Bobj

@Phone, you forgot “Golden Wedding - Woody Hermann Dunno how to stick it on using an ipad...

I believe he gave some of it to Boris Johnson.?

It’s a toss-up!

@Phone, your spelling needs a bit of work... “Outgoing President Trump In A Nutshell” should be... "Outgoing President Trump Is A Nutcase”

You obviously know about them, don’t you?

Saratoga under lily pads, heaven in Coroborree Billabong in the Mary River, Northern Territory!

Forgot to say, the pool was/is a noted duck billed platypus’s swim.

Interesting...not for fish, but sapphire mining. I had a little ‘show’ in the New England Ranges of New South Wales and came across a big granite boulder about a metre down in ‘wash’. The boulder was sat on granite bedrock. As I dug down the downstream side of it, I dug up enough sapphires to buy a new station wagon! Sapphires, being heavy, lost momentum behind the big boulder during floods. In total, I got 85 beautiful blues several small particolours (green/blue) and a pile of corundum.

You want excitement? Try barramundi fishing with 10 to 14 ft crocs eyeing you as a potential meal

Let the dendrobiums dry out for a week, or so, then drown them, so to speak. Also, put them in an outside setting, away from wind an any frosts. If they are getting good, new growth, that is a good sign they should flower in the next year. Most orchids. Require 70% shade, or dappled shade. Winter is their ‘rest’ period, so reduce waterings. Wish I could grow cymbids, but they need six weeks of very cold weather to get them to flower.

They don’t catch wild pigs, though. Blackberry ‘jungles’ abound in the New England Region of NSW and harbour pigs. Seen it many times whilst trout fishing along the upper reaches of the Macintyre River.

Where I live, @Phone,in the Whitsunday Region, the ambient relative humidity is 60-65%during “the dry” and 70-99% during “the wet”, January to March. If an orchid is in a pot filled with soil, it needs watering at least once a week, if an orchid is grown on a log, its roots absorb moisture from the atmosphere and only needs watering once every couple of months...IF it has 75% shade. An old bloke on the front house on our beach, has a cooktown orchid on his fence in full daylight and it thrives just on the sea breezes.

As you say, many, many varieties, thanks to cheap mericloning. Very rare to see species orchids in supermarkets, but still available in some orchid nurseries. When I started my collection 21 years ago, I sought out as many species orchids as my retirement funds would allow; they are mainly dendrobiums.

I have built up two micro climates, one under the mango tree and the other, under the macadamia tree. The Macadamia one 'houses' my phalaenopsis collection, plus a few dendrobiums and cattleyas among a few ferns. Th white orchid at the bottom, is the uncommon variety of cattleya skinneri, the common variety being mauve.