The Arab Revolution

If I'd been around for the French and Russian Revolutions I'd have been watching TV all day. But they might not have been so inspiring, close up, as the Arab Revolution. I am so proud of the Arab people. (What, all of them?) All the people I've seen on TV. The brave, the articulate - Who knew there were so many articulate English-speaking students, young doctors, beautiful young mothers, in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, in Yemen. Why weren't we told? And all crying out for freedom, passionately alive.

But these are backward societies. We in the West are way past that. We mumble and sigh, especially us Democrats: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity...."

The Arab world is fresh as Wordsworth's: "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,/But to be young was very heaven!"

And it's not just the young who are in heaven: it's the solid women all in black, like gleeful nuns, the Tunisian engineers and Egyptian managers and gap-toothed, worn out laborers.

Well, we all know how the French and Russian revolutions went... but what about the British or American ones? Well, that pair were Anglo-Saxon. The Arab Revolution is full of Arabs. And we know they lack discipline and civic pride...except for the Egyptians and the citizens of Bengazi... and they don't value human life like we do...except for the Libyan pilots who crashed their planes rather than bomb and all the soldiers who refused to fire... and they are not really ready for the modern world except for twitter, face book, etc. And by the way, who was it in Egypt who ordered a pizza for the Union protesters in Wisconsin?

And just a note to all the Anglo-Saxon students who need to get fueled up to march and shout: Most of the Moslem crowds are totally, deliriously sober in their joy.

Tamiwhat?

Start a blog and you are buzzed in to that hive of interconnectedness, The Social Network. Read The Does and Don'ts of orchid selling.. and it's on to Orchid Territory -a fun read and buy it here! Kosova Kosovo too - (Hey, did you know there are still our boys stationed in Kosovo?) - and of course, front and center, Motes Orchids and its delights. And now comes Motes Orchids family members actually putting on a whole show- the Tamiami International Orchid Festival!

....Which you didn't read about here. Which actually was two weeks ago, more now. I didn't blog about the Tamiami International Orchid Festival because I was too busy getting orchids ready for The Tamiami International Orchid Festival. That should have made me the perfect Twitterer. If there was ever someone primed to make short, breathless statements at irritating intervals it's definitely the person scrambling to fill a truck when an orchid show is on.

Breaking flower spikes, Biggest blue-just snapped off! **ghhjxxx!! (Can you swear on Twitter?) Where are eight inch baskets? Cash box! Loading 7 am. Bloody cold! C U there!

Then there was the Egyptian Revolution! Check out the Revolution but don't forget at Tamiami this weekend our Indian Species Special: Ten dollars each- three for twenty-five!

And who on earth is reading this anyway? I know my daughter has corralled about three colleagues in California but we can hardly expect them to be interested in ten dollar dendrobiums in Miami, even with three for 25,00. There's the great young orchid-loving dentist I met in India- to whom I owe a great long email - t0 also thank his Mum, etc. But By now be rude just to email... should really send a card...what's the postage to India?

Now when someone says "I loved your book when's the next one?" I say read my blog and email me! Let me know if you like it! But most people reading Orchid Territory are like me: the internet is not central to their lives. And they are puzzled by new words like "friending.' I need to use the old currency: You liked OT? The blog? Let me know. Just drop me a line - it's 44cents.

M for Murder

So Mubarak supporters are crashing the party.

The President of Egypt is joining the contemporary M series:

Milosevic, destroying Yugoslavia in order to gain power.

Mugabe, destroying Zimbabwe in order to hold power

Mubarak destroying Egypt's peaceful protest in order to hang on.

But then there's Mandela.

Hurray for Egypt and Tunisia!

A few years ago I was lucky enough to visit Cairo; I had friends there. Everything I'd read or heard about Egyptians, and Cairenes especially, was good: mellow people. And there they were, in the midst of lethal traffic jams, the taxi drivers smiling and joking. I never felt worried to be A Woman Alone though of course by this time I was seen as nothing more than an LOL (Little Old Lady) Alone. (Go East, ladies, as you age and certainly in Moslem countries you will find the man in the street will treat you with respect and kindness, in total contrast to how they'll treat you when you are young and pretty.)

ANYWAY this is just a shout out to all Tunisians and especially Egyptians. Someone on CNN this morning reported that there were many lighthearted signs in the massive crowds calling for President Mubarak to go. One man was holding a sign up high, saying, "Hurry up, Mubarak, my arms are getting tired!"

