September 2019
Greetings everyone! Hopefully, you all have enjoyed this summer and are looking forward to the beautiful fall season here in WNC that I am anticipating we will have. I personally wouldn’t mind if summer stayed around a while longer, and we had a lengthy fall season as I just dread the cold winter months. Are your plants telling you anything currently? I hope you’re listening and hoping you’ve gotten all your repotting done for the 2019 season. My collection is telling me all up and down my bench, that fall is about here and they’re slowing down. With Phalaenopsis species, for example, I always see a lot of yellow leaves and dropping leaves about this time of year. New spikes have stopped emerging on the summer bloomers, and I’m having to slow down a little bit with the watering. By the time we get to November and December, I’ll have a bench with virtually no flowers on it. For me and the management of my collection, this is the time to really be careful and watch for bugs. Specifically, spider mites and broad mites. They love to bust out in the warm, drier air and can absolutely wreak havoc on your foliage. As we get busy this fall and holiday season, we tend to get distracted and busy with life. This is always a very important time to be observing your plants for bugs and pests!
Our guest speaker in August was Hadley Cash of Marriott Orchids. Hopefully, everyone who was able to attend enjoyed his program. What a super guy and an amazing grower. In fact, Hadley inspired me to immediately make the time to repot my paphiopedilum collection. Glad to have gotten that done and I am suspicious by this next winter and paph season that I’ll be super grateful to have attended that August meeting. A huge thank you to Hadley Cash for coming here to Asheville last month, he’s always the greatest!
This Sunday I am personally excited to finally meet Keith Davis. I’ve heard of Keith through the years but have never had the pleasure of meeting him. I’ve always heard that he’s an incredible grower and a true lover of orchids, specifically cattleya species, and hybrids. Keith will be giving us a program capturing all his tips and tricks to success. It is my hope to see everyone this Sunday at 2 PM. I believe he’s bringing plants for sale as well as supplying us with our raffle plants.
Moving on toward the last quarter of 2019, we’re planning on going out with a bang! In October we will be holding a fundraising live auction of some incredible orchids. Hoping to have about 60 plants on auction and available to you all. Consider bringing any family or friends who are orchid lovers, they’re certainly invited. Not only will this auction have some killer orchids, but we’ll also be entertained by the one and only Randy Latta. If you’ve not seen Randy perform at a WNCOS auction, you’ve really missed out. We skipped an auction last year, providing further reasons for us to have a packed house on October 13th. We’re continuing our work on securing a native orchid speaker for our November meeting, more details will be coming soon. Finally, for our December meeting, we’ll hold our annual holiday party and if you’ve been around the past few years you know our leadership team has some exceptional giveaways to raffle off to the membership in attendance. Never, ever miss our holiday party folks!
Final few reminders….. when you attend our monthly meetings you’re encouraged to bring in your blooming orchid of choice for our show and tell segment. You earn a free raffle ticket for your effort, and it always promotes conversation and education for everyone in attendance. Also, when you come to our monthly meetings please consider bringing a light snack or an offering for the food table. This is an area we used to really be strong with and are trying to improve upon again. If you bring something to share on the food table, let us know and you’ll receive a free raffle ticket for that as well. We really appreciate the collaborative efforts of the WNCOS, and I always enjoy reminding you all that we do in fact have one of the best orchid societies in the country! Always have room for involvement and looking for volunteers to become more involved. A final reminder, we’re installing an exhibit in the SMOS fall orchid show in the Knoxville, TN area later this month. If you have something beautiful in bloom this month, please let us know as we’d like to get it in our exhibit the weekend of 9/27-29!
Thank you all and I look forward to seeing a packed house for Keith Davis this Sunday, 2 PM, Asheville Visitor Center on Montford Ave.
Best,
Mike Mims
President, WNCOS