First post! And growing spaces!

Yay!  Here it is, post #1.  I feel so special.

Thought I should start out with some pics and info about my growing spaces and situations.

If you're not aware, I live in good ol' Wyoming, which is DRY DRY DRY (all year) and really cold and snowy in the winter.  Orchids and AVs are tropical plants, meaning they like warm and humid.  Oops.  Anyway, they seem to do OK despite all that.  I currently grow several different genera of orchids, but I am now starting to focus more on Phalaenopsis since they do better than others in my conditions.  I have recently fallen in love with Phal species and primary hybrids in particular.

Here's some pics of what grows where in my teeny lil apartment:

I'll start with the "grow room", which is just the second bedroom converted.  This is the shelves where the higher light plants grow:  cattleyas, dendrobiums, and one vanda.  Top shelf is for big and tall plants, lower shelf is for shorter and minis.  These grow under 4 foot, 4-tube T5 HO lights, which also serve nicely to keep them warm in the winter, ha.

On the opposite wall are the african violets and their lights.  These guys live under a basic shop light with a couple T8 daylight bulbs.  I had the AVs under natural light until just recently, but they suffered from too much light, but have done amazingly well since being moved in here.

Closer views of the AV shelves.  The huge one on the far right of the lower pic will be chopped to pieces within the week...it's massively overgrown.  I've also got a pot of very very tiny orchid babies that I'm hoping will grow and a hyacinth bulb I'm trying to force out of season.

Next is the "east window" area where I grow all my Phals and some other random things.  This is, of course, natural light, and my phals just go crazy here.  I've had 11 spikers this fall/winter alone.  There's two hoyas, a yellow kalanchoe, and a spider plant in the hanging baskets, along with a couple non-Phal plants (a miltoniopsis, a couple Angraecums, a Psychopsis, my lone Bulbophyllum, and a piece of my ill-fated Onc. Sharry Baby).  I plan on buying lots more Phal species n things this spring, so these shelves will be packed full very shortly.

I've also got a few random things in the living room, sitting in my huge west-facing window.  Here I've got my Thanksgiving cactuses, regular cactuses, my winter-dormant orchids (Fdk. After Dark and Phaiocalanthe Kryptonite), and a couple high-light plants that got too big to live under the lights anymore (Den. bigibbum alba and Max. tenuifolia).

And finally, my blooming table!  I rotate plants to here when they bloom, then put them back in their normal growing locations when they're done.  For example, the pink dendrobium on the right is very close to being done blooming, so it will go back to the grow room in the next couple days.  My only problem?  This table is wayyyyyyy too small to hold everything I have blooming, so some stuff gets left where it is.

That's everything, I think!  Hope you enjoy reading my new blog!  Whee!