First blooms on two plants! Vireya 'Cyril' and Sobralia 'Colin Kaepernick'

August 5

It's always fun to step away from your garden for a few days and see what happens in the meantime. We just returned from eight days in Paris to first blooms on two plants. First, a R. vireya 'Cyril', which has been in the ground perhaps three years. It has grown strongly, with bright yellow leaf flushes aging through reddish and finally dark green, so an attractive plant out of bloom. These buds have been developing for over a year and until now I wasn't sure they weren't vegetative. Super excited to watch this cluster open up and the remaining buds to follow. The bud that opened was almost the size of my fist.

Here is the plant sharing space with our Geonoma undata, no longer a baby and doing quite well despite the wind.

Next was a Sobralia 'Colin Kaepernick', which I bought hoping that it would be red and gold. It isn't, but I'm still happy it's flowering. It is also an attractive plant out of flower. This has been in the ground almost a year and there are a lot of buds to follow these.