One Egyptian in their very own Rally to Restore Sanity.

Heritage TV, the Big House

Watching Downton Abbey, the latest TV Heritage dose from the UK, I thought of my grandfather, head groom, my grandmother, the lady's maid, (a union not so much of Upstairs Downstairs as Inside Outside,) and my mother who recounted how she'd eaten stolen nectarines in the hayloft as a child, and ridden down to the village in the estate's dog cart. And then it all ended, just like it always does on the TV series, with the First World War.

When my mother left school she learnt shorthand and typing and worked for the LNER: the London North Eastern Railway and then, she landed right back in that declining Heritage world. My father, just married, was being taken on as a head gardener. He had, as they said, bettered himself. One of six, a mother widowed, living "at the rough end of the village," he had left school at twelve, to work in the fields. But he had a chance to go to the big house: being 'in service' was the education you could get as a poor child in the country.

They went straight from the wedding to the gardener's cottage at Rushbrook Hall, to be greeted by the housekeeper, Polly who opened their front door with a big iron key, which she then put back in her apron pocket.

Rushbrook Hall was Elizabethan. I saw something from it, I think a section of panelled staircase, in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. For my mother, the biggest problem there was the worry that my elder brother when he was small would wander off and fall in the moat.

The PBS Downton Abbey, like the movie, Gosford Park, shows the rules that bound the upper class as tightly as the servants: the upset that a gentleman would serve himself wine, put on his own coat. It made me think of our hotel stays in Malaysia and India: someone to pour the tea, add the milk, someone else to pull out the chair, to hover. If you do these things, the modern young man is asked in Downton Abbey, then what will he do? How will he earn a living?

Every detail is delectable: the gleaming antique furniture, the feathered hats, the bosomy blouses but one thing now is always out of place. As someone who was sent to classes to learn how to speak like a "Lidy," a little suburban Eliza Doolittle, I can't help but register the accents.

The young'uns in Downton Abbey, speak with the casual voices of modern upper class England. Posh voices now are funny. The dowager Aunts, the Maggie Smiths, can drawl and purse lips and raise their eyebrows and their sentences but if the young mangled their vowels, full of frightfullys and Mummys and Daddys - more Bertie Wooster than Prince William - we'd see them as posh, out of touch, spoiled rotten upper class twits. But back then they would have spoken like that and the servants would have bowed in acknowledgement and taken their coats and hats and polished their boots and, like my grandmother, who started off as a tweeny maid, lowest of the low, too low even to have a uniform, would have washed their floors and cleaned their grates.

Kerala, view from an SUV

Kerala means land of coconuts and the Indian-thin lanky coconut palms rose up everywhere beside the roads, behind the tiny shops festooned with clusters of bottled water and bananas. Like Malaysia, there was a heartening mix of churches, Christian schools, Hindu temples and many mosques, most newly painted. Must be money coming in from the Gulf states. So many people working there, said our Indian friends, so much money coming in: every home has a computer. And why so many school children? Kerala the state with the highest literacy. Two young boys did beg -they each asked for a pen. First the Christian missionaries established schools and now the Communists are a big part of government here. "Through the ballot,"as one of our colleagues said because they were seen to be good candidates but now just as corrupt as other politicians.

Everywhere words: on the trucks, FRIENDS, Bismillah!, Jesus Never Fails and on the back of trucks and buses, the most unnecessary command of all: Sound Horn! Above the shacks and tiny shops, signs promising a future: Digital Workshop, Beauty Academy, Internet Institute, Talent Academy, Perfect English Institute. Signs painted on fences and walls. Ideal Vests Briefs and Trunks painted on a succession of private garden walls, followed us all the way down to the Cape.

First day back, never before had the standard silent suburb seemed more like an empty stage set. Every house, every gate, clear cut and on display but where are the signs, the ads, the words, where is the noise, where are the trucks, the buses, the scooters, where is the color, where are the children? where are the people?

Notes on India -Where are the beggars?

OK so we didn't go to Mumbai or Calcutta but we were in Bangalore, (the information capital of the world, according to President Sarkozy, who was there at the same time.)

But no keeping the head down, barging through a dozen outstretched hands, no averting the eyes or handing out cheap coins to the maimed and old at our feet. All I can remember were two young girls outside a big temple, a dignified old man, like a monk; a girl, making faces, pressed up against the car window.

