Gifts:
We are carrying unique glass hearts from a local artisan, Cindy McQuade, Blown Glass Artist. She has studied internationally as well as locally. Her hearts are beautiful and unique.
In a nutshell, here’s how she makes them. The pictures are amazing. First you gather molten glass – 2150 degrees. Roll into colored glass chips and powder. Melt the chips and powder into the glass. Gather more glass over the first gather of glass and colored chips, this magnifies the colors underneath. Then you shape the glass. After the heart if finished it goes into an annealing oven, – 920 degrees – where at the end of the day the temperature will be brought down slowly to keep the glass from cracking.
Here are some pictures. The one on the end is an assortment of hearts we have for sale.
Flowers:
Our Flower of the month is the unusual Hellebore. It is in the ranunculus family but that’s where the similarity ends. There are so many kinds of hellebores. The plants are typically grown as perennials in shade gardens. Hellebores come in shades of white, green, rose, purple and violet. They will last up to 10 days with the correct care. When you receive your Hellebore, trim a bit off the stems and immediately plunge the stem ends (1/2”) into hot water containing a floral preservative for about 15 seconds. Then put the flowers up to their necks in cool water for a few hours or overnight before arranging.
Some hellebores are named for the time of the year in which they bloom. For example, there’s the Christmas-rose, and the Lenten-rose. In fact, both of these will typically be in bloom well into late spring. If given winter protection, the Christmas-rose will bloom throughout the winter months. Our hellebores come from Northern California.
Plants:
How are your phalaenopsis orchids looking? We have some photos to guide you in the proper way of trimming your orchids.
We are going to show you what to do with a not so looking plant. This plant needs help. The first picture shows you an orchid plant with a dead stem (see the color – it’s beige, not green) as well as a green one, except as you can see in the second photo the green stem has a top that is dead. Also note all the roots growing out of the top of the pot. The smaller dark brown branches are birch that is used to support the blooming stem. We are going to trim the dead branches off and also the plant needs to be re-potted.
In the 3rd picture, you can see the node and our hands on either side of this node. We are going to “snap” the branch into two. We could use scissors or a knife but please clean them first with rubbing alcohol before using them to cut off the dead stem. In the 4th and 5th pictures you can see the clean end of the stem.
The 6th picture shows the potted orchid in it’s new pot. The original orchid was planted in moss. When repotting, we remove all the moss and re-plant it in bark.
In the next series of photos, we show a new orchid plant. Notice that there is one bloom open and the others are just buds. This is why in the second photo you see the bloom on the left is dead. This is not a problem, it’s just been around the longest. Just remove that bloom. The others will continue to bloom.
If you have any questions on orchid care, just send us an email: plants@adelaidesflowers.com.
