Summer Field Orchids

Security is vital to an orchid garden. Actually, security is vital for anything these days. If you have anything of even a slightly significant value, you can be sure that someone is going to try to take that away from you. That is just how the world is.

And I shouldn’t say these days. That is how the world has always been. Thieves have always existed and security companies have always tried to stop them from stealing from us.

The reason for this topic is a break and I had recently. That break-in spurred me to buy a security camera system. I bought it online from a place called Spy Cameras Reviewed. Actually, I didn’t buy it from them, but I chose it after reading all of the info about various security cameras and drones and so on on their website. They have a ton of informative reviews that really helped out.

I have to admit, the name threw me at first. I thought they would only have spy cameras, which are cool, don’t get me wrong, but just not what I needed. But it turns out they actually have more security cameras than anything else. Perhaps “spy camera” is another way to refer to a security camera. I have no idea. The point it, don’t let the name fool you. They have security cameras as well as spy cameras, plus a bunch of other home security stuff and even drones.

Anyway, I digress. The break-in happened in the garden I wrote about recently. The one where I mentioned growing orchids indoors with LED grow lights. And that is what they stole. One of my very expensive LED grow lights, along with a record player I kept in their so I could listen to music while I enjoyed my garden with some tea. I guess I should be thankful they did not harm my orchids, but that light did cost a lot. Luckily it was insured, but I don’t want to have to deal with this again.

That is why I bought a security system. It includes several cameras, sensors on the doors and windows and a monitoring system for the whole thing. It was not cheap, but it was reasonable and I feel much safer now. After the break-in, I no longer found it as relaxing as before to have a cup of tea in my orchid garden. Even though I knew no one would break in there during the daytime, I still felt uneasy.

And that is perhaps the most important function of a security system. It is not to catch intruders at all. More than that it is to keep them out, by scaring them off. But even more than that, it is to provide us peace of mind. Just having those cameras counts for a lot and makes me feel much safer in my orchid and tea garden.

One thing I noticed when I was on the spy  cameras reviewed website is that they also have a lot of fake cameras. These are obviously much cheaper, because they’re basically just the camera housing. There’s nothing inside. This is used as a deterrent and is probably quite effective. I opted for the actual real system, but I did consider this.

Then there also a ton of little spy cameras, as the website name implies. These are really cool. You can easily conceal them just about anywhere. Most of them look like common household objects, so you might never know they are there. They can look like smoke detectors, they can be hidden in a teddy bear, a.k.a. the infamous nanny cam, or in many other normal everyday items. Then they have drones and door and window sensors and all kinds of other home security stuff.

Of course, when I say “have”, I mean they review it. They don’t actually sell anything themselves, which I like. That means they are impartial. Unless they are being paid by a brand, but I did not get that sense at all. The seemed trustworthy reviewers.

Anyway, I will head back to my newly secure and camera-surrounded orchid and tea garden to relax and enjoy it as I always have. Thanks to my new spy (aka security) cameras!

 

When you imagine pure bliss and relaxation, what do you see?

For me, I see myself swinging from between two trees in a hammock on a warm summer’s evening with a hot cup of tea in my hand.

I know I’ve previously mentioned adding a gazebo to my orchid garden so I could watch the orchids from a nice relaxing spot. I also wanted to keep an eye on my new tea garden. But I quickly realized that, while the gazebo is wonderful, it is a little hard, even with cushions. It just isn’t as relaxing as it could be.

But a hammock is relaxing. In fact, I would argue that nothing is more relaxing than a hammock. Some people might say a bed, but I actually feel a hammock is more comfortable than a bed. In a bed you still feel pressure from below on your body. That is why people get bed sores if they lie in bed too long in the same position. You cannot get those kind of sores in a hammock. A hammock exerts the same amount of pressure on every part of your body that touches it, so there is no spot where more pressure is being exerted. Thus, you don’t get sores.

Swinging in a hammock is as close as you can get to floating in the air. It is as close as you can get to weightlessness. Knowing all this, I’m surprised that I didn’t think of getting a hammock before. I think it would even work well in an indoor garden under LED grow lights or similar horticultural lighting. But obviously, feeling the real sun on your face is preferable.

