Orchids in the Desert
This past weekend, I and my wife went with her Red Hat group to the Landers Orchid Festival in (of course) Landers California. Many times I have tried to grow orchids and have failed every time. Because I love them so, I wanted to learn from professionals who lived in the desert just as I do. The only time the orchid farm gives classes on how to tend these wonderful plants is at the festival.
You would think that living in a desert would not the most illogical place to have a farm of any type, let alone an orchid farm, but you would be surprised of what we grow here. We are the largest producer of pistachios, walnuts and alfalfa in the U.S. I have been told. You can grow any type of fruit bearing tree except citrus or avocado. Even some forms of bananas, guavas and other tropical fruits can be grown here. What makes this part of the country desert is more the result of wind and the mountains preventing rain and fog from reaching us. It is not the high temperatures because it is usually cooler here than in Los Angeles which is about a hundred miles southwest of here.
But back to the orchids. God has provided us with one of the most beautiful plants that requires very little care. The reason that my plants died was that I was tending to them too much. My misting them every day was drowning them. Trying to keep them in moist peat moss killed their roots. God just has them basically, hanging onto trees and breathing the humid air about them. Some orchids, don’t even root at all, they just drape themselves over branches and let the root hang free, swinging in the warm, moist air. So when God says to look at the lilies in the fields, and see how they do not worry, the orchid would be an even better example.
Even here in the desert, all I have to do to see to my orchid is to give it a little food each week, and see that evaporating water is near at hand. God will take care of the rest. Why can’t we do that? Why can’t we just let God take care of us? Each of us still cling to the hard core ideas that we have to make things work instead of turning to God and stop the worrying about tomorrow.
In these tough times of Global Crisis and short money, we stress ourselves and for what good? We will survive, we always have. Even when the world was covered with ice and snow during the Ice Age (which some still don’t believe in) we came through. Trust in God, turn over your burdens to Him who created the orchids and the rest of the world and you will be O.K.
Meanwhile, should you be in Southern California, make your way to two wonderful sights next Spring. The first would be Joshua Tree National Monument for the desert flowers and then just up the road a ways is Gubler’s Orchid farm. See the beauty of God’s creations
Print This Post Filed under Uncategorized |Similar Posts:
One Response to “Orchids in the Desert”
Leave a Reply
Congratulations, you’ve been awarded a web award.