The Bursting Bud-Emergence

First bloom of a young orchid, or any orchid, is not a speedy process. What fun would instant gratification be, anyway? Orchid fanciers learn to enjoy the journey. It helps to have a lot of orchids so that when one's journey slows down or stalls altogether (hear that, Donna?) you can switch your fickle affections to one that's doin' its thing for you.

Another ten days down the road. The scales on the bud hint at multiple flowers to come. Squeeee! Now I'm wondering if it's going to bloom precisely when it would were it living in Guatemala. How cool would that be? Clearly, I have weeks to wait before finding out--this photo was taken in the last week of January. Slowly I turn, step by step (you have to say that in a Daffy Duck voice).

February 3, 2010: I'm having such fun with this post, photographing the plant as it changes. I've no idea when to expect flowers. I've been watching this bud for so long I can hardly imagine the day when its flowers will open and start emanating that heavenly scent in my very own bedroom.

March 1, 2010: It's really cooking now. I fantasize that each little kink and scale on the spike will resolve into a bud and then a flower. I'm misting it several times a day and at night before I go to bed. It's kind of like boiling water when someone is in labor. It's something I can do that seems helpful.

The spike elongates and miraculously differentiates into separate buds. Here it is on April 20, 2010.


By April 28, it's starting to open.
agggghhh
boinnng
pop pop pop

The color deepens and even more flowers open
and along about 10 AM that heavenly muguet/carnation/paradise perfume, barely remembered from a roadside in highland Guatemala, begins to emanate

and it fills up the room until about 1 when the sun is no longer warming the flowers

but even after that you can catch a whiff until nightfall when it rests and girds itself for the next day of beauty and fragrance.

It surely favors its mother.

Not to be outdone, the little Encyclia cordigera alba plant I bought to tide me over decides to open on exactly the same day as its big purple cousin.
Just to show me, it pumps out a perfume that's even spicier than the purple one's.

I fall in love with it, too, and apologize to it for ever thinking it wouldn't be just as lovely and fragrant as its cousin from far away.

My orchids aren't really so much plants as members of the family, friends who bring me joy. My bedroom looks like a sale table at an orchid show. I bring practically everyone who enters the house in to see them; they're just too wonderful not to share.
We all have days when nothing seems to be as it should.

It's good to have a place to go where everyone is happy and thriving, where abundance and beauty are the order of the day. To to receive affirmation in the sight and scent of well-grown plants; know that this, at least, is something you've done right.

The Swelling Bud

This is a post months, nay, years! in the making. You'll see why as it unfolds.

Here it is, my personal Grail of orchids: Encyclia cordigera. It is not a rare orchid; it is not a particularly difficult one to grow. It is a species orchid, which means it hasn't been messed with or crossed with anything. Like the clumsy, bespectacled hotelier in This is Spinal Tap!, it's just as God made it, sir. And here it is, growing at a roadside rest stop in Guatemala, near Los AndesLos Andes Post.

(an exquisite place you should go to eat and rest and rejuvenate while watching orchids and hummingbirds and tanagers and resplendant quetzals). To experience a visit there, and see some of the fabulous birds you'll find on this plantation/cloud forest reserve, see Birdchick's excellent
Encyclia cordigera. It's poetry to me, that name. It has rhythm and style. And it is a name imbued with memories.
For me, it brings back Guatemala, March 2006, the last, best trip to Guatemala that I took with Bill. We hung out with our friends Marco and Hector and laughed our way through Tikal.

Near Los Andes, in the higher elevations, we stopped at a roadside restaurant. Wired to a tree trunk in the picnic area was an orchid the size of a bushel basket, all strappy green leaves and lavender blossoms. Drawing close, I put my nose to them, as I do to all flowers.

I remember closing my eyes and breathing deeply. I remember muguet, lily of the valley, but with a deeper, subtler, spicier undertone. I remember floating away on a belladonna cloud singing, "Euphoria." (Stampfel and Weber fans, unite!)In a freaky bit of Internet kismet, when I Googled an image of Stampfel and Weber, the third photo on the results page was of Bill and me playing a Stampfel and Weber tune called "O a Little Wishbone." Yahhhhh! The Google, she works in mysterious ways.

But back to my Grail.

I remember thinking, "I must have this orchid somehow." Then I remember saying it. I remember Bill saying some strongly admonitory things. I looked the plant over. Every pseudobulb, and there were dozens, had a bloom stalk with multiple flowers crowning it. It was at the peak of perfection. There was just one pseudobulb that didn't have a flower stalk coming out of it. All it had was a single leaf, and no rootlets.

