Vanda motesiana - Who's your Daddy?

The bright colored flags are up at Motes Orchids, like a car dealership. Martin, Dr. Martin R Motes, has just received- no, earned- the ultimate honor for an orchid breeder, or any orchid nut: he has a new species named for him- Vanda motesiana - the plant long inaccurately known as Vanda stangeana.

He's right up there now with Mr. Sanders, Mr. Schiller (Phal Schilleriana, etc) the two Dr.Hookers- father and son. All nineteenth century gentlemen, their names somehow right for long black coats and top hats, gas light and cobblestones, alongside Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper. Whereas twenty-first century Motesiana has a lightness to it; it sounds like a music festival.

So in the wake of this great event I set out to interview Dr. Motes on this honor and found a happy man.

First question of course, is: "Why the name change?""

"Well," said Dr. Motes, "the species formerly known in horticulture as Vanda stangeana was NOT the plant described by Reichenbach."

Oh. "How could that be?"

"Ignorance! Everyone thought they knew what V. stangeana Reich. f. was but the plant in cultivation had never been described! And now this young graduate student in botany from Pennsylvania, has discovered that the plant in cultivation was not that described by Reichenbach."

Pennsylvania? Vandas are warm-loving orchids-you would think it should be Manila, or Bangkok or Hawaii.. In the same odd way it happens that the revised rules for fertilizing vandas have come from research at the University of Michigan, that hot house of a state.

"So how did the lad in Pennsylvania..?"

"He went to the old plates and pictures, examined them." Played, in fact, the botanical Sherlock Holmes. "And when he pointed out these discrepancies to me and Dr. Eric Christenson" (the two top hats)-"we agreed."

"-That that was not the orchid described by Reichenbach?"

For those for whom this explanation seems a little thin and lacking in detail I refer them to the September edition of The Orchid Review, the journal of the Royal Horticultural Society: page 147: "A new species of Vanda." "Timothy Choltco describes and illustrates Vanda motesiana Choltco, a new species and the correct name for plants in cultivation hiding as Vanda stangeana hort."

"And why did you get the name?"

"I've done more breeding with Vanda motesiana than anyone else- as with many vanda species- It was just that no-one else was very interested." Dr Motes here exhibits a pleasing modesty.

I know the aforenamed "V stangeana"- a not very brilliant yellow vanda but with interesting tessellations-that was why Dr.Motes used it in breeding. (When you live with someone who breeds orchids you learn there are often odd reasons why they like a certain plant: -Me-"What's so special about that one?"- Dr. Motes: "It's the length of the stem!" Me: "Oh."

And of course Dr. Motes helped Timothy Choltco and provided the type specimen of the vanda that was "hiding" under a false identity so the young botanist offered the name to Martin and Dr. Motes is now proposing to name our best "stangeana"- now motesiana- cross after the sharp-eyed young botanist.

So I asked Dr. Motes what did this mean for him, the family, society at large and civilization in general?

Dr. Motes modestly drew attention back to the domestic scene, as well he should: "I will no longer be known as the man married to the woman who has more orchids named after her than anyone else."

Oh. OK. So from now on I'll be the woman married to.. . I'll be Mrs. Motesiana.

Play it again, Sam!

We won last night! The Canes are back. The University of Miami, our Miami Hurricanes, beat Georgia Tech 33-17. Yeah! Except when our household raised a cheer it was after the event. Together with our new, enormous flat screen TV with HD, we have the record-and-watch-when-you-want miracle feature; the ability to play with time.

Now we can start watching later, skip the commercials, replay the touchdowns..play God. Be king of all we survey, emperor of the remote, thumbs up, thumb down - Caesar surveying the arena. But ...well, for one thing, I rather like the commercials. Football tends to bring out the fun in advertisers. Not like the ones who turn the old-fashioned nightly news broadcasts into a doctor's waiting room.

I know it's a great advance in technology to be able to play with time but if I can't be there in person I'd like to be there in time, when it's all happening - when the Canes come surging out of the smoke on to the field, I want to be cheering with everyone else. When they score a touch down I want to feel I'm yelling with the whole of South Florida, with the nutty students stripped to the waist and painted orange, the tail-gaters waving beer cans and hot dogs, the crowds in bars.. a collective moment.

We are already removed physically from the action -miles away from the stadium. One perched on the rocking chair bought new from Hialeah, one on the futon, one on the old rocking chair from a Salvation Army store in North Carolina: comfortable, not far from the fridge, but isolated in our Florida room, by ourselves. But at least, till now, when we yelled Yes! or howled No! it was with everyone else.

