This is my old & beautiful friend, Amado.
He is from Mexico.
He is world famous as an orchid expert & has over 700 varieties that he bred.
He has won hundreds & hundreds of awards, but he only loves the rewards of growing his lovely ladies.
His Orchid Ranch is surrounded by grounds that are exemplified by the image at Planet Earth.
Note the large plant growing on the branch of the big Sycamore.
He has many of those & this one is small in comparison to others he has.
I have dozens of images from the property which you shall see soon.
I spent some time with him yesterday, but I was very happy to see him at the ranch again today, & made sure we had our picture taken by Berta, a small Mexican girl who works for him.
He is a very gentle man.
It must help account for his age, as he turned 90 a short time ago.
I met him over 30 years ago playing pool at a bar over a few years.
We always had a great time challenging each other while improving our game.
His wife would quietly sit & watch us play.
She`s still sitting quietly in the background.
Linked to this image I have a set of some of his orchids.
One image is a set of orchids I processed tonight along with a screen capture of the folder that all of the shots I took today of the orchids though I haven`t gotten to all of them yet.
I have quite a few folders yet to go through from today`s shoot & you`ll soon get to see them.
Also on Planet Earth, I did a vertical merge of a tree with a climbing vine/plant taken from a footbridge across the creek that runs through the property.
I`ll describe the place when I post the images.
I`m dedicating this post to all the ladies in my life, past & present.
(There are quite a few surprisingly, & I`ll be posting some stuff soon about an art show I attended last Sat. where I met many of said ladies from my past.)
Enjoy your visit to my friend`s paradise.
