We have a rainy, blustery day today–perfect for working in the greenhouse and finishing up the plant clean-up.

I don’t get lonely out there, since there are lots of fun creatures around keeping tabs on me:

I believe this is a Giant House Spider, which is a European import.  I welcome all spiders in the greenhouse, though this one, approaching four inches long, startled me a bit at first.

Here are some pics of the cleaned up greenhouse:

I tried an experiment with some holiday cactus two years ago–I decided that they might do best in hanging baskets planted in orchid mix.  I potted three of them up this way, and hung two of them up and put the other one on a shelf:

I don’t know that I’ve fertilized these appropriately, but they seem healthy enough.  And for the first time, they have fat buds appearing on the tips:

One of my favorite orchids is the persnickety Coelogyne cristata.  I have had this plant for probably six years, purchased at the annual Flower and Garden show here in Seattle.  I believe the plant has bloomed two years, with its beautiful pure white, fragrant flowers.  However, there were few flowers and the display was unimpressive, as they turned brown pretty quickly.  This year, I took the drastic step of repotting the plant into a big wooden hanging basket.  That was several months ago, and the plant seems to really be happy with its new home–the new pseudobulbs are fat and clean and the plant is now HUGE:

My dream is to have a basket full of flowers from this plant one year–who knows?  Maybe next spring!  I’ve done a bit of reading online about these plants and discovered that watering can be tricky to honor their bloom timing and their rest period.  I doubt if I’m doing it right, but it can be tough to customize the treatment for all the plants in the greenhouse!  I’m lucky to water them at all, so tailoring a water schedule to a certain plant isn’t really in the cards right now.

Below is a close-up of the Plectranthus flowers mentioned earlier.  I am impressed by the delicate design on the insides of these graceful flowers.

One final panoramic view of the cleaned up greenhouse.  Next weekend, the outside plants come in!

A quick count of all the remaining plants in the greenhouse came out to 344 plants!  No wonder I’m tired!!  And that doesn’t count those that will get moved in next weekend, or the plants outside on shelves!