I suppose the argument is soon everyone will have this feature because nothing can stop progress! We'll all be working the remote: fast forwarding, pausing, stopping, twirling time around. And everyone outside of the stadium will be cheering a little later, after it's all happened, and then playing the good moments of course, again and again.

I must admit I planned if Georgia Tech buried us, I'd insist we just go back and replay our first victory of the season over Florida State which we recorded on Labor Day. Again and again till the pain of defeat had subsided. So there would be some basic gut level consolation in high tech progress- Play it again, Sam!

Orchid Territory -New! Improved!

I had been bemoaning the fact that Martin has sold thousands of his book- Florida Orchid Growing Month by Month - while I toil along - six here, two there - with "Orchid Territory: A Comic Novel." (Will make you laugh, actually! It’s funny about orchids, the business of orchids- You know the English- got to see the funny side!)

People, especially Americans, want to be informed, not laugh. And to say “a novel’ unless you’re Stephen King or those horribly successful women who write about vampires and teenagers...then that’s the kiss of death. Or maybe I should have been inspirational: Chicken Soup for the Orchid Soul..or maybe Cooking with Orchids...

But Orchid Territory, of course, is full of orchid stuff and Aunt Charlotte, the central character, is channeling Dr. Martin Motes, author of the bible for orchid growers: Florida Orchid Growing Month by Month.

Martin wants to add that despite my complaints Orchid Territory has sold 2000 copies and is going to a second edition - which is where the Insider’s Guide comes in: (see below) Each chapter of the second edition will now begin with a little nugget of information. Mary Motes is out to capture some of the How To public. So here goes:

Orchid Territory

An Insider’s Guide

Chapter I Fetching the Pig

If you are serious about Christmas in South Florida you buy a pig. If you are serious about the pig you buy a live one.

Chapter 2 Christmas Eve: Preparations for the Party

“Remember: If a Cattleya looks like it needs watering water it tomorrow. If a Vanda looks like it needs watering water it today, if a Phalaenopsis or a Paphiopedilum looks like it needs watering, you should have watered it YESTERDAY.”

Aunt Charlotte’s famous advice on watering orchids.

Chapter 3 The Party

“You don’t have to know a thing, dear boy! A lot of orchid judges haven’t grown a damn orchid in years! All you need to remember for judging is that you’ve always seen a better one of whatever it is, last year or in another region.”

Aunt Charlotte’s helpful advice to Mark on impersonating an orchid expert from Kew.

Chapter 4 Christmas Day

“Orchids that need moths for pollination are fragrant after dark and tend to be lighter in color– the white or yellows! There’s the hallmark of your orchid– adaptation and intelligence!”

Charlotte (“I do not suffer fools gladly!”) would not have grown orchids if they were stupid.

Chapter 5 New Year’s Eve Party

“I’ve always said Christmas is a tricky market.”

“No-one wants to commit till Christmas Eve. ..You can’t wrap up a plant in November and put it in the closet.”

It may be a party but, if you’re selling orchids for a living, it’s always a good time to complain.

Chapter 6 Cold Front

“Every farmer and nursery-man had the water on. All the way home to Orchid Empire the whole of Redland humming with water: a warm sixty-three degrees out of the ground.”

When there’s a cold front, let alone a freeze, turn on the sprinklers: water can save your orchids.

Chapter 7 New Year’s Night

“Mark had done all he could do. The plastic was tight, the water was on. Nature was on the rampage out there just taking her course, clumping down the peninsular: Termi-nature! And in an hour or two, with the dawn, they’d all see how merciless she’d been.”

Mark facing the freeze New Year’s night.

Chapter 8 New Year’s Day

“The orchids along the front of the greenhouses, the landscape orchids, their actual flowers were frozen under the sprinklers. Charlotte says a coating of ice protects; calls it ‘relatively benign.’”

Mark trying to make conversation New Year’s morning.

Chapter 9 New Year’s Week

“You’ve got your blood lines and your winners. Horses can have four words, orchids only three. Make a new cross, a hybrid, or win an award, you can put any name on it. Register with the Royal Horticultural Society and you’re part of orchid history!”

Charlotte on the naming of orchids.

Chapter 10 A Visit to Orchid Magic

“Apparently for industrial espionage among the orchids all that was needed was a toothpick to lift the pollen from the flower...An awarded orchid of course, was like a prize racehorse. “But a damn sight easier to breed with!” Charlotte had chortled. “All you need is the toothpick!”

