I just noticed that my electric bill is lower,with added lighting here too,probably just a coincidence and we will pay for it next month.
They have us hooked up to the new meters and one thing I noticed is the bill is more consistent. Oh.... We did put in a new dishwasher and may have helped with the bill.

Well I am not sure about my electric meter being new or not but they are coming to change the gas meter soon. The reason given in part was to do away with estimated bills.

But what I saw was my last three electric bills AND gas bills were actual meter readings. But if they are staying constant and not rising, I am happy.
What bill has increased here in Michigan is car insurance. For the same coverage with the same company: $430 in Florida, $948 in Michigan! It is a good thing I am filthy rich!

Ouch on the car insurance bill, Bill. Maybe it's time to change companies. It seems like the only way to have lower bills for a while. Every company starts low, but increases them every year. I can't imagine having snowy weather there would make the insurance that much more.

With snow comes ice and icy roads cause lots of accidents.

Oh yes,car insurance is crazy here. And depending on the car,the price can vary hundreds of dollars.
I can understand prices compared to value of a vehicle but that does not always apply in Michigan.

It is because of me being in Wayne County with Detroit. Car thefts, uninsured drivers, more accidents per capital. It all adds up. Just like NY!
In Florida the geezers go to bed early, stay off the roads causing rates to drop.

I had Judging today at the Great Lakes Judging Center and I have a few things to share with everyone.
This was the best plant I saw today and it was a beauty. We broke up into three teams and this was looked at and awarded an 87 point AM by another team.
It is Phragmipedium Bright Spot which is Phrag. Memoria Dick Clements X Phrag. Twilight. I am not familiar with Twilight but Dick Clements is famous.


This was a beautiful, fairly flat deep cherry red flower on a 28cm. tall inflorescence. Flower was of good form, intense color with a very deep yellow color inside the rim of the pouch. There were numerous cherry red spots on the yellow rim.
The flower was about 4 1/2" wide on a two growth plant. It was grown in a 8" plastic nursery tub. The media seemed to be straight medium grade Orchiata. The two growths had dark green foliage so I think that the plant was not getting a lot of sunlight. Growths were about 12" and 14-16" wide.
When I saw this plant come in the room, the color was outstanding!!

It is gorgeous! I love these red Phrags!!

me too! and 4 1/2" wide is a nice big flower.

This is a great little plant that came to the judging table! It is Mediocalcar decoratum. It is native to New Guinea I believe and it kind of grows like a carpet. It has several awards, mostly cultural. A recent award from early 2018 was a CCE of 93 points. The CCE had 1225 flowers and buds! This plant was passed with around 230-250 flowers.





The little flowers are 'globe like', with an orange lower half and a yellow upper half. They appear to be like a little seed pod that is exploding or bursting open. Flowers are about 1/4" tall, foliage reminds me of a herb growing into a ground hugging mat. I hadn't seen this in 10 years at least and some of the biggest flowered clones were grown in Hawaii. The largest flower count I found had 1,936 flowers and 300 buds on 2,236 inflorescences. Amazing.

Goodness! Do you judges have to count flowers, or do you guesstimate?

I love that one too. It is always a cutie!

We count flowers up to a point. With this Mediocalcar, we are trained to use a system. Some judges use 4 ribbons knotted together and some use 4 strings. If you drape it over a plant like this and spread out the strings or ribbons, you effectively divide the plant into quarters. If you count one quarter at a time, then get a total.
Your string/ribbon device is placed over the center of the plant. In the case of the plant with 2,236 buds and flowers, they may have counted one quarter of the plant and multiplied by four.
When we get a plant with say 300 flowers on 23 spikes, we count like 6 or 8 spikes carefully and get an average of those inflorescences. Then we take that average and multiply by 23.
Sometimes in a description you'll read "approximately 1650 flowers and so many buds". But we are able to, in the case of 300 on 23 spikes, compare our counts with other published culture awards descriptions and by looking at award photos. With experience, you get good at not only counting flowers but also in estimating just how many there are.

