Unfortunately can’t help you there as this one was in bloom when I got it :)

Has yours grown additional side growths? As far as I understand each fan of leaves only blooms once, then the side growths have to mature and those will each bloom once and so on.

Interesting about the cinnamon! Sounds like you’re doing a great job.

Thanks! Definitely most of the roots are in the bark, about 4 inches cover and half an inch or so sticking up

Thanks for your comment! That’s reassuring that it’s pretty normal for the stem to be out of the bark. They’re not really aerial roots in that they were completely under the bark in the previous pot. It’s just the top half-inch or inch or so that’s moved up above the bark after repotting. Kind of fun that the roots are so strong to be able to lift up the plant like that!

Congratulations! What did you do for intense rehabilitation? Did anything else change (sun exposure, temperature, day length)? Hope the momentum keeps up!

Very nice! Looks like it’s 3D printed, is that right? Do you plant directly into it or is it meant to hold an inner pot?

I think overwatering is very common with orchids! They’re different than most plants because they grow attached to trees, not in soil. So their roots are designed to be exposed to the air or just barely covered. They get water from rain that runs over them and then dries off as well as out of the humidity in the air. The houseplants we’re used to growing grow in the soil where the roots are used to being moist. So that makes orchids a little different!

Here is a great video about watering orchids, it gives more details than I did and it’s really helpful because it shows how the roots should look when they need watering. I’ve seen her other videos highly recommended too!

This book is the one I’ve liked most. It’s more detailed than most of the books I’ve read, which I want! But there are lots of good books out there. What I’ve learned is that flowering is a complex process governed by many different factors and differs between species (of which there are tens of thousands for orchids!).

First it needs to be healthy, so getting appropriate levels of light, water, humidity, and temperature. Then it may need some kind of environmental trigger, this could be daylength/seasonality, change of temperature, or even change in atmospheric pressure from a storm! But then the total opposite too: if a plant is dying it may flower as a last ditch effort at reproducing itself. So basically it’s pretty impossible to make it flower on purpose unless you know the specific needs of your plant, just keep it healthy and hope for the best :)

Generally Phaelenopsis orchids (the most commonly available for sale and iconic type) want to be heavily watered (even soaking the pot for 15-30 minutes) and then allowed to dry almost completely over a week or two, more or less depending on the temperature and humidity. Keeping the soil/bark constantly moist causes the roots to rot, so you want it to dry (but not so much that the leaves get floppy/wrinkly). They like bright but indirect light, which is tricky – not direct sunlight but in a bright location all day. Warm temps, with night time minimums above 60. Higher humidity (mist them with a sprayer sometimes if you can). At least that’s what I have taken away from the reading I’ve done!

This is pretty out of the box. It’s just something we’ve wanted to do for awhile and we’re using the 4th of July as an opportunity:

DIY nacho bar: everyone gets a cookie sheet, there’s a table with various chips, cheeses, and toppings, and you take turns under the broiler

DIY sundae bar: same thing, but ice cream (and no broiler!)

I love how paprika will extract the ingredients and cooking instructions from a recipe site so I don’t have to hunt through a page that’s a mile long!

Good point!

Interesting! I wonder if other countries will follow suit and if alcohol packaging will eventually go the way of tobacco labels. I also wonder if it will have less of an effect than tobacco labelling – so often you get a drink at a restaurant or bar where the consumer wouldn’t see the labels, compared to a cigarette that’s almost always purchased as a back by the smoker.

Great point!

Wow, it’s finally approved. I feel like I’ve been hearing about lab-grown meat forever and I wasn’t sure it would ever come to market. Then in the meantime Beyond/Impossible came onto the scene with their technology. To be honest their products are such close imitations of meat, I wonder how much better this lab grown meat could be. I also wonder about the cost.

You can make pizza dough with sourdough starter and get the protein through toppings. Here is a recipe by Paul Hollywood for sourdough pizza, with a little yeast thrown in to help it rise. “Strong white bread flour” is the same as bread flour, in case the “strong” throws you off.

I definitely agree with you! It’s neat to have alternatives available. So far I feel that comments are higher quality here. So even if reddit goes on, I can enjoy the interaction here.

I hadn’t heard of that rule before, that’s an interesting idea! It would be cool to find out if the generation of new posts and comments has declined at a greater rate than the number of views.

The article says that page views dropped by 6.6% from the day before the blackout to the second day of the blackout. Those numbers seem quite small to me and sobering about the impact of the blackout. At the peak of the blackout, views were only down 7%? I would imagine that views are recovering as more and more subreddits are being forced back open. That doesn’t seem like it will have a big impact on reddit long-term!

To be clear, I’m not happy about it or saying this to defend reddit! It’s just my takeaway from the article. Maybe someone more familiar with these metrics can explain that 7% is actually a really big and significant impact?

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, they’re really helpful! You kind of combined the concept of satisficing from one comment with the deadline suggestion from another comment in a helpful way. I think reframing my goal as you suggest would work for me. I’m definitely looking for the perfect chair right now. Maybe if I was looking for the good enough chair today it would help me pick. I worry about getting buyer’s remorse, but realistically I’ll just be happy to have a chair.

Thanks for sharing the word “satisficing”! I’ve never heard it before and it’s really nice to have a word for that concept.

I definitely fall into the maximizer category and that causes some of my purchase paralysis. For many types of item, I’ve started just buying the wirecutter recommendation and trusting it to be good enough. Clothing and furniture feel more personal and less generic, so the wirecutter strategy hasn’t applied, but I will have to try to find a way to satisfice with those purchases too.