Chapter 11 Las Olas Show: Preparation

“Always a litany of disaster! Cold damage, bud drop from high temps, flowers fading, flowers not open–It’s show time!”

Charlotte on the standard nightmares for orchid exhibitors.

Chapter 12 Las Olas: Putting in the Show

“For just the Oncidium Alliance alone there were twenty classes: Oncidium equitant hybrids, pink and lavender predominating, then yellow, orange, red predominating, then ‘other colors.’ Then after having covered more variations than anyone in his right mind could even think or imagine, the list ended with: Oncidium genera, species and hybrids– “other than above.”

Mark on just one corner of orchid judging.

“But...when someone’s got a plant, a pet they want to exhibit and there’s not a division for it to be entered, they’ll scream bloody murder.”

Charlotte explaining.

Chapter 13 Selling at the Las Olas Show

“..treat Phaleanopsis like an African violet, great for beginners or those with low light; but you can’t flower a Vanda just on a window sill even in South Florida.”

Mark, discovering to his surprise he has learned a few general rules about orchids.

Chapter 14 Visiting Rachel and Jen

“You need a cat in South Florida to grow catts. They should be able to walk along a bench without knocking the plants over. Then you have them spaced properly....till the seventies orchids here always meant cattleyas.”

Mark, making conversation; facts courtesy of Charlotte.

.

Chapter 15 Preparations for the Orchid Talk

“Don’t these societies always have an endless agenda, anyway?...Rachel was complaining, remember, Rachel? They got you all the way up to Central Florida to talk micro-propagation and then what with the minutes and the discussions and the treasurer’s report you had about twenty minutes at the end.”

Larry persuading Mark he’ll be able to survive having to give a talk to an orchid society.

Chapter 16 Orchid Talk: Part 1

“...orchids that looked fairly ordinary and those were the most treacherous of all, the orchids with a totally obscure reason for being special: ‘It’s the breadth of the side lobes!’‘It’s the fact that this is a pink one and coming from the south side of the those mountains in East Java that species should be yellow!’

Mark panicking at being asked, as guest speaker, to identify and assess the orchids brought in by society members.

Chapter 17 Orchid Talk: Part 2

“There were references to the new temperature tolerant Oncidinae, the breeding of short day plants to long day, the fact that cattleyas were still judged as corsages, and the need to work on the strengthening of their stems; the beauty of odontoglossums, so big in England and what a joy that the intergeneric breeding was creating temperature tolerant varieties for Florida.”

Charlotte taking over orchid duties from Mark at the meeting, triumphantly.

Chapter 18 Valentine’s Day at the Mall

“Watch people. You take a flower. You say ‘How beautiful.’ You bring it forward to the face, your nose. Quite instinctive. A painting? A necklace? You say ‘How beautiful,’ and you hold it away to view.’

Cooper on his quest to breed fragrant Vandas.

Chapter 19 The Beginning of the End

“...Mark and Carlos had been ‘consistently over-watering’ but that was a common mistake, one she was sometimes guilty of herself. And Mark knew that was as close as Charlotte would ever get of saying Thank-you, thank-you for keeping Orchid Empire going.’”

Chapter 20 Preparations for the Miami Expo

“Who cares? Two garden chairs and a bird bath...It’s only two hundred square feet, for God’s sake! It’s not the bloody cricket ground at Lords! I tell you, you put in what you’ve got. No soul searching required.”

Charlotte on not getting carried away when setting up an orchid exhibit.

Chapter 21 Monday: The Sand

“Monday was finding the exhibit spot and the allocation of sand; Tuesday allocation of palms and greenery and Wednesday ’You trundle in the plants and get cracking.’ Wednesday was Putting in the Exhibit, the day Rachel would rent the U haul.”

Why orchids cost more at traditional orchid shows.

Chapter 22 Tuesday: The Palms

“All around people were landscaping their chalked out squares: trundling in their rationed allocation of palms and greenery, the background for their Orchid Fantasies.”

Why orchids cost more at traditional orchid shows.

Chapter 23 Wednesday: Putting in the Exhibit**

“The whole essence of being epiphytes – air growing plants- is to escape from the enemy -fungus. Fungus likes to be moist. So orchids have learned how to be dry. Dryness is the important factor in growing all orchids: not what moisture your plant needs but how much dry it can tolerate!”

Charlotte again.

**Why orchids cost more at traditional orchid shows.

Chapter 24 Thursday: Judgement Day

“Most exhibits seemed to have at least one big old specimen plant eating up space.’You can’t blame the big commercial people for going with the quick and easy stuff but who is going to keep these sacrificial wonders in their greenhouses?’” -Charlotte.

