Field Trip!

In my internet travels, I happened upon this African violet place.  Now this is just weird.  One of the world's premiere African violet growers is in Seriouslynowhereville, New York.  Even though I'm not a huge African violet fan, I had to see for myself.  I get all excited any time I find someone making a successful living with plants and I want to learn all about their operations so I can copy them and become a filthy rich flower farmer.  Shut up, I'm trying to be realistic. 

So yesterday we drove and drove into the rural hinterlands and found it.  Have a gander:

Double tiers of violets filling two huge greenhouses.

Every variety imaginable, including this almost-albino one!

They start each plant with a leaf cutting from a mature violet.

They also have their private collection of orchids on display.

Stunning!

A few other houseplants were available, like this Rex Begonia.

And this one which is called 'holy shit!'

That jellyfish-looking thing is a hoya blossom!

Behind every beautiful thing there is some ugly to make it all happen.

'Frozen in time'- this one came home to live with me.

I was in heaven.  The mister was in annoyedaboutthelongcarrideonahotday.  He'll thank me later when we're rich flower barons.  The staff was busy packing flowers to ship so I didn't bug them with thousands of questions, but I really wanted to know more about the how and why of this whole thing, so I did more internet travelling today and found the story of Lyndon Lyon on youtube.  Please disregard the hokey music at the beginning of the video.