After a long winter and an unusually cold and dry spring, summer has finally come to Sweden! But there were times this spring when it felt like summer would never come. You can see scars from the drought and cold all over as many plants and flowers outside did not make it. Alas, one who waits for something good… Summer is here, we have about 18 hours of daylight now and the weather has been quite agreeable for several weeks. So, we decided to move out to the seaside cottage early this year and commute to work for a while. This weekend the first load of orchids made the journey out. Over the next few weeks I will shuttle the rest of them out as well.

I usually bring a few selected orchids out with me for the summer (see 2012), but I still have to shuttle back and forth to the city every four days to water the rest. I always feel like I am missing a lot, and the longer we stay the more out of touch I feel with the orchids left in the city, especially the pleurothallids. But this year, that is all about to change… Right now I am in the process of building a fantastic greenhouse, so from now on I will be able to bring all my orchids out to the coast, and extend the season from (hopefully) early May through September. A very exciting prospect! I will share more on this as the project comes to completion in the next month or so. For the time being I just keep the orchids in a temporary location where they are sheltered from the wind next to the house.