In fact, all the children we saw seemed to be coming home from school, the boys cheeky, the girls bashful. All in uniform, clean and tidy. And there can't be a more beautiful sight than a line of Indian school girls, slim and graceful, dark hair to their shoulders, walking home under those big old orchid-hosting trees, their uniforms a delight: deep blue scarves over pale blue tunics and deep blue trousers, cream colored tunics with vermilion.

I asked about poverty. The poor can buy rice at a special rate. That's one thing. Pressure to survive is obviously intense. In The Hindu Times: six lottery sellers have committed suicide because lottery draws were to be limited to one per week and "a number had turned to begging to make ends meet."

Orchid Hunting in the Western Ghats

We have been orchid hunting in the Western Ghats. I should really leave it at that. We went to Kerala, Southern India just before Christmas because that is the season for the flowering of Vanda wightii - a Vanda not seen in Western greenhouses, and not recorded in the wild for a hundred years. We also needed to check on the range of Vanda tessellata -we have the smaller northern Vanda tessellata in the greenhouse and the much bigger Sri Lanka version. These from Travancore were betwixt and between.

I had planned to stay back at the hotel with The Hindu Times and CNN. I've read enough old accounts of orchid hunting: "Despite the terrain we only lost one man..." But orchid hunting in the Western Ghats turned out to be a lot less strenuous than Christmas shopping. It involved an SUV on loan from the Trivandrum Botanical Gardens, with driver, and Indian colleagues with my sense of humor. Sorry, America, only those who have been through the British school system and the old caste system of the English can, deep down, be on the same wavelength.

We were hunting orchids along the roads because that is where the oldest trees are: not chopped down but left for shade, not jungled up but separate, receiving their share of sunlight. And it's only on the oldest trees, Dr. Motes says, seventy-five years or more, that orchids have time to grow and can find that crusty old bark they love.

Kerala is the most populous state in India. True, whenever we stopped under a particularly old tree on those country roads, there was always a house and garden nearby where we could negotiate for a bamboo pole, be observed by grinning groups of school children walking home or locals on crowded buses charging by, their elbows jutting out of windowless sides.

We did not lose one man on those trips; we did find a Dr. Motes, more than happy, as he saw these Vanda species in the wild. And I was more than happy to just slide into my SUV seat to go hunting orchids in the Western Ghats.

India ate my homework

Home from two weeks in India. Back in BC (before computers) that would explain silence but with laptops and wi fi (a whole line in Abu Dhabi airport) it's no longer an excuse.

But pounding away on greasy metal keys? Now the closest the big old desk computer. And pounding along later, one is less likely to announce I'm at the airport! OMG need coffee!

So Toronto to Trivandrum, Southern India on Etihad, the Emirates airline. (Cheap joke: "Jihad" airlines?Ha Ha!) Maybe had is a verb or noun, just meaning a journey... and ji is the nasty bit. Ask the handsome young Arab attendant who bashfully explains Etihad is Arabic but a made up word. Like those Japanese car names.

ANYWAY, Etihad, economy class, is the way to fly: foot rest, individual movie screen, real earphones, printed menus with choices! (Not everyone needs to eat mutton) AND free drinks. Scotch, wine - and the smiling attendants return unbidden to refill your good-sized glass with no hint of disapproval. My advice to strict Moslem parents: book your children and wives on American Airlines where the head sets cost, the drinks cost, the glasses are small and the attendants hide behind the curtain in business class to avoid refills.

Watched a great Indian movie, "Three Idiots." Students at Imperial College of Engineering, pressure to succeed. The young flight attendant said it was made in response to the great number of student suicides. Note: Read later in The Hindu Times it's the biggest grossing movie ever.

Nearly asleep: changed categories to Arabia. The young gardener is falling in love with the rich young daughter who lives on what looks like a golf course and goes riding in jodphurs with a little scarf at the neck just so. They hold hands passionately in the shrubbery; no kissing. Years ago I hitchhiked down to Florence with two Egyptian girls I met at a youth hostel in Venice. Safinaz said for an Arab girl to kiss a man is like sleeping with someone. She was a journalist- sat up at night in the hostels writing her articles: First Egyptian girls ever to hitch hike! Forget how she got her material back to Cairo. Sent me a magazine. There we are, thumbs out, by the side of an Italian road. Said she told her readers how surprised she was to find she could be friends with an English girl. (We have ended the Suez crisis! she announced.)

