The Sleeping Warrior Blog

It seems that this is the year of the Orchid. It was only last week we were out filming at the Rosses point Golf Course interviewing Ross Collins the Course Superindent. He has done a major job in keeping the Orchid people happy by not only preserving the wild orchids on the course, but making sure they flourish. I spent a good part of the day shooting in macro some of the specimens for the last part of this years TurfNet Goes to Ireland 2010 series. Now it gets stranger..

I got a weird feeling I was looking at something extremely familiar. This was explained today when I was raking around in the big old shed beside the house at home here in Dromahair. The end part of the building lost it’s roof back about ten years ago and I haven’t had the time or need to put it back on yet. What did I see in front of me? A clutch of about eight Orchids..the same ones we had been shooting at Rosses Point. All quite strange. I then went on a hunt around the garden (2 acre jungle) in the wild grass areas and couldn’t find any more anywhere. It seems that the conditions in my shed might have been ideal for them.

I have to point out that I’m not the most educated person on this earth when it comes to wild flowers. I know most of what grows around here in the hedgerows though as I’ve always had a keen interest in in monitoring the environment. I keep an online diary of all seasonal factors and changes as well as details of what is flowering when and the weather at the time so I can compare year to year. It helps to have an accurate record of what’s happening to the stuff I plant..fruit and veg etc. To have Orchids pop up like this to me seems amazing. All I have to do now is research how to seed them out.

There you go. I hear the Orchid people are a kinda fundamentalist cult. That itself fascinates me as I was already looking at cutting a broadcast piece just on the basis of what we got at Rosses Point. The people who are obsessed with Orchids would be as interesting to me as the Orchids themselves.

More later methinks..
Here’s the pics..