Wow so cool! I wish I lived in a climate where growing outside on trees was possible. I live in Seattle, not exactly prime territory. Although I would like to learn about orchids native to the area.

It’s pretty good! I have only listened to a few episodes so far. I have tended to skip through the first 30-40% of the episodes, which has been a lot of discussion of the guest’s academic training and career, which isn’t very interesting to me personally. After they finish talking about that, I usually enjoy the rest of each episode!

Wow! Good luck getting to 100! What city are you in?

I heard about the orchid project on this podcast episode, a pretty interesting interview: https://www.indefenseofplants.com/podcast/2022/5/29/ep-371-the-million-orchid-project

What a cute idea! How many have you given away so far?

Reminds me a bit of the Million Orchid Project, where plants are given to community members and schools to plant out in their community https://fairchildgarden.org/science-and-education/science/million-orchid-project/

It looks terrific! I’ve never seen one of those growing so rambunctiously. Why do you think your succulents usually get leggy?

Wow! I’ve never seen one in bloom. To be honest I never even considered they could

So satisfying to bring a plant back from the dead! Congratulations! The color is really pretty in the newest picture. Does it normally change color throughout the year or is the color change a reaction to the stress?

Love it! They look so fragile during that process. Like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis

Beautiful! The waxy case makes them seem so precious and special to me.

I know what you mean! To be honest I get pretty excited about new roots too haha, all new growth is exciting

Great question! I know for sure because the picture is from a couple of weeks ago and by now it’s clearly a flower spike.

I had your same question when the growth was at the stage shown in the picture. I looked up how to tell the difference between flower spike and root. What I learned was that two signs of flower spike are:

• Located right below the middle of where a leaf attaches to the stem, because that’s the location of a node that can become a flower spike. Roots can come from a greater variety of locations around the stem.
• Shaped like a mitten, in other words the growth is slightly asymmetric. I believe the thumb is a forming node and the fingers part is where the spike will continue growing. The mitten shape is not present in this image, it developed a day or two later. In contrast, a developing root is fully symmetric/round.

There may be other signs too or these may be incorrect, please share if you know them!

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, they’re really helpful! You kind of combined the concept of satisficing from one comment with the deadline suggestion from another comment in a helpful way. I think reframing my goal as you suggest would work for me. I’m definitely looking for the perfect chair right now. Maybe if I was looking for the good enough chair today it would help me pick. I worry about getting buyer’s remorse, but realistically I’ll just be happy to have a chair.

Thanks for sharing the word “satisficing”! I’ve never heard it before and it’s really nice to have a word for that concept.

I definitely fall into the maximizer category and that causes some of my purchase paralysis. For many types of item, I’ve started just buying the wirecutter recommendation and trusting it to be good enough. Clothing and furniture feel more personal and less generic, so the wirecutter strategy hasn’t applied, but I will have to try to find a way to satisfice with those purchases too.