“It was Bert who had lamented the fact that when the old firms died out, with them went so many of the great orchids, the perennial one of a kind stars and ‘pets’...”

Chapter 25 The End

“Friday was the day for the botanicals, for the orchid society people and the best and cleanest of the commercial plants so the orchidists won’t decide the nursery’s going downhill and the spray program a total disaster. Saturday always mainstream but wait till Sunday to bring in the scratch and dents and the fully open, even fading so the Sunday afternoon bargain hunters can be allowed to beat you down, you with heart-rending reluctance, on price.”

Mark, on his second orchid show, already an old hand.

Chapter 26 The Last Party

“...I have learned much from living among you, no, not just the quaint customs of orchid vending. Though I must say, I have discovered you could sell an old boot if it has buds on it.”

Mark saying farewell.

Mirror Image

I could never go past a mirror without glancing in it. In fact, any reflective surface - shop windows, car windows, shiny fridge doors- Yes, it's me. It's still me.

I know it's always called vanity but I think for a lot of us it's more like the opposite. We don't think we look so good: we're just hoping somehow this time, at this angle, in this light, we won't look so bad. Even beautiful young things do it and most for the same reason. It doesn't matter how young or beautiful you are you will find something wrong. All those gorgeous teenagers scowling along a line of parked cars, checking themselves in the succession of car windows.

Or they used to. Now they're all talking or texting and they hold these iPods like young women used to hold compacts, looking in that little round mirror and touching up the face. Interesting! One thing these miracles of technology lack, apparently, is a mirror.

When you're young, of course, it's no good being reassured how nice you look. Perhaps that's why my grandmother never bothered. If I grumbled about my legs, she would announce that I was lucky to have two because some people only had one. She was one of the models for Aunt Charlotte in Orchid Territory but I missed out one of her classic lines. If anyone asked what time it was, she would answer, for example: "Two o clock! You be lucky you've lived so long. Some people die at one!"

Mr. Wilson had the same no nonsense approach. If I ever start a wellness center I will replicate Mr. Wilson's. He rented rooms in a small house on a beach in Jamaica, a stretch of beach with evidence of past hurricane damage -maybe that's why it was so nicely underdeveloped. We stayed there a few years ago and I remember it with much affection because at Mr Wilson's you just got out of bed in the morning and went down to the beach.

Mr Wilson did not have mirrors in his rooms. I think I remember one narrow oblong high up in the bathroom. Short, anxious females had to stand on tiptoe and still not see much below their ear lobes. He had no new shiny appliances either or cars parked outside and the beach shack where we got breakfast had no walls to hang a mirror on. It was worth any amount of massages and treatment with hot pebbles and aromatic candles. Nothing could beat not looking at yourself for a few days. It was a real holiday.

Darwin at Venice

Martin, Dr, Motes, will be speaking to the Venice Orchid Society on Wednesday evening, September 2nd, and the subject is Darwin and Orchids. Of course, just the phrase “Darwin at Venice” has a fine ring to it, as though some scholarly botanist has discovered a forgotten trip the great man took, a Victorian Mediterranean voyage. One sees him gliding along in a gondola, maybe checking for molluscs or whatever there might be clinging to the mossy walls of the palaces lining the canals.

Of course, Darwin and orchids are indelibly bound together and a perfect subject for an orchid society talk. I am very pleased we have a new topic because though Martin is a great speaker, when the subject is orchid culture there are really very few variations on presenting the rules for watering, tackling mites or repotting cattleyas. And as a loyal wife and partner accompanying Martin on many of these trips I’ve heard them all.

I’m lucky, of course, because at these meetings I have a chance to steal five minutes from the potting and the insect warfare, and introduce my popular, comic novel Orchid Territory. This is what every struggling author dreams of: a captive audience interested in their subject. And I also slide in and speak at the very start, when the audience is at its most captive.

I’ll have something new to introduce now - this blog. And for Wednesday evening at Venice, I’ve just discovered a lovely fact about Darwin. In his later years he confessed that what he really liked to read were “popular novels” though "...only if they do not end unhappily - against which a law should be passed."

Orchid Territory passes the test! Darwin - a great man indeed!

Mickey Mouse Ears

Orchid Territory is dedicated to Martin, of course, and also Bart and Alice “who were never taken to Disney-world because there was always too much to do in the orchid house.”

I have had many hardened orchidists nod sagely- of course! - and tenderhearted mothers sigh over these few words. But the truth is, this is a family joke.