Of course, having this specimen was impossible. The thing was huge. And I couldn't bring it through customs even if I'd wanted to. And ohhhh, I wanted to.


I leaned in close to the heavenly muguet perfume. Then I blacked out from ecstasy.

Well. I went home to Ohio and dreamt of Encyclia cordigera. Looked for it. Finally saw a cultivated one at a show, which was heavily awarded, albeit not quite as deeply colored as the Guatemalan specimen. Still, the same species, perfectly grown, showing what could be possible.


Bought one at the same show, even though it was E. cordigera var. alba, a white cultivar. I didn't really want a white one, but it was as close as I could get. I was hoping for the same fragrance, at least. And that plant has sat in my collection, barely growing, stolidly refusing to bloom, for three years now. Bad karma, maybe, to take something perfect and bleach it to white. It's sulking. Correction: I looked at it the other day, and there is a tiny flower spike starting. Here it is, with a ladybug on it, circa mid-January. The spike is all of an inch long at this point.

Perhaps it doesn't want to be shown up. But oh, it will...it will.

Four years have passed since I fell in love at a Guatemalan roadside restaurant. And in my east windowsill there is a plant with five pseudobulbs on it. It is big and shiny and bursting with health and vigor. Its leaves are three times longer than the cultivated E. cordigera var. alba right next to it. Clearly, it has a plan.
I have tended it lovingly for four years, repotting, watering, feeding, misting it, giving it the catbird seat for sun and humidity, closest to the bright east window. That's it, near left corner.

And in the crevice of the newest, fattest pseudobulb there is something that has been forming for four months. It started as the tiniest green tip, perhaps a new leaf. But then it started to swell, and by the turn of 2010 it was clear that this was no leaf. It was a flower bud.

I peek into the crevice of leaves at least three times a day--when I wake up, when I dress, when I go to bed. And note the subtle changes, as I would follow the changes in my body were I pregnant.

Which

I

am

not.

(Happy Mother's Day!)

But I AM pregnant with anticipation. And my camera is ready, over the span of months that this post encompasses, to capture the moments of its emergence. I'll serve that up in my next post.

I cannot resist adding this Mother's Day dispatch. I wish I had photos but alas! I was busy driving.

So this afternoon Phoebe and I are driving around town on Mother’s Day looking fruitlessly for a nice Peace rose for Bill's mom Elsa, and everything we see hits us as extremely funny. We see this woman brilliantly adorned in a tie-dye rainbow T-shirt and stretch pants, and I begin to sing, “I seen a RAINBOW, I seen a ANGEL a-walkin' down County Nine!” and Phoebe joins in and at the point at which Rainbow Woman runs lumpily across the street to beat the traffic we are doubled over in the car.

The next thing we see is a woman walking one of the most beautiful Boston terriers we’ve ever seen. So I screech to a halt and we yell out the window, “We have a Boston at home!” and badabing! we’re instant friends. “He’s gorgeous!” we yell and she yells “THANK YOU!” and we yell “How old is he?” and she yells “One!”

“What is he, about 23 pounds?” and she says “Yes, exactly! I’m trying to hold him there!” and I say “He’ll bulk up! Ours is 5 and 25 pounds now.”

So it goes on like that a little while and we thank her for stopping and letting us admire Riley. Just to test I yell “RILEY! How old are you?” out the car window and Riley’s head snaps around and he stares at us, which is supercute because he has a bad underbite so he looks like he’s spoiling for a fight. She tells us her vet calls him a Boston Terrorist. Phoebe does an imitation of Riley snapping to attention with his lower lip sticking out which is spot-on and we laugh about that for awhile. I yell RILEY and she snaps her head around to stare at me.

The next thing we see is a man walking an old dachshund, and he’s carrying the requisite white grocery bag full of old dachshund poop. So I pretend to roll down the window and yell, “HEY! We have a bag of dachshund poop, too!” at which Phoebe releases peals of laughter and adds, “We’re trying to keep it down, but it keeps bulking up!”

We roll on, still laughing our heads off, and the next thing we see is a man walking a huge Portuguese water dog lookin’ thing on a leash. And he’s not carrying a grocery bag; he’s rolling a giant TRASH CAN behind him. “Man! His dog must poop a whole lot!” I say, and Phoebe squawks with laughter and on we roll. It was the best Mother’s Day moment I can remember. It had nothing to do with cards or flowers or overcrowded restaurants. It was realizing I have a daughter I can hoot with.

