The Orchid Experirment

I learned at an early age that houseplants can be fickle friends.

Oh sure, they start out all lush and fat, full of promises of indoor greenery with minimal care — "Just water me, give me some light, how could you go wrong?" — but a few weeks later my mom and I would be staring at a whithered stick in a pot that would make Charlie Brown's tree look worthy of Rockefeller Center.

So we fell back on the hardiest of hardy houseplants: spider plants for her, ivy for me.

Which is not to say I gave up trying to cultivate other plants (my previous post shows that), but one genus of which I steered clear was orchids. Not only did they seem as temperamental as Veruca Salt, they were EXPENSIVE.  No way was I gonna plunk down that kind of money for something doomed to die.

Until yesterday, that is.

I went to Wal-mart for bird food — three varieties of bird food, to be exact — and there they were: orchids. Tall, slender, deliciously delicate orchids in simple aluminum pots. I felt myself drawn closer.

Only $10, the sign read.  Easy care, the snowflake tag promised.

I bit my lower lip, considering.

They are awfully pretty, I thought. And $10 isn't that much to risk....

Obviously I took the plunge, and am now either on my way to expanding my plant-growing comfort zone or relearning a painful lesson. Fingers crossed for the first outcome!