Timely post. They're heeeeeeere.........the honey bees! I was out walking with my dog and started to deadhead a daylily when I heard a familiar sound - a thousand bees buzzing. Looked up and there they were like a bee tornado above the courtyard garden and in the privet hedge nearby. I walked around the back of the house quick to check the siding where they always try to go in. Last year I caulked that siding heavily, leaving no holes for them - I hope. So I walked on around behind the house to the front yard to get a better look at them in the hedge and sure enough they were swarming big time. Stood there a long time, and they seemed to be moving across the road and into the ditch. Then half of them started swarming across the road and right into the ditch, thought I saw a bunch take off across the field but not sure. So now there are thousands in the ditch and some still in the hedge, stretching themselves across the road like a barrier. Wouldn't you know, the neighbors down the road, the visiting father and mother pull out of the drive in a convertible! They drove right through it before I could call out to them and I heard the woman exclaim. They stopped and talked to me about it for awhile. I stood and watched for another 20min. or so then walked back around the house to where I could see the courtyard and I think they have all or most have moved to the ditch on the other side of the road. The queen must be in there. Just heard a motorcycle go by so went out to check, walked a little closer and got a good look at a huge swarm on the ground up against the side of the ditch. Either they are wild or someone has lost the bee colony out of one of their hives. This happens every year in June, sometimes a few (scouts?) sometimes the entire swarm. There is old honeycomb in my house walls that they smell and try to get at, I can't afford to rip all the siding off and dig all the old comb and honey out. Have you ever smelled dead bees? They die over winter if they can get settled in there; there is so much caulking on that side of the house! ha. Well, hopefully they move on by tomorrow morning and don't greet me at the back porch.

One good orchid nursery I used to buy from is Oak Hill Gardens near Chicago. I just found that they have 6" Sharry Baby for $20. Now in terms of fragrance, most orchids can not compete with landscape trees or shrubs like Daphne odora or Boronia megastigma. For one thing, orchids usually do not put out a lot of flowers; and the fragrance of most of them are kind of clogging. IMO, the best orchid species for fragrance are: Cymbidium ensifolium Rhyncholaelia glauca Sedirea japonica All three give very clean fragrance that you will not feel tired of smelling even when exposed for a long time, unlike a Sharry Baby. Here is a link that might be useful: Oak Hill Sharry Baby

Tinasam, Sorry you have to put up with discouraging posts! I think your articles could be very useful lists for people searching for information on native plants. My only comment is that they are a little hard to read because of the constant page breaks, and the layout of the page means the text doesn't flow too easily. You could bold or highlight the names of the native plants to make them easier to spot in the article. Good luck!

Ben, I also believe it is Cow Horn. I saw an article in Orchids Magazine from AOS and it looked the same. My neighbor got a piece of this from an old man in Miami who said he got it from the Everglades. When he died, my neighbor asked his family if he could take a piece. He did not know it was an orchid. He was so amazed by the size of it that he decided he would ask for a piece. He said the old man had it growing in a tree. The orchid was so huge it appeared that the tree was flowering. My neighbor put it in a pot with sand and sat it by his tree and it has grown so large over the past 8 years. It appears rooted in the ground. The pot is broken and the plant is firmly in the ground.I knew it was an orchid but I've never seen anything like it. The flowers look like Oncidium type flowers. Harvey, those were the only photos I took. The plant is not flowering now. I took it last month from a distance. I didn't want to walk in his yard. Jane