“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds you plant.” -Robert Louis Stevenson

Researching my 99th Etsomnia™ post, Exotica, I kept coming across incredible orchid varieties for sale on Etsy, some of which I’d never seen before. The wild diversity and glorious beauty of orchids has long fascinated me. (Did you know that vanilla is an orchid? Me, neither!) Let’s face it. Orchids are a pain in the ass to care for. Even the so-called easy ones can get temperamental if there’s any change in their watering schedule or lighting. But still, I buy them and try (and try, and try) to get them to bloom. Why do we love them so much?

Painter Georgia O’Keeffe‘s works depicting orchids and irises were interpreted in the seventies as feminine iconography, which made the Freudians wild with joy (and annoyed the hell out of O’Keeffe). On the other hand (so to speak), Tom Mirenda, orchid curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, believes our fondness for the orchid is at least in part because they appear to us to have symmetrical faces. Though I think both positions have merit, in my case, I think it’s more their weird and wonderful other-worldly qualities that keep me coming back for more.

I hope you enjoy them! Where possible, I’ve included links where you can purchase seeds for the variety pictured.