Zedd - The Orchid Thief

We have grown tropical orchids since spring 2001. Our first orchid, however, was not long lived. We had purchased our orchid from the garden department at a local Home Depot. The orchid was a beautiful light purple flowering Dendrobium compactum. We had placed the orchid outdoors and beneath the dappled shade of a pine tree. To our delight, not only did it survive, but it continued to produce lovely flowers for six long weeks.

Dendrobium compactum, our first orchid.

It might have continued to produce flowers for many more weeks, had it not been for Zedd.

Our one year old Vizsla puppy, Zedd.

Zedd was then our one year old Vizsla puppy. Zedd had never shown much interest in any of the thousands of perennials that shared the one acre yard with him. That is, until the day he sat on our back deck showing us the pretty purple flower dangling from his mouth. The pretty purple flower was the remains of our orchid!

Such began our adventure with orchids. After several more trips to Home Depot and the local orchid show at Mitchell Park Conservatory (Milwaukee, Wisconsin), we had acquired a small collection of plants. This time we had the plants placed on an indoor growing rack, far above the deadly jaws of Zedd.

Zedd - The Orchid Thief.

Read the complete story about Zedd, The Orchid Thief, in Chicagoland Gardening magazine.

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