From a Balcony in Guatemala

Through the haze of discomfort, it quickly became apparent that my balcony on the third floor of a detached hotel was quite the hotspot for birds. Of course, the same principle applies here as applies at home. Indigo Hill, as we call our 80-acre sanctuary, is really nothing special as far as Ohio mesic woodlands go. It's our close attention to it that makes it seem so abundant and miraculous. Which any piece of land, closely observed, can be. Here follow the observations and photographs I made while recuperating.

Repeated soft tapping from a branch stub that had been cut off to accommodate the hotel construction gave away the new nest cavity of a pair of golden-fronted woodpeckers. Yes, I know, they don't have golden fronts like ours do in the American southwest, and the scuttlebutt in the birding community is that this is probably a discrete species, perhaps to be called the Guatemalan woodpecker. An endemic in the making. I say that with a bit of irony. The woodpecker knows what it is. It's we who are trying to decide whether it's a big deal for our lifelists or not.
Knock yourselves out. I'll just keep digging our nest cavity, thanks.

A larger relative: the lineated woodpecker, Dryocopus lineatus. Smaller than our pileated, it's a bit more ornate, too, with barred underparts and cool facial markings. The lineated woodpecker was interested in a cavity in a rotten snag just a few yards from the golden-fronted's home. But that snag was hot property, as I was to find out, and the lineated woodpecker didn't have a chance against the current owners. They weren't taking offers.Nope. We've taken it back off the market. You'll have to excavate your own.

A white-fronted Amazon, the smallest of the Amazon parrots, and arguably the cutest. In the pet trade, they're sometimes called spectacled Amazons, but their Latin name (ever the most reliable) is Amazona albifrons. I've seen these little birds kept as pets, but I've never seen one look happier than the pair incubating their eggs just 15' off my balcony.The female's in front. Can you tell what makes her the female? She's worn her tail off in the tight nesting cavity, incubating her eggs! I was thrilled when, the first time I could observe them at length, the tailless one I'd picked as the hen disappeared back into the nest cavity, while the perfect-tailed male took off yelling. (I'd add here that they were not the least bit visibly concerned about my sitting on the balcony. They were relaxed, preening, talking between themselves, and just being parrots).

Each morning, they'd both sit outside the cavity and scream, AK AK AK AK AK AK AK AK AK AK AK!! They'd preen a bit and scream some more and then one bird would quietly crawl back into the cavity and the other would take off, screaming AK AK AK AK AK AK AK AK AK as it arrowed into the distance over the lagoon. Wild parrots scream a lot, even when they're paired and incubating and conceivably self-actualizing to the hilt. I always smirk when I read bird behavioralists proclaiming that pet parrots are screaming "because they're lonely, bored, in need of attention..." Well, yes, all that might be true, because unless he's glued to your cheek, a captive parrot is de facto lonely, bored and in need of attention; but happy beautiful wild parrots scream all the time, even when they're in a flock of 30. Screaming is part of what parrots do. Ergo: Parrots are noisy pets. Apologies to Charlie, who doesn't scream much at all, but does it enough (say twice a day AGGGHAGGGH HAGGGHAHHAG AGGHAGH GGHAGGGH...until we close his sliding glass door)...to drive anybody crazy.

In better light the next morning, the male parrot amused himself by clipping brancheswatching mepreening, stretching and dozing--such lovely red primary coverts!!! Such lovely indigo primary feathers--feathers we parrotkeepers are instructed to clip off as soon as they grow in, so the parrot never gets to use them. Yes, I am having a mid-life avicultural crisis, in case you hadn't noticed.

Eventually he'd take off, you guessed it, screaming all the way.Flying, the way all parrots should. Screaming, the way all parrots do.

Both talks at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology went very well. Man, I've had sooo much fun up here in Ithaca. I hate to leave, but home calls, and the peas need to be planted in the beautiful new moon. Heading home Tuesday, Baker by my side. He keeps me awake by regularly fumigating the car interior.

Grounded in Guatemala

blue-gray tanager, Via Maya, Guatemala

Earlier, I made reference to staying at Hotel Via Maya for the remainder of the Guatemala trip. Foreshadowing, all that. Somewhere along the way, after leaving Las Tarrales, I ran into some frijoles refritos that didn't want to submit to their duty to nourish my body. No, these beans staged a miniature version of the L.A. riots in my guts, complete with burning, looting, and Molotov cocktails. The Antibiotic Police were called in, but it took awhile for their forces to quell the uprising. Firehoses were deployed, to little avail.