OK. Trivandrum, Kerala, three in the morning. Hundreds of people waiting, dark faces, flashing smiles like it was midday. Down the darkened streets but could see hammers and sickles painted on walls and fences. Yeah, Toto we're not in the US anymore.

Playthings

For play, young children need two boxes. When they are really small they need a box with three stones in it. Then it will rattle. And a somewhat clean box is best because they are going to gnaw on it when they are teething. When children start to run around they need something more. That's when parents need to go to ToysRUs, to the back entrance and ask for one of the large boxes that The Princesses Castle came in or The Big Plastic Slide.

That's it; dump the plastic castle and keep the box. In a big cardboard box you can serve tea, plot war, hide from the enemy. You can cut windows and doors or slits for arrows. You can't carve your will on plastic or if you do your Mum and Dad will be angry and worry you'll grow up to be a vandal.

Another thing: I was hanging up the washing the other morning and spread a King-sized sheet across the two laundry lines to dry. And there it was- the secret tent- the shadowy sides moving mysteriously in the breeze. So go green, employ the latest sophisticated solar technology,(hanging out your clothes in the Florida sunshine) and give your child an extra, organic hide out.

Not everyone has the space for a tree and a dog or a laundry line but everyone with a child must find room for the big cardboard box.

We need trees more than birds do

Coral Gables: the City Beautiful. What's the difference between Coral Gables and the rest of us? Trees. The whole place is like the Brazilian rain forest. Yes, there are million zillion dollar homes crouching behind those tree trunks and leafy branches but it's the trees, stupid.

When we moved into our place the first thing we did was plant trees- well, actually, the first thing we did was plant selected seeds of live oaks and gumbo limbo and satin leafs into big old baked bean cans and, bless the South Florida climate, in a year or two they had left their cans behind.

But the point is, you can sit on a crate, you can eat off a piece of plywood (cover with a clean, bright cloth!) and later on you can buy your fancy Italian leather couch and table that seats eight in an afternoon but you can't wake up one morning and say I'm going to be surrounded by leafy branching trees this evening; where's my wallet! It doesn't work like that. (Well, the very rich and impatient can truck in instant trees complete with scaffolding and irrigation and good luck with that.) But the Brazilian rain forest or the gentle beech woods of southern England or just your shady corner were not built in a day - though I suppose our Creationist friends would beg to differ.

Does this blog make me look fat?

I'd given up on the election: it was the Rally. And the vital thing about the Rally was the numbers. As Napoleon said of the Pope:How many divisions does he have?

Well, this Pope has numbers. Doing the wave at the Rally to Restore Sanity was a great way to emphasize the sheer number-ness of it all; all those arms, raised up, two at a time, all the way down the Mall.

Now I can face Tuesday. Though I am still extremely peeved and mystified as to why my powerful letter to The Miami Herald, concerning the electoral process, did not make the cut. Mystified because it had the winning ingredient: it was short.

Having total copyright control etc, I am going to print it here: even more shorter, it might have made a good Rally sign.

Buying Elections the Old-fashioned Way

Why don't we go back to the buying of elections the old-fashioned way? All those millions of dollars spent hiring ad men and political back-room boys...Let Scott, Rove and the others really do something for the unemployed. Maybe not the Oprah-level of a car for everyone - but a new washing machine or TV, or at least a gift voucher for Macys for the ladies and a quart of Jim Beam on election day as you ride to the polls. Cut out the middle men and we might get something out of this election!

Note: I have never forgotten a picture in The Herald some years ago, of a Mexican politician addressing a rural crowd, while behind him, like a Sunday choir, stood a semi circle of gleaming white washing machines.

In Praise of the T shirt

Chanel may have started the clean, uncluttered look but Chanel always meant suits with little chains, and braid doggedly making its way round every collar and cuff and pocket, announcing "I'm Chanel. Who are you?"

Well, I'm the one over here in the classic T shirt, the real clean, uncluttered look that makes even tailored shirts look fussy.

A well-fitting T shirt, like a good education, can take you anywhere, especially in South Florida. But acquiring the right one, like a good education, can be tough. Even the best ones, after a few washings, have a tendency to droop. (Hint: treat your T shirts like silk - wash only on the Delicates cycle.) But the problem of droop has been mostly cured by the "...and 5 percent spandex" formula.

