Daily Archives: May 13, 2011

The Czarina is quite fond of quoting a book by Eric Hansen called Orchid Fever. In it, Hansen describes an orchid enthusiast in Spitzbergen, above the Arctic Circle, who keeps his collection in a well-heated greenhouse during the summer and moves them to a space in the laundry room for the winter. His wife refers to the orchids as “his green harlots,” so the Czarina sympathizes whenever she looks inside the greenhouse.

Personally, I don’t see what the problem is. I mean, I could be like a lot of other husbands. I could insist upon dragging her out into the cold on Sunday mornings in December to watch Dallas Cowboys games. I could pull the bedcovers over her head and then pass gas. I could plan a roadtrip and charge the 300-pound Samoan attorney to her credit card. (I’ll do that with the crocodile monitor, but only when she’s out of town. Once she looks into its beady yellow eyes, she won’t want to send it back, especially if it’s already gotten used to its lizard bed by then.) I just have a rather disturbing addiction to plants that eat flesh, and it’s not like I’m raising opium poppies or making breast milk cheese.

That said, I made the plunge. I have a Nepenthes hamata from Sarracenia Northwest on its way. Where is your God NOW, er, I mean, what can it hurt?