Thursday, January 28th 2010

The day started early and cold. It was snowing, but because the roads weren’t yet holding much snow, we thought it would be all right leaving for New Jersey in the tail end of the rush hour.

Once we had crossed  on the Outerbridge Crossing the snow had stopped, as we got further on the Garden State Parkway it looked as if there hadn’t been any snow there at all. Colman and I were the second and third visitors to arrive.  This arrangement of plants greeted us as we entered the greenhouse.

Anthony Silva, Colman and Joe Silva.

A greenhouse cat found me and rode on my shoulders for the first walk through the main greenhouse. She felt like a kitten but they said she is about 12 years old.

I like this green orchid, the blooms form a ring around the pot edge making a wreath under a canopy of bold, broadly ribbed leaves.

There are a great number of green cymbidiums in bloom, this end of a bench that went around a corner and about a third of the length of the greenhouse.

This is a species paphiopedalum from Vietnam. The flower is in its last days but still has a remarkable presence above netted leaves.

This plant is in full bloom, a lot of flowers in one pot.  A close-up follows this photo.

This little dendrobium was hiding in the very back of the greenhouse with the cool masdevallias. It is a dendrobium,  in a 3″ pot, it’s my favorite of all the plants I have seen this trip. If we had a cool enough place to grow it we would have taken it. It was picked up by a couple that spoke with a German(?) accent.

Joe talking with some of the other visitors.

Our friend  Ron arrived as we were finishing up looking and buying plants.

A couple of visitors found this bulbifilum growing in a fern root basket on a high shelf.  This is another favorite.