This essential garment, in fact, has started to be taken seriously not just as a way to tell the world to Save the Whales or Join the Marines or visit Jimmy's Bike Shop but something that can accompany you to lunch, and maybe with a lower neckline, fine for dinner.

But this unfortunately has led to the tarting up of the T shirt. From ruffles and lacy bits to flower and fruit prints, to sequins and beads and puffy sleeves. And finally the classic neckline has taken a dive down to the area usually reserved for the name of your team or your favorite soda. This gathered up concentration on the bust has created a slutty Empire line look, best described as Jane Austen meets Old Navy.

We purists can only intensify our hunt for the classy version. But even a cheap T shirt, if brand new, will take you through an event so always have one in your drawer. And even a cheap one will do fine if you check your colors carefully. No Crayola colors, please. Of course, there's alway black, though Christian Dior did say: Never wear cheap black. Easy for him. White is great. And if only one could find charcoal or midnight blue! The men get all the best colors. A rich velvety brown, of course; the essential olive, and oatmeal -mushroom -khaki, whatever you call that color and always sidestep the cliches. Not pink but salmon, not baby blue (No!) but ice blue and a delicate amethyst or turquoise. And watch out with navy. My advice? Never. Only exception if you are actually on a boat. Even when brand new, a navy T shirt looks too much like Dade Correctional Institute or the Parks Department.

Naysayers may counter: How dull! But what makes the T shirt a perfect canvas for prints of your new baby or favorite candidate, is what makes it the perfect background for your beads, your pendant or pearls, that Italian silk scarf and your fancy gold or silver with pashima for a dinner out. You can load a T shirt up with everything but the kitchen sink and you will still look cool. In fact, you will have achieved that goal that so often eludes the eager or worried dresser, especially in hot and steamy South Florida; you will never get that hit right to the stomach, as you enter a party or special event, that Oh oh! because you will never ever look as if you tried too hard.

A few Do's and Don'ts of Orchid Care

It is always a good idea to talk to your orchids. This means, unless you have some very odd physical quirks, that you will be looking at them. And when you're looking at them, you will see

how they are doing. But don't wait till the second glass of Chardonnay in the twilight, when any minor problems may be hard to register.

And talking to your orchids does not mean addressing the assembled plants like someone at Toyota. As any good CEO will tell you, each operative blossoms when afforded individual attention.

If you think something is wrong with your orchid, Do Not Panic.

Most orchids die from worry. Not their worrying, yours. Because we always seem to be talking about keeping orchids warm enough, they are thought of more like patients than plants, or like hot house divas, ready any moment to get consumptive and dramatically expire.

Orchids are tough: think old boots not primroses. You could lose them in a land fill and most of them would emerge, if you dug around long enough, a little creased up, but still alive.

Which brings us to:

Never throw away an orchid because it looks dead.

Orchids are not like the Monty Python parrot. They can look like they're pushing up the daisies, they can look stiff as a board but hang on! Many look dead on purpose, like some dendrobiums, or play dead. (Many vandas I have known). They need:

Tough Love

Certain dendrobiums need to be ignored, for 3 months when they go into dead parrot mode. Some orchids apparently wither and die. But hold on to that crusty old stem or clump of roots. Hang it up, high and dry. And, often, after you've totally forgotten it, you may see tiny green buds emerging- signs of life.

This tough love also can work with a lush plant that refuses to bloom. It preens around, all green and happy but you didn't pay good money for that. A head of lettuce can do that. Take it out of its cosy spot- hang it up next to your wizzened stems. Ignore it. Shock it. And the final move: put that orchid in your Wilma.

Every orchid house needs a Wilma section. Hurricane Wilma wrecked one of our orchid houses, old shade cloth still hanging overhead, tilting benches. That's where we started to put ugly, dried out, near death plants or leggy orchids that had never bloomed. Ones with too much mite damage, ones I couldn't quite bring myself to throw away -Wilma was the back of the fridge.

And after a few months I would wonder: why had we put such healthy looking plants out there?And how come so many were blooming? Some bits and pieces had died away but most, falling out of broken pots and old baskets,were happily tangling up with new roots and climbing over each other like toddlers, open to whatever nature gave them: rain when it rained, bright hard sun. No extra help at all.