Bad food happens. It happens anywhere, but it happens more often in the tropics, because there are more bacteria foreign to tender North American digestive tracts, because there's higher heat and humidity, and, well, just because. I always travel with Immodium, which sort of stops overzealous peristalsis in its tracks, and since this happened, I travel with ciprofloxacin, an antibiotic that's effective against the kinds of bugs that cause dysentery. Having had dysentery for six continuous months while in Amazonian Brasil, I needed Immodium to function on a daily basis. Cipro is a new, delightful development in the war.

One thing you don't want to do when stricken with dysentery is get in a vehicle. You don't want to do anything, in fact, that takes you farther than sprinting distance from a bathroom. This unfortunately includes birding excursions, boat rides, and (sob) going to Tikal. But hey. I've been to Tikal twice; I've had some of them most magical experiences of my life there, and as I told Bill of the Birds as he was taking leave of me in the pre-dawn hours, there are way worse places to be laid up than a third-floor jungle hotel room with an open-air balcony in the Peten region of Guatemala. I had my camera, I had my laptop to download and edit 8 bajillion photos; I had birds just off the balcony; I had a book to read, and most importantly, I had T.P.

The hotel maid looked in on me midmorning, at my sunken eyes and prone form, and visibly alarmed, asked auf Espanol, "Don't you want me to call your husband for you?"

"No. Absolutely not. There's nothing he can do for me. He belongs in the forest, watching birds. Please, do not call him."

Which must have sounded kind of weird, even though it was my most fervent wish, albeit in stilted, Portuguese-tinged Spanish. Perhaps she deduced that I was hallucinating, because about two hours later the loveliest lady doctor appeared at my door, carrying a small black bag and wearing a stethoscope around her neck. There followed a most interesting conversation, again conducted entirely in Spanish.

She listened to my description of my symptoms. Her eyebrows shot up when I told her I'd uh...gone...8 times since midnight.

"Ocho viezes?! Ehhhhhh."

She thought for a moment, then said, "Here's what I want to do. I want to take you in my car to Sta. Elena, to the hospital there. I want to put you on I.V. fluids, because you are dehydrated. And then I want to get a sample of your po-po from you and figure out what kind of germ you have, and give you the appropriate drugs for that germ."

The thought of getting in a car paralyzed me with dread. I had tried it just that morning, thought I'd surprise the group by showing up late for the birding excursion, and had had to stop the van for a little roadside interlude, and get the driver to take me straight the hell back to the hotel. Oh, no. Not getting in a vehicle for any hour-long ride over bumpy roads. Nuh-uhhhhn. I thought fast. Spanish bubbled up from the deep limbic recesses of my mind.

"Pardon me. But I want to stay right here, in my bed. And you can take my po-po to the hospital at Sta. Elena, and figure out what kind of germ it has, and then somebody can come back and bring me the right drug. My po-po can go. But I am not going anywhere. And I promise that I will drink and drink and drink and I do not need to be put on an IV."

I held my breath, watching her face, hoping hard that the good doctor would

a. understand my emergency Spanglish and
b.not make me get in a car again.

She smiled, shrugged, and asked if I had a little container.

I dumped out the rest of my Origins fruity facewash, maybe $20 worth, cleaned out the container, and quickly, yes, merrily produced the sample the good doctor had requested. We hugged and agreed that it had been a pleasant and fruitful exchange.

She came back that afternoon with a diagnosis:

"Se observo la microbiota moderamente aumentada con campos llenos de leucocitos."

which I gathered meant there were germs and white blood cells in my sample. She handed me a couple of cards of ciprofloxacin; we hugged again and shook hands. "Con mucho gusto!" I started the meds, and by late that night was feeling steady enough to wobble my way over to the thatched-roof bar, where my husband was yukking it up with the rest of the gang. I just as quickly wobbled back to the room, realizing that I was not going to be leaving at 3:30 AM for Tikal the next morning.

Well, that's some rotten timing, to get dysentery and miss the crowning birding excursion of a too-short trip. I'd have to make the best of it. I had the pre-excursion to Los Tarrales, there was that. Three days of bliss and manakins..And I have to confess, birding off a balcony in Guatemala, even sick, beats gazing out on sullen juncoes and dreary ice in Ohio. I would stay put, and make the best of it.
agouti, Tikal, 2007

Livin' La Vida Maya

Like all monkeys, she was an itchy little thing. (So was the howler, har har.)
Blogger poll:Are my pants touristy enough?

