In about 1982 I was dating an earnest young man I didn't love and
working in a job I hated. I was trying to grow orchids on a windowsill
in a duplex apartment with clanking radiators and peeling linoleum. I
was working too much, not sleeping enough, and my plants were wasting
away. I was not happy. Then I read in the Bulletin of the American
Orchid Society that the society was looking for an editor. I decided to
apply. Leaving Ann Arbor was certainly one way to get myself out of a
funk. About a month later, I was contacted and told to come down to
Virginia Beach, where the AOS board was conducting interviews.
The interviews were held in a Holiday Inn. During the night before the
interview, the fire alarm went off three times. I was a mess in the
morning. After my then-customary breakfast of coffee and cigarettes, I
went to the upstairs room where the first of the interviews took place
and was standing on the landing awkwardly trying to reapply my lipstick
just as the Publications Committee arrived.
The committee was composed of orchid-world luminaries whose names I
never quite got who probed me politely. We all sat on two beds and
talked about what I would do with the Bulletin if I had the chance.
(More photos, I said.) Later, a larger group of orchid society founding
fathers got their turn to grill me about my lack of familiarity with
orchid nomenclature, my pitiful liberal arts background (with my dual
major in art history and studies in religion, I had my pick of many
rewarding job opportunities, as you can well imagine).
This time, I had the sense that the interview was not going at all well.
This impression was particularly strengthened when I was asked who (back
in Michigan) I knew in the orchid world. The answer was no one-not a
soul-except perhaps the (unfortunately married) genetics graduate
student I hardly knew who also grew orchids who I'd somehow barely
persuaded to write a letter of recommendation ("on department
letterhead, please") endorsing my candidacy for the job.
Other than that and the fact that I had spent a lot of money, most of it
on mail-order orchids, I was in this all by myself. That is to say, I
had basically no one to talk to about orchids and had no idea what I was
doing. But this incredibly addictive and expensive hobby had taken hold
of me and, under the circumstances, ladies and gentlemen of the search
committee, I'm just trying to manage as best I can. At least, I hoped
maybe my enthusiasm might qualify me for the job. But unfortunately,
this was not to be. "What!?" - Carped one particularly obstreperous
southern gentleman and an esteemed veteran of the AOS Executive
Committee - "You mean you don't know Ray McCullough?"
"No, sir, I'm sorry, I don't," I said, embarrassed and ashamed. And that
was the end of the interview.
It wasn't until quite a few years later that I actually had the
opportunity to meet Raymond McCullough. I believe he was at this time 82
years old. After a ten-year or so remission in my orchid-growing
obsession, the compulsion had again taken root and it was a great
comfort to finally meet and get to know other similarly affected
individuals. So in 1995, 1 joined the Ann Arbor Orchid Society and in
1996, MOS.
When Ray spoke to the Ann Arbor society last March, I asked him if he
would be willing to show his greenhouse to a small group of guests. The
answer was an invitation to come to lunch and stay the afternoon. We
declined the lunch, not wanting to put Ray's wife Helen to the trouble
of entertaining us, and spent a memorable afternoon during which Ray
gave us hands-on lessons in how to work with osmunda (his preferred
media, about which he had strict rules of how to apply and groom) and
how to mount plants on cork.
Instead of just simply demonstrating for the three of us (Susan Crippen,
Henri Mendel, and myself). Ray made us do it ourselves, under his
supervision. And of course, he sent us home with our projects.
Summer came. I remembered that Ray said he summered over a thousand
Stanhopeas out of doors. I remembered his complaining of back pain from
an injury received on a collecting trip earlier that winter and wondered
how he was managing. And in July, I heard he'd passed away quietly while
mowing his lawn, and I reflected how my not knowing Ray had once hurt
me. And my getting to know him later, when I had no ambitions other than
to grow my plants well, was such a gift.
Today, this third day of December, five months after Ray's passing, the
Encyclia vespa he gave each of us a piece of as part of our
how-to-pot-with-osmunda demonstration is flowering.
In The Manual of Cultivated Orchid Species (Bechtel, Cribb, et alia)
describe Encyclia vespa as a common epiphyte throughout tropical
America. Its flowers, which I would describe as somewhat diminutive,
wonderfully spotted with chestnut-purple overlaid on lime green, and
adorably upturned, they describe as "non-resupinate, creamy green or
yellowish green heavily spotted maroon." Fortunately, there is a color
photograph.
My Encyclia has been building up to flowering for months, actively
growing in all directions simultaneous with its budding. It had some
setbacks along the way, with aphids and buds blasting just as they'd
begun to fatten (an allergy to my homemade insecticide, I think). This
is one of the few plants I have in osmunda fiber and its root growth
seems altogether different from the way roots move through bark.
While I haven't quite gotten the hang of watering (frequency) in
osmunda, the root growth in it seems better than what I typically
achieve in bark, and I plan to switch more of my plants over to it in
the future. Ray wouldn't say how often to water plants potted in
osmunda. I pressed him on this point, more than once. He just smiled
buddha-like, amused by my persistence in demanding easy answers, and
told me just to touch it.
And in fact, when I think about it, the tactile aspects of handling and
examining my plants is one of the biggest pleasures I find in growing
orchids. When I work with my plants, barbering them, ripping them apart
and putting them back together in modified configurations, new media,
new pots or surfaces for growing on, I feel more attuned to their
requirements.
Connie Bailie reports that in her first days as a horticulturist at
Matthaei Gardens, Ray used to mentor her about how to take care of the
collection. "He was always touching things," she says, "rubbing the
leaves between his fingers and brooding on them."
One of the things I found most enjoyable about being with Ray was the
way time seemed to stop in his presence and you just wanted to go on and
on talking about and looking at orchids. Having spent just one intensive
afternoon in his homemade, subterranean greenhouses teeming with plants
accumulated through a lifetime of travel and collecting all over the
globe, I had the sense that he was happier in that place than anywhere
else on earth. (I'll bet Helen had a time of it dragging him away just
long enough to come in for dinner.)
And I have lately come to know the feeling well.