I had announced from the very start that I would never take any child of mine to Disney World. I saw it as my one claim to being a Good Mother (most of the other criteria being hopelessly out of my reach). There was a good dollop of English snobbery involved, but mostly the despair of the Eng. Lit graduate who sees the end of civilization at every turn. This even though I’d grown up with Snow White, and the seven dwarfs are more a part of my internal landscape than most of my relatives.

The more Bart and Alice argued the more resolved I became. First, of course, I was informed that they were the only children in their school who had not been to Disney World, which - hallo! was just a little north of us, just up the road in Orlando. Then it became the whole of South Dade, had gone, then the whole of Florida and, as their horizons broadened, the US, and of course, living in Miami, the whole of the Spanish-speaking world. Then we heard about the influx of cheap flights straight to Orlando, from Western Europe and beyond and then the Emperor of Japan had to announce that he loved Disney World too.

I didn’t know about the Emperor but I had to admit that whenever I went back to the UK, the plane filled up with families coming or going to Orlando, and coloring books and crayons were being given out to at least half the passengers.

So the funniest thing happened last year when Martin was invited to speak to several orchid societies in the Los Angeles area and one day our hosts arranged for us to have a free trip to Disney Land. We were picked up and deposited at the gates for the day. So it came to pass that in our family it’s the parents who have been to Disney Land. We called Bart and Alice from outside one of the sunny palaces and I think they were old enough to have a good laugh. We mostly people-watched and Martin made sage comments about the landscaping and I really got into the spirit of it all. I discovered how delicious the chocolate-vanilla Mickey Mouse ice-creams were and all day whenever I felt hungry I got a Mickey Mouse ice-cream and ate it, starting with the ears.

The Kennedy Boys

Tonight we've been watching tributes to Ted Kennedy, much about his reputation in the senate, his sterling work as a senator. And talk of his brothers who died so early. As they say one never forgets where one was.

I was in Yugoslavia - the old Peoples' Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia - in November, 1963. I had just got back to Belgrade from a long trip, on the 22nd. My friend Nada and her family lived right in the center. Their flat was very cosy; the big tiled stove had been lit and Nada was hemming a skirt, ready for a party on Saturday. But in a few hours we heard that Kennedy had been shot and everything came to a halt.

Saturday was a national day of mourning. All entertainment was banned: only solemn music on the television and radio. The mother of Nada's friend cancelled the party. The American reading room was not far away and we saw people gathering in silence outside in the cold, some in tears, some taking flowers inside. In the trams that passed we saw Belgraders sitting stone faced and silent. People were crying in the street. And Nada cried. Nada who had survived the German occupation of Belgrade, everything, who always vowed she would never cry. But she said, chin up, she was crying because she was angry. And she said what many Yugoslavs were saying then: "There is too much violence in America!"

I was in Yugoslavia five years later, this time teaching down in Kosovo, southern Serbia, much to the dismay of my Belgrade friends for whom Kosovo was the wild west. A wild west full of Albanian moslems. I was in my little lector's flat, getting ready for class when three of my fourth year students came to the door. One of them, Mark, was crying. This was something I'd never seen. Kosovo was called the wild west for a reason. This was where the blood feud still existed, where every self-respecting Albanian male was supposed to own a gun or at least a knife. The other two students asked if they could all come in for a moment, apologising. Mark, they explained, just wanted to pay his respects. They were both moslem but Mark was from a catholic Albanian tribe; you could tell that from his name. And Mark, they told me, had just heard that Robert Kennedy had been killed.

Health USA: No country for young men

I am from England.

Until I came to America I didn't know what a financial burden the body could be.

Now I'm much older I can relax. Contrary to the idea that America is a land dedicated to youth is the fact that it looks after the old. Reach the gently sloping uplands of Medicare and you can quietly graze away.

I used to joke that one should spend one's youth in the West, specifically the States and then go East, to Turkey, to China - where reverence for youth gives way to reverence for age. But increasingly, as we are told, more money is spent on the last six months of life in the States, than any other time. Reverence indeed.

It seems America is obsessed with the first six months of life in the womb, and the last six months in bed. The first six months of life coming from zero to the last six months, going to zero.

In between, it's business as usual because your body is big business.

Ask your doctor. Tell your doctor. Ask your doctor. Tell your doctor.

Why Don't We Do It In The Road?

My Woodstock moment came on Easter Saturday 1958. I'd heard about the "Ban the Bomb"march on the BBC. Organised by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, it had started from Trafalgar Square on Good Friday and was headed for the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment outside Aldermaston, a village on the other side of Reading, my home town.

