Well, HeLOO There!

Orchid fanciers among you will remember, perhaps, my disappointment at my Psychopsis Mendenhall "Hildos" when, in May, it dropped a bud that had been forming since February 2008. I'd been watching this spike grow, passing a full yard in height, watching this bud form, delighting in the little elf-shoe curl it attained, only to see it drop off immediately after this photo was taken. Plunk. Oh.

I took comfort in the fact that another bud was forming beneath it, in the hope that perhaps that one would come to open. Fast forward a month. It's 3 AM, and Bill and I are getting the kids ready for bed, having just arrived from Utah: 3 1/2 hours on the road; 6 hours on airplanes. "Was there supposed to be a big flower on that orchid?" Bill asked as he emerged from the bedroom.

"AGGGH!" Suddenly remembering what awaited, I ran to the bedroom to be greeted by THIS.I laughed like a hyena for ten minutes, hollering to the kids to get back out of bed and come see what had happened in the bedroom while we were gone. I was jumping around like Daffy Duck. Four inches across, six and one-half inches high it is, and it dances at the end of a yard-long stem, embodying everything joyous and insane and wonderful about orchids, about loving a plant, caring for it carefully, listening to it tell me what it needs, and being rewarded beyond my wildest dream by a single flower opening.

Let's have a closer look at that little flamenco-dancing lobster. Is that a face I see? Or two?I believe there are two faces here, a mustachioed monkey, perhaps an emperor tamarin, and a beautiful snobby puma. Emperor tamarin photo by AFP/Getty Images, from daylife.com.

See if you can find them.There's another bud forming beneath this one. This time, perhaps, I'll be here as it opens. I want to see how it does that.

NOW are you going to go out and get yourself an orchid? What's stopping you?