It's a reminder- (see under Don't Panic)- orchids are survivors. They have been surviving all over the world without the bloom boosters, the fancy fertilizers and sprays, the stakes and tidy pots.

I think they'll be around when we've all gone but that makes them sound too much like cockroaches. Just think old boots.

Joining the Party

I'm a tea-partyer.

WHAAT?

I want my country back. I want my life back. I want my world back.

No, I'm not unsettled by black people, women people (You betcha!) Hispanic people or gay people finally starting to nudge the great white male to one side.

For me, it's the whole tech world owned by young people, the younger the better.

The old joke is no longer a joke: "This is so simple a child of five can operate it!" "OK. Find me a child of five."

That's why I'm adrift, like a tea-partyer in a three cornered hat.

For example: We agree I should put pictures in my blog, among these old woven, tweedy paragraphs. We did it with the Singapore Orchid Show, (see below.) But that was when my daughter was here. She may not be the child of five but she still retains all the legendary skills of that toddler. And now she's gone with the slogan of today's youth: "It's easy!"

And I want to snap my twenty-four pictures, take the roll into Walgreens or Publix, put it in an envelope and come back in a week to decide which were the good ones. There they were, in your hand. Get copies for Christmas.

Hopeless to tell me you can't get them into your computer that way. As a tea-partyer I'm not strong on logic.

After all, without my magic typewriter (the computer) I could never have knocked Orchid Territory into shape. How did I trudge through all those drafts on my Yugoslav stuff and Kosova Kosovo? OMG! The Smith Corona, the carbons. And right in the middle of the page a typo- and do you go with the white out that makes it worse and once more you rip out the paper...

So. Not much logic. The Tea Party would understand: "No Socialized Medicine!" but "Leave my Social Security alone!"

I loathe and fear the newfangled picture-making but don't touch my Word Perfect - OMG, Microsoft Word!

NB Actually, my daughter (Alice) did not say "It's easy" but "Give it a go, Mum!" which was much nicer but didn't fit. So to keep up with my self-image of fair and balanced, I must admit this mis-speak.

Random thoughts on Malaysia

Across the Singapore Straits and into a Malaysian bus station: right away bubblegum, Wrigleys and Turkish lavs, what the Singapore airport calls "squat pans."

When I smell the sharp smell of stale pee, I'm home - it says the old Peoples Republic of Yugoslavia, like nothing else.

Something else reminds me. The waiters, taxi drivers, shop keepers, all insisting as they always had in Tito's patchwork Yugoslavia: "We are one -( Indian, Chinese, Malay, Hindu, Moslem, Buddhist, Christian-) no problem!" "There is no problem here."

In the capital, Kuala Lumpur, we stayed in the Citin for thirty dollars, the street market so close to the hotel steps that Dr. Motes would say "Shall we go in through the handbags or the dresses?"

Close by, was the grand, modern Indian mosque, the muezzin's balcony level with our window. We heard the call to prayer in Malaysia, officially Moslem, everywhere, most clearly at dawn and dusk. But nowhere such a voice, not the high, plaintive call but a passionate, deep voice, halting almost to a sob, on the edge, then plunging forward.

"Wow, think of doing that five times a day!"say I, giving rise to another of those eye-rolling family moments -Dr. Motes informing me: "It's a recording!"

I'd been remembering the imams climbing up the steps of the little mosques in the small towns of Kosovo.

Malaysia retains its colonial buildings, many echoing Westminster and the great old "cathedrals of steam" like Paddington Station. Many a night I've pounded down the platform under those soaring, sooty girders, just before midnight, getting the last train home -the cheap day return! In Malaysia, the mini Paddingtons are built in the Indian style and shine in the sun like white pavilions.

The Federation of Malaya, "belonged" to us, the Brits, till 1963. My older brother, a shy suburban lad, was sent to the jungles of Malaya during his two years of national service, to fight "the Communist insurgency," our mini-Vietnam. So we had airmails from Malaya, and postcards of the beaches of Penang where the soldiers went on leave. There were movies too, back then: seas of dark palms, lying in wait, the plucky tea and rubber plantations, the alien fruits, the heat and sweat.

Everyone apologizes for the heat. But we are from Florida! we say. Hey, we don't even have air conditioning! The straight-backed waiters, the hotel staff in their uniforms and white gloves, look puzzled: they must have misunderstood.

Yes, we know the fruits, the different palms! Living in South Florida links us not only to all things Latin but to Africa, Asia, the old Empire, the old imperial world of bananas and coconuts.