I had come out to see it go by, standing in the cold by our bus stop on the London Road. A few neighbors had come out too. It was late afternoon, already getting on for dusk. And then we saw them coming down the hill, not many, a few hundred, their flags and banners drooping in the rain. The snow that had fallen on Good Friday had turned to classic, cold, English rain. It was the coldest Easter in living memory.

My heart was thumping hard, not just because of the banners, the raised voices and ragged chanting but the fact that they were all walking in the road. I was thinking what will happen when a bus comes down the hill, behind them, one of the big double decker Thames Valley buses. As we so often say now: it was a simpler time. People did not walk in the road. On Friday and Saturday nights when the pubs closed at ten thirty then a few unruly, lower-class citizens might lurch along the gutters but that was it. The first march for nuclear disarmament in 1958 was the first time the British had taken to the streets since the hunger marches of the thirties, when the starving Welsh miners marched on London.

As the marchers got closer we could see their banners said all kinds of things: Unite Ireland! Independence for Cyprus! There were elaborate Trade Union banners, embroidered like something from a church among the anti-bomb and peace signs. Our little group by the bus stop were the only bystanders in sight so we got the full force of the column starting to chant: "Come and join us!"

And I did, the only one, heart thumping harder, like a village boy swept up by the soldiers to go fight for the King. Though afterwards I always liked to say modestly, yes, indeed, I had been on the first Aldermaston march, one of the pioneers, first of the few.. I usually didn't add that it was basically because we lived just round the corner from the London Road and I was home from college, on Easter break.

The reasons why I wanted to ban the bomb, fight the cold war and work for world peace were quite personal, even selfish. Some of my best friends were young Communist Party members. In 1956 I'd gone to Yugoslavia, just shy of eighteen and spent the summer in the Peoples' Socialist Republic with two pen pals, two school girls from Belgrade. I came back, glowing with the discovery that many young American students were to make when they volunteered to help harvest the sugar cane in revolutionary Cuba: sunburnt, handsome young party members made one think twice about the evils of communism.

Then almost before my summer Adriatic tan had faded, Russian tanks were grinding into Hungary to put down the Hungarian revolution and any idea of a warm and friendly communist was dead.

But here on the march a few months later, were people who I felt for the first time understood how complex things were and yet how full of possibilties life was. All you had to do was not bother what people thought, not care about being respectable. I'd been swept into a group of marchers who didn't care: a young doctor from Ceylon, now Sri Lanka. Behind us an older couple, Quakers. Two dark young men with the "Independence for Cyprus!" banner. A very serious man with a beard and maybe his students. They were all incredibly friendly and, even the English, totally uninhibited. We chanted Ban the Bomb! And Come and Join Us! all the way into Reading in the twilight facing the same little knots of dazed and disbelieving people watching us go by, that I'd just left.

Sunday morning I didn't wait for a bus; I walked into Reading and found the marchers, found my group, my Singhalese doctor, outside St Lawrence parish hall. We started off for Aldermaston, the village in the Thames Valley with its Atomic Weapons Research Establishment. Word came down the line when we reached the tall wire fences: march in silence. The place seemed huge. There were clusters of men in uniform behind the wire, with dogs and guns. It was the first time I'd seen guns in England.

And when I got home for the first time when I listened to the BBC, I knew things they did not or refused to acknowledge. We were not a few rowdy students, a group of naive housewives pushing prams fifty-two miles through the good old English rain. The next year the BBC could not dismiss the march. We were sixty-thousand leaving Trafalgar Square. There were bigger and better banners and ones proclaiming all the towns and cities represented and bigger and shinier badges with the CND logo.

But I wore my little one given to me on that first Easter Saturday, the international symbol of peace, the semaphore for N and D, which began life on drenched and drooping banners coming from Trafalgar Square to Aldermaston on that first Easter march against the bomb.

Florida City Swap Meet

The Florida City Swap Meet is featured quite a bit in Orchid Territory. Aunt Charlotte's Extra Large mens' shirts come from there, second hand -a dollar a piece. And the dignified old Mexican ladies in charge of the Christmas Eve dinner make their appearance in a motley array of old T shirts that Aunt Charlotte always looks forward to. "It's something of a Christmas Eve tradition wondering what will turn up on their fronts." She was hoping for another Only-in-America zinger like the one a few years earlier: 'Coon Hunters For Christ.' But this time the swap meet sample was disappointing. There was a RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE on the lady who'd stayed up all night with the roasting pig but the other two doling out the rice and beans could only offer an almost brand new MIAMI DADE PARKS DEPARTMENT and a fading TOMMY HILFIGER. Nothing even from Harley Davidson or the military.

