Gardens, gardens everywhere

Anybody who knows anything at all about me knows that I like flowers. And in Puerto de La Cruz there are at least two big gardens. So I went to both this time :)

One is "Jardín Sitio Litre", which is confusingly marked as "Orchid garden" in the little tourist map, private property attached to a largish house where the current owners live. The current name is the result of somewhat japanese-sounding transformation of the original "el Sitio Little", "Little's Place", after Archibald Little, the first owner of the estate. It's not big, well established, nicely laid out, with some space dedicated, yes, to orchids, a koi carp pond, fountain, small cafe etc.

Another one is the "real" botanical garden, know as Jardín de Aclimatación de la Orotava, Jardín Botánico or El Botánico. It's larger, but still nowhere as large as Cambridge botanical garden for instance, let alone Kew. Acclimatization bit in the name is there because it was used to acclimatize plants brought from different parts of the world.

Well. I liked the second one more. It's bigger, collection is more impressive, the entrance is just 2 euro for Canarian resident (dat's me) against 4.75 for the Orchid Garden. Plus, to be honest, I was lured to the Orchid garden by the name, hoping to see a lot of beautiful, well, orchids. I don't know if it is the season or what, but you will see more orchids in Scotsdales garden center. Maybe the garden holds more variety - I don't remember seeing Lady slipper orchids in Scotsdales, for instance. Maybe. Still, I was somewhat disappointed

Now, I wrote this sorry excuse for a text just to be able to post some flower pictures. So here they are :)

yellow one

now yellow phalaenopsis is starting to bloom.

Timur is an unusual boy - he quite likes shopping. But his concept of shopping is the most primitive one - if you go shopping, you gotta buy somethings, and that's that. To go and look at what's there and go away empty-handed - that type of shopping he doesn't understand.

Consequently, when we are in the shops, he keeps suggesting things that we can buy. Last time in scotsdales garden center, when we were looking around houseplant section, he said "Mum you do have orchid, don't you? Look - there's orchid food".

I manage to wriggle out of buying it. We have orchid plants, but they bloomed a few times each without any "food", so I figure I shouldn't start spoiling them now. I am not sure how they get whatever they need, but their aerial roots are doing nicely. Maybe they catch an occasional fly with them or something - I don't really want to know

orchid pics at shutterstock

another one

The pink phalaenopsis was opening more and more flowers for about two months now, and I got tired of photographing it somewhat.

Now the white one fully opened its three flowers. Yellow one formed two flowering spikes, and cattleya is about to open a flower. I think it's yellow one, although not sure.

I just checked and apparently many orchids start blooming in response to dropping temperature. well, temperature inside our house is well and truly dropped what with cold snap and all. Let's see if that's going to be too low for them. So far they are doing great


orchid pics at shutterstock

it is doing it again

our oldest orchid plant is starting to bloom again. it's one of those objects in our house that paid for itself many times over - I just checked how many images of it I have for sale and it's quite a few(there are some different plants in that search result, but still a few)

well, hope it'll turn up as photogenic this time and will sell just as nicely or better again

dendrobium

yet another present for myself from Scotsdales garden center, this time dendrobium orchid. I am not sure what I am going to do with all those orchids when it's time to move (maybe big give-away event is indicated).

The thought of move is the only thing that stops me from buying books like this one - beautifully illustrated, expensive and heavy as bricks