Little did I know that I would eventually miss that light and no longer ever feel as relaxed again. I came back to add this paragraph after I was robbed and had to outfit my whole garden with spy cameras for security against future theft. I spent a lot on that security camera system, but it is worth it for the peace of mind. Anyway, back to the point at hand.

Now that I did decide to get a hammock, I needed to choose which one. I’ve been reading up and there so many different types of hammocks. I found a great buying guide that helps you choose the right hammock and it helped me out a lot. I learned about things like tree tents and cacoon pods, but in the end I decided to go with the regular hammock.

I still had to choose among Mayan hammocks or Brazilian hammocks or Nicaraguan hammocks or just plain old parachute hammocks. The one hammock I didn’t want is the one I actually pictured in the beginning. That is the rope hammock. It turns out it is the most uncomfortable of all the hammocks and I actually knew that to be true. Whenever I was in a rope hammock, I would soon start to feel uncomfortable after 20 minutes or so. In a real hammock, you do not start to feel that feeling of discomfort.

After my research, I ended up going with a Mayan hammock. I chose a brand called Warimba. They are very expensive, probably the most expensive Mayan hammocks on the market. But they are absolutely gorgeous and make a perfect fit for my garden. I wanted something that is not only comfortable but also beautiful and these handcrafted Mayan hammocks fit the bill perfectly.

If you have a garden, you owe it to yourself to get yourself a hammock to truly enjoy that garden. Think of yourself with a nice cup of tea, be it green tea, black tea, white tea or any other kind of tea, and gazing out at your orchids or your other flowers in your beautiful garden. This is the hammock lifestyle.

Two months ago I finally got the opportunity to visit Asia and of course I made a stop in Singapore. It has been my dream to visit the city for a long time. And one of the big reasons is the famous orchid garden.

The National Orchid Garden is actually located within the Singapore Botanic Gardens. It’s a world-famous garden, but surprisingly, it has only been open for a little over 20 years.

It is located on top of the highest hill within the Botanic Gardens and in total, it has over 60,000 orchid plants. You will find 1000 different species and over 2000 different hybrids.

The garden was designed around the theme of color, with plants separated into four different color zones. You have the spring zone, which has a lot of bright shades like gold and yellow, the summer zone with a lot of strong reds and pinks, the autumn zone which has more muted colors and the winter zone which features whites and blues. Other trees, bushes and plants are chosen specifically to match the orchids and to fit in with this color scheme.

As a part of the orchid garden, there is a celebrity orchid garden. This little subdivision features orchids that are named after celebrities. Most of them are Asian celebrities, naturally, like movie stars and singers from China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and of course Singapore. But they also have orchids named after celebrities we in the West would recognize. For example, I saw a Margaret Thatcher orchid.

To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what the point of this little celebrity orchid garden was. I guess I’ve never really been into celebrities myself, so maybe that’s why don’t get it, but I just didn’t see the connection. None of the orchids looked like the celebrities they were named after, so how do they choose? How do they choose which orchid would get which celebrity’s name? And why name them that way at all?

I guess it probably has to do with marketing. It probably brings in people. And I suppose, if it helps them be more profitable than I’m all for it. The world needs more beautiful places like this orchid garden and if they are profitable, then more will exist. It’s so much nicer than another sports stadium.

And clearly other s love it. It was crowded and surrounded by hundreds of spy cameras watching our every move. I guess famous orchids need a security camera and security system as much as the actual celebrities!

My favorite part of the orchid garden was the tea. That’s right, I was able to have a cup of tea. There’s a little tea garden located within the botanical garden, where you can sit indoors and have your choice of different varieties of tea. I ordered a nice green tea and it was excellent.

It was also nice to get out of the heat for a while. Even though the tea was hot, just sitting down indoors was refreshing. Singapore is located near the equator and is extremely hot all year round, even in November when I was there. It definitely gets to you after a while, the heat and humidity. It feels like you will melt into the ground. So stopping for a nice cup of tea was definitely a highlight. Even better, they had a couple of super comfortable hammocks set up with great views over the serene surroundings. You better believe I spent some time in one of those hammocks!

