OK, OK, I finally learned there was a special section for newbies. So here I am, populating it
I'm originally from Romania, then moved to France for 3 years and now I've been living in Turin, Italy for almost two years.
A few months ago I moved to... ORCHIDS! I've always loved plants and gardening (I'm also a vegetarian), and I thought it would be nice having always an orchid in bloom in the house. I found them "decorative" and the fact that the flowers lasted for long helped a lot.
So I started to buy the silly hybrids you can find in the normal shops -- they are beautiful and they made me fall in love, but they are always pretty much the same and you can never find species.
Then I turned to ebay and bought pretty much whatever I liked, species and fancy hybrids together
Well, Turin is rather cold in winter, plus the climate here is temperate, so I guess tropical orchids are viewed as exotic even by the nurseries
By now, I could find 3 orchid nurseries in Italy and I'm still looking. I really like one of them and I buy a lot of stuff from them (plants and materials included).
Here are the species they're selling, if you want to take a look:
Nardotto e Capello Shop
Anyways, I'm trying to get a realistic list of what I have. Most of my 'chids are still very young, some of them are in bloom (I'm expecting the Phal. Equestris for the next week).
What else about me? I love taking photos (of my 'chids too, of course) and you can see them here:
www.fotothing.com/choices or here
www.fotothing.com/onichek.
Well, I guess that's about all for now, I hope I won't give you too much trouble with the tons of questions I have -- I'm only reading the 3rd book on 'chids, so the road is long
Best regards from Italy,
Oana.