Orchid Week!

Nero Wolfe had nothing on the San Antonio Botanical Garden when it comes to orchids. I know almost all of my recent posts have been from this wonderful place, but what can I say? I'm emphasizing the "hometown" in my title and not doing much traveling lately, but I'm hoping that will change later in the spring.

The great thing about having the SABOT membership, though, is that visiting there is almost always like going someplace new. The roses are all sleeping now, but the place makes up for that with incredible orchid displays. (Can you believe that arrangement at the top of the post?! I should have had someone stand in the frame for scale, but, trust me, it was 5 feet wide!) And they're working on new exhibits all the time.

I took advantage of my membership to go on a special orchid tour the other day, and it was such fun, as well as educational. I'm sure everyone on the tour knew more about orchids than I did, but that just meant I got to learn more new stuff from our expert guide than they did. For example, did you know that the vanilla called for in all your sweet baking comes from an orchid family plant? That was news to me.

Here's a couple more shots of the lovelies we got to see. (I can't believe I didn't think to take my camera, so all I had was my phone. That's why there's just these few pictures instead of 20 or 30!)

A special treat was getting to go behind the scenes at SABOT and spend some time in the orchid greenhouse with one of the horticulturists. I couldn't help but think of the detective's rooms and half-expected to see his ample frame puttering around the pots...