I also got to visit the nursery, where young seedlings were raised. This was an indoor area and I was thrilled to see that the seedlings were being lit by LED grow lights. It was really cool to see them use the same lighting principles that I’ve seen and indoor gardens everywhere, including the one I have set up for myself. I really enjoyed seeing some of the LED grow lights being used to grow such a difficult flower like the orchid.

If you’re ever in Singapore, you definitely don’t want to miss the National Orchid Garden. Not only is it extremely beautiful, but it also makes a nice change of pace from the hectic city. It’s hot, but is not as hot as walking around the rest of the city, because at least you’re surrounded by nature. And they have hammocks. Swinging in a hammock always makes it feel at least 10 degrees cooler!

Traditionally, farmers have always rotated crops. This way they can grow things in every season and the different crops also add different nutrients to the soil and they extract different nutrients to grow. The different crops the farmers alternate growing form a sort of symbiotic relationship: they help each other out.

If you are growing orchids, there are a number of plants you can grow alongside them. You don’t necessarily want to rotate in this case. Instead, you want to grow them concurrently.

One of the best plants to grow alongside your orchids is tea. Yes, that’s right. That stuff you drink in the morning or the afternoon comes from an actual plant. And that plant is very easy to grow, in fact. Plus, growing them together means your tea plant will also be protected by whatever security system with spy cameras you have installed to protect your orchids. Not that I think someone would steal tea plants, like they might orchids, but having spy cameras never hurts.

There are a few different types of tea plants, but they’re all basically the same. They can grown in a lot of different climates, but they prefer humidity and a lot of rain. Tea does grow in tropical warm climates, but it must does much better in cooler ones.

It is telling that the best US tea growing region is Hawaii. The tea does not grow at sea level, however, but at altitude. This means cooler temperatures, lots of rain and humidity and a ton of cloud cover. This is the kind of weather tea loves.

All of the great tea growing regions in the world have this type of weather. There are the foothills of Mount Fuji in Shizuoka Japan, the high mountains of Fujian province in China, the Darjeeling area of India and many more areas in those countries and in other countries like Sri Lanka and Kenya as well.

You may not have this type of climate at home, but you can grow tea indoors just as well. You just have to provide the water and the light using artificial grow lights. If you give the tea plant that, it will do well. You don’t even need the same type of grow lights you would need with other types of plants. Tea does not flower so you only need daylight light. Metal halide bulbs or LED bulbs with a preponderance of blue light work great here.

Now I know that orchids are generally thought to prefer a tropical climate and many species do. But there are also other species of orchids that actually grow in the same areas as the tea growing regions. These work especially well with tea, but even the tropical ones work well.

As I said, tea does grow in tropical weather it just doesn’t grow as well. Of course, the best teas do not come from tropical climates. But you’re not really growing it to sell, you are growing it to help out your orchids, so none of that matters.

And it still would make a good tea anyway. If you want to harvest it and process it into the various types of tea, like green tea, yellow tea, white tea, black tea, oolong tea and pu-erh tea, then you can. There are plenty of resources online to help you with that. A great site for information about tea is Let’s Drink Tea. It will help you out a lot in your research.

So if you’re looking for something to grow along with your orchids, give tea plants a chance. Not only are they easy to grow, they also provide you with tea leaves. Once you learn how to process them, which is very easy for most types of tea, you can enjoy fresh organic tea grown in your own garden. It might not be the same quality as the best teas from Japan or China, but the difference will not be that great.

It’s not like making your own wine, which will taste much worse than famous wines. Your own tea will not taste that much worse. It will actually be quite good. And if you’re used to drinking tea from teabags, it will be much better. Any tea made from the actual leaves, the whole leaves and not the chopped up crap that gets stuffed into teabags, is going to be better than any tea bag, no matter how expensive. So get out there and grow your tea and enjoy!