Hey there, I thought it was time to look back at a few posts and share some updates with you. Today’s post includes a success, a failure, and a modification.

The Failure :

I made a space for native bees, and they never came! I was really bummed, because I was so excited to have Alex, our little bug lover, watch the bee activity all summer. I was also hoping to share updates with you all summer, oh well. Fortunately, the bee house is in great condition, so I took it down for the winter and will hang it again next spring. I’m going to try a different location.

The Modification :

 {warning : dirty glass walls ahead!}

That’s an close-up of what I did, but let me take a step back and explain. When we lived in PA, I had great success keeping my orchid happy, healthy, and blooming. Then we moved to dry (dry,dry) Colorado, and it became such a struggle. I finally got the conditions right in our rental last year, and then we moved into the new house.

After moving, I was keeping the orchids in a corner of the living room. They were getting plenty of light, but they were dry. I tried to stay on top of watering, and I even added a big pan underneath that I filled with water to try to raise the humidity level in the air around them. Unfortunately, it was just too dry.

So one day I had the brilliant idea to move them to our shower. The shower in the master bathroom is huge and gets plenty of sunlight. Before starting the project, I did a quick search online for “orchids in shower” and learned that I am definitely not the first person with this idea. And seeing those posts, I gathered my supplies : a wire container to hold the orchids and suction to the wall (we already had this one), some moss to fill out the container and look pretty, scissors, yarn and cheesecloth (I thought I would need the yarn and cheese cloth to create a little bag around my orchids to keep the soil in, but as you’ll see, this was unnecessary).

The orchids were in plastic pots that sat inside of clay pots. I took them out of the clay pot and carefully cut off the plastic pots. As you can see in the photos above, even without the pots, the orchid roots and soil were solidly contained within a layer of moss. This setup was so sturdy that I didn’t use the cheesecloth.

I lined the wire basket with the green moss and tucked the orchids in the basket, adding more moss where necessary to fill the space. After suctioning the basket to the shower wall, I added a few to the outside of the basket.

*If you’re interested in air plants (the easiest plant to take care of), we showed you how to make an artistic air plant display and how to use them for decorating an outdoor shower.*

As you can see, the basket sits up high and towards the back corner of the shower. I was worried about it being in the way, but when Calder showered and didn’t even realize it was there, I knew we were safe.

The exciting news is that we have new growth on the orchids. One, in particular, is going crazy and sending up two new flower spikes! I’ll consider this one a full-blown success once we actually have flowers.

The Success :

Our mold & mildew spray made with essential oils has been the most effective shower cleaner I’ve ever used! We’ve been living in this house for almost 8 months now, and have not had to scrub mildew from the tile wall yet! They are absolutely clean.

And to give you some insight into our shower usage : Calder showers at least once a day, sometimes more if he goes on a long bike ride; I shower about once every 3 days (no joke, but my skin thanks me). I’m the only one that uses the shower spray, so it gets sprayed on after one out of every four showers. And that’s it, no other tricks…. now to come up for a trick to keeping the water stains off the glass walls.