The Birmingham Botanical Gardens will host the Alabama Orchid Show and Sale ...
As soon as Ronnie Bliss and his wife, Jo Ann, moved from the east coast of Florida to Helena in 2005, they immediately started making plans to build a greenhouse.What was the big rush? They needed to preserve their precious orchids.
"You guys have winters that are way too cold for my orchids," said Bliss, 58. "That greenhouse had to be built before the winter of '05 got to Birmingham, Ala."
Today, there are more than 500 orchids in that 400-square-foot greenhouse, where Bliss spends a lot of time caring for his plants. Next weekend, he will showcase some of his flower power when he enters the 27th Annual Alabama Orchid Show and Sale at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens .
The three-day, free event will be held Sept. 16 and 17 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and on Sept. 18 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Orchid show contestants must enter plants for judging by 7 p.m. on Sept. 16.
Judging will begin on the morning of Sept. 17 and end around noon. Vendors will start selling orchids at 10 a.m.
Then I insert the stem of cattleya orchid into the space among the water hyacinth stems in the glass container. For this kind of simple floral arrangement,
He especially loved cattleya orchids, which he cut and turned into corsages. "He was a wonderful person and a wonderful husband," Britt Wroble said.
