Maxillaria tenuifolia (click here for an image)

For the most part, commercial growers can control the environment in which they grow and bloom plants to such a degree that projections and cash flows and budgets actually have a basis other than, say, thin air. But as the saying goes, there's one in every greenhouse.

You see, every year, we play a guessing game, what we like to call Wholesale Roulette, with one particular crop - Maxillaria "Coconut Orchids." It's a game we'd prefer not to have to play, because frankly we haven't won it in years. These plants look harmless and friendly, and I'm sure they really don't mean to disrupt our sleep patterns and our bottom line. Since Maxillaria are a perfect plant for Mother's Day markets, because they're unique and fragrant and easy to maintain, we do everything in our considerable power to provide the optimum conditions that will allow the plants to bloom in May, for all those Moms out there. You'd think, since Nature is a mother also (and we mean that in the nicest possible way), that she'd give us her support.

But that's the thing about Nature. She's always been unpredictable, and is growing more so daily. She gave South Florida the really cold shoulder this past January. She's been shaking her tectonic plates at all of us an awful lot, and she really blew her stack in Iceland last week.

So we hesitate to bother her, she's obviously overworked, but here we are again. The Coconut Orchids sit and look innocent, while they remain busy not flowering. Buyers come in from large companies, with checkbooks to match, and ask us to sell them the entire crop. All we have to do is...predict when they will be in bloom. Could be next week, we say. Possibly the week after.

Or next month, or next year or not at all.

There were some commercials out decades ago for Blue Bonnet margarine. The tag line was "it's not nice to fool Mother Nature." In our case, it's not possible to fool her, either - at least not where Maxillaria tenuifolia are concerned.