After our various adventures at Cerro Cahui, Ixpanpajul, Sta. Elena and PetenItza, it was time to settle in for a few days at a very nice hotel called La Via Maya. It's not too far from Tikal, and is surrounded by some nice forest and some very nice birds. This turned out to be a very good thing for me, because I was to spend the rest of the trip right there. I am now using foreshadowing, a literary device intended to produce tension in the reader, with a desire to punch the computer screen. More on that later.

Like many large hotels in Latin America, La Via Maya has enclosures with native wildlife; the harsh squawks of captive scarlet macaws ring out starting at dawn, well into dusk. They are well-treated and free to ramble about a large area, socializing, a satisfactory lot when you think of how most captive parrots end up living: in solitary confinement. Another paddock holds a herd of Guatemalan white-tailed deer, which are noticeably smaller and darker than our whitetails, not quite as small as Key deer, but getting there. I considered trying to make you think I had captured these images by stalking and waiting, but it is not so. My main concern was poking my lens through the woven wire and not getting any of it in the picture.

By chance, one of the does had just given birth to twin fawns, and I was captivated by the tiny animalettes, their bodies no larger than a small Jack Russell terrier's, all legs and angles and huge liquid eyes. They'd totter a few feet, then collapse down in a defensive crouch, probably responding to low vocalizations from their mother. Think small loaf of Pepperidge Farm Toasting White and you have the size. Teeny.
The other does were fascinated by the twins, and they got a whole lotta lovin.' I was reminded of myself around our friends' children Oona and Sophia, the 1-year-olds to whom I am lucky enough to act as an unofficial auntie. Oh, I love those girls.
Also hanging around the grounds was a somewhat mysterious young female black howler monkey. She was a most placid and lovely animal, unafraid but unobtrusive. She seemed to enjoy the smiles and surprised reactions she got from hotel guests when she'd drop down out of the trees and sit near the tables, absent-mindedly scratching herself. Here are the incomparable bird painter Keith Hansen (left) and the illustrious co-author (with Sophie Webb) of Birds of Mexico and Northern Central America, Steve Howell. Both are much rowdier than the little monkey. Keith is a howl unto himself. Dude. I love this guy and his beautiful wife Patricia, a Yucateca from Mexico with a keen sense of humor and terrific taste in textiles and travel. We staged some wonderful pictures of Steve showing the howler some birds in his book, but I took them all with his camera--rats! I never saw her grab anything from anyone, the way many acclimated monkeys in India and Africa do. Even when Keith offered her his video camera (something I would not do), she thought about taking it and then gave it back to him. She was a perfect little lady.

I so wanted to groom her. She probably would have enjoyed it and reciprocated. But it's never a good idea to touch a wild animal, even one that's obviously been hand-raised. So I hung around hoping she'd touch me. I wanted to bury my nose in her hair and see what she smelled like. Missin' Baker.

In the morning and evening, we could hear the unearthly roars of wild black howlers coming from the forest all around. They're common in the Peten region. They're heavy, rather slow-moving monkeys who live on fruit and leaves. Their round bellies house chambers where the low-quality forage is fermented and digested. Tails are prehensile, and act as a fifth hand. Nice nonskid undersurface, too.
Something about monkeys freaks people out; I think it might in part be due to the contrast between their familiar (human) eyes and faces, and the fact that many have these long slightly creepy prehensile tails, that move with a mind of their own.

Male howler monkeys have huge round bony bullae, or chambers, in the gular (throat) area that act as resonators for their roars. They have the most amazing skulls. I wish I could find a ventral view to show you, but the bullae are in the vee, under those massive mandibles. Very cool skull. This picture, pirated off the Net at a site that sells skulls. You can buy any darn thing online. Monkey skulls. I like skulls but I draw the line at displaying primate skulls in my home. Too close. At a distance, calling howlers sound like a great wind through trees. Close up, they sound like mythic lions, very angry ones. I love the sound of howlers in the morning.

And now, I am off to Ithaca, to hang the "Letters from Eden" paintings, open the show, give some talks, and meet some wonderful birdpeople at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. There is talk of ethnic restaurants and wine. Plans are being made. It ought to be a hoot, or a howl. Chet Baker is going with me as my mental health guide dog. Maybe I can sneak him into public facilities by saying I'll freak out unless he's with me. He'll be great company on the drive, which will push 9 hours each way. Howler monkeys and humid forests will be a distant memory in the Land of Ice and Snow, but I have been promised ducks in nuptial plumage, and I'll take them! Must pack his sweaters.