My brother is old style too. His only experience of life outside the UK is as a soldier: Germany and then Malaya. If he came to stay he would recognize a lot from his tropical days in the Durham Light Infantry. But he still has some kind of infection from the jungles of Malaya and says he can't take the heat.

Still no gum in Singapore

"Well, don't bring like a whole box.." our Singaporean friend said. "Just enough for your own personal use."

So chewing gum was still frowned upon. We flew Cathay airlines to Singapore. Economy class but printed menus, (four choices for dinner!) complimentary wine in those generous little tumblers, and great choice on the music channels, including the Korean Music Box, Malay Hits, Thai Mix, Philippine Sound Wave, Mandarin Zone, Chinese All Time Hits and Mumbai Beat.

I knew Singapore had long since lost the old Imperial cobwebs though all the taxi drivers asked; "-Where you from, Sah?" The clipped Sah! taking me back to old wartime movies.

Singapore has always sounded like a clean, cold, Asian New York - nowhere to go but up - but there are trees everywhere and the trees grow up with the buildings, six or seven storeys high, and so elegantly pruned they are a delight to contemplate. The Singapore Orchid Show was part of the Singapore Garden Festival, organised, like the whole of Singapore it seems, by the the Parks Department. (motto: "Let's make Singapore our Garden.") The city is all over green, and at night, lights up like a classy Las Vegas.

And like Las Vegas, well ordered. Prostitution is legal. There are recycling bins in the hotel rooms, and a notice propped up on the breakfast buffet at the Grand Pacific: Additional charge for food wastage.' (The fine according to the number of grams left on your plate.)

That's my kind of nanny state. Plant trees or else! And clean your plate!

Singapore Orchid Show, the next one

I'm having nightmares. It's when I start thinking about the next Singapore Orchid Show. And putting in an exhibit. Two garden chairs and a bird bath is all you need -

that's Aunt Charlotte's philosophy in Orchid Territory.("What's the show called this time? "Orchids from Paradise?"... Could be "Orchids From Hell." You put in what you've got.")But it's not just a question of Singapore being half the world away and what you can fit into the overhead bins. It's that the Singapore Orchid Show of 2010, so elegant, artistic, bright and beautiful is considered just a rehearsal for next year, the World Orchid Conference. The WOC is held every three or four years, the Olympics of the orchid world, the orchid World Cup. And we, Motes Orchids, will be taking part. And that means putting in an exhibit. We will be defending our title, Dr Motes jokes. In France, at Dijon, two WOCs ago, we swept the board for vandas. At the last WOC we were not invited, even though it was held here in Miami. Ah! Politics, politics! - What? See me after church.

So anyway, just getting fancy with ferns and hammering sheet moss on to the sides of old milk

crates is not going to do it. In Singapore, you are faced with elegant orchid displays, right off, in the airport. One of our Singaporean friends suggests - a Florida theme... Pink flamingos? Dr. Motes, of course, like Aunt Charlotte, dismisses exhibits as window dressing - that is, he doesn't like doing them.

I will be the one.

So here I am. Here it is, the end of July, and even though we've been snipping buds off because we're closed for the summer, Motes' orchids are still blooming their hearts out. And I'm starting to plead "Save it for November, guys! Not this November but the next..."

This November I'll be checking what's in bloom, what's in season, trying to get an idea of what I'll have to work with next November.... but then it all depends on the weather, on snails, let alone a hurricane. If I think about this anymore, I won't get a decent night's sleep between now and November 2011.

I must remember Aunt Charlotte's,"You put in what you've got!" After all, I invented the woman. And in fact, we pride ourselves on just that: only putting in our own orchids. No borrowing, no buying to add to an exhibit. And, for me, the one good thing to come out of observing the current Singapore show, is to see that no-one else has our kinds of hybrids, our vandas and ascocendas.

"See? Told you," said Dr. Motes, an old hand at the international orchid scene. As he says, he's the one doing the most breeding with certain neglected Vanda species: "No-one else was interested." So there's that. And I must remember the sad little Vanda I saw, right in the front of one exhibit, in Singapore. At Motes Orchids we wouldn't have thought it worth more than 12.50 US dollars on a good day. So there's that. But still, hardly enough for a good night's sleep.

The Fourth of July. Sort of.