"Over the years," Charlotte says, "judging from the T shirts, a surprising number (of these ladies) seem to have served in the Marines."

The Florida City Swap Meet featured a lot in my life too. and T shirts were only the tip of the iceberg. When Martin and I came back from teaching in Yugoslavia, he was unemployed and I was pregnant. He'd warned me he'd rather starve in South Florida than go back to his college job in Ohio. (Note: It was the winters, Ohio! He's a Miami boy!)

We didn't starve, but for many years the Sunday morning Florida City Swap Meet was just about my sole resource, for clothes, furniture, plates, jewelry, knives, forks and spoons, beautiful bowls, often a little cracked, and things I hadn't realized I'd always wanted until I saw them sitting there in the early morning sun for not more than a dollar or two.

I still remember what I paid for almost everything - if I can't, then the vase, silk shirt, side table, and anything else, belong to a later time when our economic situation lacked the drama of the early years. At the start my budget ranged from 25 cents for T shirts to two or three dollars for something like a chair. Yes, it was that great a swap meet. (Though it was too good. It got to the point where I would show off my latest prize: "It only cost fifty cents!" and Martin, surrounded by teapots, old atlases, irresistably pretty plates in blue and white, sterling silver bowls only slightly tarnished, would plead: "I'll pay you a dollar to take it back!")

For twenty-five cents (we're talking the eighties here) I harvested all the T shirts, blouses, scarves I could ever need. And the best guy we regulars went to was Carlos. We called his spot Carlos's Boutique. Carlos was a shy young man who parked his old green van in the same place every week, putting down a plastic sheet and spilling out black trash bags of treasures. I got my first Ralph Lauren shirt there, an Hermes silk scarf - someone, the maid probably, had put it in a hot washing machine and the colors had run a bit. We all just got down and dug. But then one Sunday morning everything changed. Carlos had brought along some kind of a stand and a load of coat hangers and everything was hung up and 50 cents. In one awful moment he'd doubled his prices and a lot of the fun had gone out of it.

It was probably at Carlos's Boutique where I got my 'Alabama' T shirt. It was white and green and unlike most T shirts, fitted perfectly. I wore it till it died and from time to time, someone, usually a youngish woman, would stop me and say- "Hey! Wasn't that a great concert!" I had no idea about a concert but it was certainly a great shirt. And for a moment I'd be lost, oblivious as the old Mexican ladies as to what was written on my front.

Saying it with flowers

Motes Orchids has been awash in flowers, all our vandas and ascocendas that we're so proud to say bloom all the year round. But the problem is we've been closed for the summer and we wanted them to take the summer off too. But of course, they've been blooming their little hearts out.

We should have started to cut the buds off round about the end of June, but I only did just a few. It seems a little too coldblooded, murderous, like deliberately taking eggs out of a bird's nest, like Herod slaughtering the first born. And what if someone close to us- let alone one of the children (Ha!)- suddenly decided to get married? Flowers are what we have -beautiful, unique vandas and ascocendas, though we say so ourselves - born and bred on the property. That's what we would bring to a family wedding, not fine linen or rich relatives or distinguished grandparents.

But we would never ever want to get into the wedding business. It's fine to give flowers to friends for their weddings or hot dates ("No, not that big pink - she'll think I'm proposing!") as long as no rules are involved. Yes, we have orchids in many lovely colors but they are not coordinated with Macys or J C Penneys or bridal books. I list florists who do weddings right up there with elementary school teachers and emergency room nurses. I admire them from afar and wish them luck.

Only once did we get sucked into promising orchids for a wedding without our golden rule. I knew we were sunk when the bride's mother sent me a little square of taffeta with a note: "This is the color for the bridesmaids' dresses. For the bride two shades lighter. And there'll be twenty tables."

We prefer to keep our flower presentations casual. The new FPL guy usually gets a flower especially if the dogs have been extra noisy. The two from Best Buy who put in the new stove. If we didn't have at least one of the big purple sprays or a fragrant yellow to hand, the family would feel uneasy. Motes Orchids with no flowers? That's like a pub with no beer.

