Thanks for the photos! Ahh, suburban living. I'm suprised because the layout looks like a split house, i.e. left half and right half would be separate apartments.
Nice setup you have there Johnboy and your Neo's look very nice. Your flat looks like a typical German "familienhaus". I wished that I had such a nice growing area.
Just adding a few things in flower now. It seems autumn where I am, and most Cattleyas appear to run into trouble, still growing their "this year's growths"... We'll see!
This is what's been happening:
Peristeria elata opening, 20 buds, one got fryed in last weeks' heat-wave:
And some 3-4 weeks later:
And here's a nice comparing shot. It's a wonderous Cattleya schilleriana, vs. a very nice leucochilum outcross.
Not one "uhhhhhhh"! Not one "AHHHHHHHHH"! Okay, I'll shut up then! You know, they don't sell great Cattleyas at B&Q!!! ;0)) This Cerro Verde did really hurt (actually I remember having to find an ATM at the time I found this plant at an Expo... It's that sort of money, it did take at the time (Back in the 3rd age!).
There's not really too much happening right now. I'd be repotting things over the weekend, and the Neos need working on, other than that: I should be sowing about 30 pods harvested over recent weeks. We'll see if I find the time for that somehow...
Here's my "in situ" Lc. Persepolis Splendor x walkeriana semi alba, a plant I for some reason really like:
The other thing, nicely rooted into her surronding brothers and sisters is a Bc. Humming Bird I'll hang on to her now that she reached multi-growth, mass-flowering stage:
Well, and here's more lab-work, in the making (Laelia tenebrosa "Valpotas Night" X Laelia lobata coerulea:
The eye candy tour continues - fantastic! I love Blc. Hummingbird. How can you not like B. nodosa hybrids? When I move to the tropics (yes, when, not if) I'm going to festoon a tree with them.
Your plans are great, I have similar ideas with my Cattleya schilleriana bottles. The Idea was to produce hundrets-and-hundrets to keep all of them for myself, and hope for that move to the tropics one day. I've tried that one before in the Dominican Republic, finding out that I don't like living behind barrs, just because any "White Man" is considered loaded and therefore needs robbing twice a year.
So next time I'll have to make it Cuba, or maybe St. Bath.....
Where (which tropics) would you choose, given the chance?
Here's another (not great) picture of one of my blooming blue violaceas.