The wheels have fallen off my blog. It's all just "I" "I" and I'm sick of it - Maybe it was better in the old days with "One." It has come to one's attention... One often has the feeling....

One wanted to get something down for the Fourth of July- one tried to get away from oneself and go for something like :The Ten Step Program To Becoming American but that quickly turned nasty. For example:

Divide the world into where you can safely go on vacation or where you can bomb.

Do not master another language, that tells everyone your parents are just off the boat or over the wall.

OK so one tried another Fourth of July theme: Ten Ways To Know One Has Become An American:

I. When one says "We," and it no longer refer to one's country of origin. In this one's case, England and the English, unless it's really personal. i e "We always played Tiddleywinks on Tuesdays.'

2. One yelled for Team USA though that's partly because England SUCKED.

3. One can invite 60 people for the Fourth of July and prepare almost no food or drink.

We always have a big Fourth of July party and once an old friend was staying with us from Serbia. I spent the morning dusting and tidying and Draga was a great help but she was becoming more and more agitated. I was busy getting six months worth of fluff out from behind the furniture, cursing the chairs for having so many rungs. About three thirty we did put a ham in the oven,(Our motto: let's see if our Jewish, Moslem and Veggie friends really love us for ourselves alone.) We had some chips at the ready sitting on my newly de-cluttered and polished table. We had some beer.

Draga could stand it no longer. "Sixty people! Mary! Sixty people! And you have nothing!""

"Oh, some people won't come."

Draga asked where the flour was. Draga made a big loaf of bread. (For the English it's not a real meal without potatoes, for Serbians, without bread.) We placed the bread, warm from the oven, in the middle of my newly polished, empty table. Draga's hands were still clapped to her cheeks in the familiar Serbian gesture of dismay and despair. It was five o clock. We persuaded her to go have a shower. When she came back her bread was already surrounded by food, by "covered dishes," salsa and salads, with brownies and flan and a row of wine bottles to the side.

One could remark, as one did in the Second World War and after, on the remarkable generosity of the American people.

Remember the story of Jesus feeding the thousands with three loaves and two fishes? If that crowd had been American he wouldn't have needed a miracle. He'd just have said: "Hey, it's a party. Everyone just bring something."

One is now quite excited to be off to Singapore with the esteemed Dr. Motes who has been invited to be one of the judges at the 2010 Singapore Orchid Show.

North Carolina road trip

Four North Carolina orchid societies in four days: if this is Tuesday, it must be Durham! Lovely people, they bought every one of my Orchid Territory's (forty) and almost ten Kosova Kosovo's. So let's hear it for North Carolina. But there was not so much time to ramble round the back roads, and noting details got a bit slap dash:

"Cat Hospital" but "Canine Academy." Young tobacco plants like Boston lettuce. New Zealand scored 92nd minute v Slovakia. On small bldg: "US Post Office" and "Homemade Ice Cream."

We have become frivolous. We read fewer historic markers: Colonel Dobson Jobson who commanded the first something, something was born here..." and more shop fronts and backsides of vehicles. Behind a gravel truck: "Stay back - Not responsible for broken windshields." On the door of a feed store: "Yes, the cat can go out." In the front were chickens: "Birds sold as is. No refunds no returns. Items relating to chicken health are in the store."

Then there are the gas stations. I saw another first: Do Drop In -though Dr. Motes said it was commonplace. All are new to me: Stop and Go, Stop and Shop, Chat and Chew, Pic and Go. One I could not believe when I first hit the US: Piggly Wiggly.

And hair dressers and barber shops: Upper Cuts, The Chopping Block. Dr. Motes observes that barbers and hairdressers have to be good talkers, so maybe that's it.

Everywhere I look I see great names for bands: "Seamless gutters" - can't beat that for a punk group. And Dusty Treasures - obviously country, maybe an old cowboy.

All this started years ago. I was on a double decker bus going to the other end of Reading for my first elocution lesson. Down below on a shop front, I saw Tibbles Bakery. There was an older man sitting next to me on the bus and he looked down at me with a gentle smile - She likes the name Tibbles and she's writing it down!

I can still remember the overwhelming mortification. I was just seven, that's when the elocution (speech) lessons began. So that's when all this started. And now it's seamless gutters and the same old thrill, sitting next to Dr. Motes now, who's doing the driving but still keeping an eye open too. It was Dr. Motes who caught "Hooker St, Business Park."