Now this plant was a puzzler! It came to Judging with a name tag on it, Bulbophyllum annandaliae AM/AOS!! It was printed on a lavender tag.
When it came to the table, the tag was missing! This made two judges very suspicious.
Why was the tag removed??? If it got an AM, it is a one in a million shot to get it upgraded to an FCC. Or did they remove the tag to pretend it was being judged for the first time and did they hope we will award it. Then they could put their own clonal name on it and feel really good about what they've done. In this instance you just don't know. You want to think everyone is honest.



2 judges on my team knew what we saw. But we evaluated the plant honestly. We looked at its award description and on this flowering there were 7 flowers with a natural spread of 1.6cm horizontally and 2.4 vertically. When it got its award, there was 8 flowers of better color and they were wider and taller.
But the plant you see here is a very attractive species that was yellow/gold in color faint red stripes and fine red speckles. The lateral sepals are rolled inward. But there were inconsistencies in form from flower to flower and the color was deeper and more intense at the time of the AM awarding. It had bulbs the size of green grapes, the leaves were darker green, three inches long by three quarters of an inch wide. It was in a 6" azalea pot and grown in sphagnum moss.

That is such a cool looking orchid! I didn't realize orchid judging was so complex with calculations (and obviously super competitive). Your posts are very informative, Bill!

I'll never show, but the process is interesting.

Thanks Alyssa! My goal is just to try and show everyone who may be interested in determining what makes a better orchid flower. Hopefully if people go to a show or visit an orchid vendor they will have a little insight as to why one flower may be better than another.
I realize that not everyone wants to show orchids but a lot off people like to win ribbons instead. But for me I figured that if I was in the hobby I might as well grow better flowers if I had a chance. But there is nothing so rewarding for my hobby than to get an award on one of my plants.

My last post from today's Judging is this plant of Paphiopedilum Faire-Maude. It is a hybrid of Paphiopedilum fairieanum X Paphiopedilum Maudiae.


Maudiae is typically a green and white long stemmed hybrid from the Callosum section. It is a very old hybrid but the flower can be very elegant. The other parent fairieanum is often referred to as a little "Dutch Girl". The dorsal looks like a bonnet that Dutch girls wear, the petals are downswept except at the tips which flow back upwards at the tips. It is a very variable species with a certain charm. Some are light, kind of pastels while some line bred plants have darker colors. They are all noticeably striped and somewhat dainty.
This I thought was a pretty flower, 4 1/2" wide, basically green and white with some rose blush on the pouch, petals and dorsal. It is of good size with broad segments. There are fine hairs on the petal edges!! It was in an Orchiata mix in a 4 1/2" plastic pot.
It received an AM of 80 points. There are slight notches in the petals and dorsal but it was still very pretty!

The last judging of this calendar year happened today.
There were only four plants but I will present what I can. The only plant my team looked at was this Cattleya Cherry Song. It is a hybrid of Cattleya Candy Tuft X Cattleya walkeriana. There are 2 previous awards listed, one AM and one HCC. I did not think as much of this flower. I'll explain in a moment.


This flower was 9.5 cm. tall by 9.9 cm. wide. Flower was a rich lavender pink with a white lip. Lip was overlaid yellow centrally with a deeper yellow center just under the all white column. Apical tip of the lip was suffused darker lavender.
I scored it 75 points and the other scores were 78, 79 and 80. It was awarded an HCC of 78 points. I found fault with the lips of each flower which were slightly left of center. This showed up more when it was in my hand. One had a dorsal slightly askew to the right. The two previous award images showed fuller flowers, more rounded. This one seemed a little open or starry. I thought that the two awards on fuller flowers were much prettier. Petal edges were slightly wavy which is attractive in its own right but there was some noticeable pleating or overlap. This top edge of the petal kind of slid underneath the edge next to it. Almost like it was pleated, folded over onto itself. Very difficult to explain. It is almost as if there was extra tissue. But these few things caused me to subtract a few points. I subtracted a few points from the previous HCC.
As you can tell by the posted scores of the team, no one else felt so inclined.
Plant was bifoliate and in a 6" plastic pot, media was orchiata, aliflor and charcoal. Pseudobulbs were 4-5" tall topped by two heavy leaves.

Bill, that is most interesting about the wavy petal edges!