Friday, June 11, 2021

June 7, 2021 Carter and Holmes

 

 

 

June 7, 2021 

I figured out how to get my humans to let me out without me asking.  Throw up! 

It rained off and on through the night, but it was only cloudy this morning with no rain, at least for now.  Spouse and I took a walk down the rural road.  These people must think we are crazy to live on such tiny lots.  They must see it as being suffocating given the huge properties even the small houses have.  There is so much open space and greenery.  The wild azaleas and rhododendrons would sell for a small fortune back home in a nursery!

When the orchid nursery opened, I got a personal tour from Mack Holmes.  His father was one of the creators.  At one time they had 18 greenhouses and were major wholesale suppliers.  That was a lot of work for little profit so they changed their business  model to basically online sales.  This requires only about 10 greenhouses and a quarter of the employees.  You can come in, but there wasn’t a huge selection of blooming plants (THANKFULLY).  Mack took me to their greenhouse with their older plants, many of them over 50 years, and some more than 70 years.  You could see the respect based on the area each plant had to itself and with their great roots.



He has a greenhouse for house plants for when they create displays for people.  They don’t do a lot of orchid shows as they would have to travel to far, so they pretty much keep it local.

            

They do their own lab work, pollinating, collecting pods, flasking, replating and all that.  They like to create a good plant then mericlone it for sale

Of course I still had to look at the plants that I could buy.  I teetered on two, but they were not quite blooming size and if I was going to have to futz with them while traveling, I didn’t think it would be worth it.  But, if I had been closer to home… 

I fled while I still had my sanity and we got back on the road.  Lady Gagarmin directed us the same way back as when we came in…  HOWEVER – I HAVE EYES!  There was a sign on this great big road that said ‘TO I26 EAST’.  Gee Spouse, why don’t we do that instead of following Lady Gagarmin???  Ohhhh no I am following her.  Boy, those GPS gods know a patsy when they see one.  They started laughing…  Not only did she take us through a town with roads we could barely drive straight on, she made us take unnecessary turns to test our slalom ability.  She directed us to turn right on this tiny street, then left on a tinier street.  From where I sat, I could see that if we were to stay on our wider street and turn right, we could be in the same place with less aggravation.  But NOOOOOO….. Spouse has got to follow Lady Gagarmin.  The GPS gods are hysterical now.  We are on this tiny street and we have to turn right.  There is no right turn on the red so we have to wait till there are other cars to participate in the fun. To make this turn, we have to pull way out, which means the red truck that is waiting at the light has to back up almost the entire block so we can make the turn without taking out the lightpost.  Thank you Lady Gagarmin…

We finally did make it back to I26 without casualties and continued east on the bumpy road into Charleston.  We are at the Oak Plantation RV park which is a huge RV park with (you guessed it) oaks!  Lots of live oaks with hanging moss that are absolutely beautiful.  The sites are quite nice, some of them are amazing the way they are tucked in the trees, but for us, we are in the middle.  What can you do when you call last minute.  It is still very nice, but there are some killer sites that would be great.  It is warm, it is muggy.  It is cloudy which is keeping it tolerable. 

Tomorrow, we will do some touring.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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