florida, the fantastic animal and plant life of the Fakahatchee, the histories of European and US American orchid collectors, orchid cultivation, and John Laroche, the real-life orchid thief who stole a bunch of orchids from protected wetlands.

I've loved orchids all my life; my maternal grandfather had a collection of cymbidiums and oncidiums in his homemade greenhouse, and I loved to assist in the process of repotting and splitting the orchids, playing with the bark chips and dusting a few stray ants off the long stems when the orchids were in bloom. My grandfather had a beautiful garden that surrounded the house; the house was on a corner and the yard went all the way around; you could run around and around the house, and the path took you past the greenhouse, across the brick patio which was overhung with wisteria (I loved the long, velvety-green seedpods), over pebbles and under a bamboo grove, past the earthy damp shaded parts where moss grew on the stepping stones, to the front of the house and the rose garden. There were slopes covered with ivy, which grandpa and my mom later dug up and built terraced planters for. There were orange and red nasturtiums trailing along and up the fence grandpa had built, and I would examine the vines for dried blooms, because each one had a seed inside. The seeds were as big as garbanzo beans and very easy to germinate. I liked to do that, and had my own little seedling nursery at my grandparents' house. Grandpa was always working outside, planting and weeding and building, but the yard always did have a wild feel to it; I could always find pretty and unexpected and weird things like a fallen birds' egg, perfect spider webs, lizards, and a tarnished silver cross that may have been dropped by a raccoon.

My grandpa was always offering me orchid plants but I never accepted them for fear I'd kill them. Since he died I've had a few but I've never had success getting them to bloom. Reading The Orchid Thief, I think I understand them better, and feel I was too hard on myself when it came to my orchids. It seems they're tough and stubborn plants; they'll only bloom under the right circumstances, and they're not at all native to San Francisco, so the right circumstances have to be carefully created in a place like this. My grandparent's house was in Southern California; in comparison, San Francisco seems cold, damp and salty. I've seen orchids growing and blooming here, but I don't blame mine for not wanting to.