Judging the judge

I didn't get too excited or teary-eyed about Judge Sotomayor's ascendancy to the Supreme Court. It was the compelling, historic moment for all the older, white men of substance and power in the Senate, something to tell their grandchildren. That was the fun part. Sonya with her sexy, humorous, lived-in face, warm but quzzical, sitting there observing a gang of important men in a muddle. It was like watching the workers drive the bosses out and locking the gates- but ever so politely. For a woman of a certain age it was especially sweet. And now on to Danica winning the Five Hundred, a filly winning the Preakness with a female jockey and Mr. Florida going on to win Mr. America.

Hurricane Season

Motes Orchids has closed for the summer but we're not going anywhere. We have orchids -a lot of them. Too many to be left with a neighbor. And hurricane season has been starting earlier each year.

So Martin scheduled his last speaking engagement out of state for the middle of June with the Tulsa Orchid Society. A great time was had by all and then as usual we took off in a rental car for a few days and discovered how wonderfully friendly Oklahomans are, and so worried for us, from Miami.


"Hurricanes!" The waitress in the diner in a little town had gasped, "I'd be so scared!" And she'd just been telling us about the couple of tornadoes that had hit just the last week, two roads over. No big deal. This lady had the big trees fall in her yard and then two days later-on the Thursday- another tornado came through and that was when the other tree hit the house.

We are used to hurricanes being plannned for, like finding a cheap fare on Orbitz. You tune in with the first announcement, a slight dust cloud forming off the coast of Africa. If you're really eager, you look for your hurricane chart conveniently provided by the local Walgreens and while you're still hunting round the TV for where you put it, those folk in Oklahoma, if they had managed to hear a tornado warning at that same time, would already have raced for the basement, clung to a tree, or crawled into a ditch.

And while we are being shown charts of the Caribbean and kept informed on the status of this cloud of dust far off in the Atlantic, surprised once more by how close Trinidad is to Venezuela, and what a long trip your neighbors from Trinidad have to take each time, and wow how close Cuba really is, so no wonder ...a day or two goes by. Meanwhile, often before your tropical depression even becomes a storm, let alone a future hurricane with a name, the poor people in tornado alley have already salvaged their remaining possessions and hopefully found the cat and are being looked after by the Red Cross.


If the tropical storm finally makes it to hurricane strength- seventy miles an hour - then, unlike us with our Orbitz travel plans, the itinerary can change. And every one can join in and play. OK, maybe headed straight over Cuba - once more, poor Cuba - but lucky for us. Or straight past and into the Gulf- Watch out Mexico! No, wait, maybe turning north, maybe us, this time -South Florida. Time to go for the baked beans, the batteries and the Chlorox! No, no -Now they're saying more east and north. Oh, Oh, North Carolina, your turn again!

Floridians can spend a whole night at a bar discussing this. Indeed, this can all go on for days. It's all very gentlemanly and leisurely. Does anyone ever have time even to name a tornado?

Maybe we just all get hardened to whatever happens in our own state. Most Californians I've met accept earthquakes but like the sturdy Oklahomans make faces over hurricanes. I hate the idea of earthquakes. Unless you live near a zoo and hear all the animals making a commotion- how do you know? And all my favorite plates are just propped up on my shelves. They get knocked off just by lizards. Californians must keep all their best stuff in a box.

Whenever there's an earthquake there's always a mellow, cool Californian on TV standing stoically in front of the sliding grocery shelves, amid the cans and packets, or crunching cheerfully through their living room over their broken plates and glasses:"Yeah! The bed shook. I just woke up- hey just a small tremor! No big deal!"

But I'd be wailing at the camera: "No warning! All my lovely stuff from the Florida City Swap Meet! Gone! We were never told!"

First Post by Internet Immigrant

There was a cyclamen in a pot, a vase of yellow roses, seven cards and then suddenly about fifty emails zoomed in to our Motes Orchids email account when I broke my hip in March. That's when I finally had to admit the internet is where it's at, even for Get Well messages. And at some point I had to come out from behind the orchids and face the computer and stop writing orchid names out by hand because I'm scared of the labelling machine.

The great divide now, I heard on the radio, is between technological inhabitants and technological immigrants. Between those younger among us and any random three year old, and those who've arrived late on the scene, coming down the gangplank, clutching their homespun bundles of pens and papers, folders and dictionaries, blinking at the shiny new world.

Actually, when it comes to computers, I've not even arrived at Ellis Island; I'm still well out at sea. But, like a classic immigrant Mum I rely on my son to translate. He speaks the language. Not only that, he excels-Bart writes for the Huffington Post-and with him holding my hand and only occasionally rolling his eyes, I am advancing into this wild and unknown territory like I did into the Balkans (Kosova Kosovo) and later, into the South Florida world of orchids. (Orchid Territory)