I am pleased to report that my oldest orchid appears to be blooming again. I think this is the second time I have been able to get it to bloom.
My second oldest is shooting out still, but suffering dramatically. It's hard to tell if it will even push out one bloom before it completely croaks. I think the dry air this winter has been especially hard on my more tropical plants. I've started placing jars of water every where around all my plants. I think I may need to double this effort, though, as the jars almost completely dry out after a week. I don't have any good photos of the second oldest at the moment.
The absolute youngest is now completely dead. I was keeping a close eye on it for awhile because it had sprouted a "baby," which I thought was odd given that the orchid itself was already so tiny. I had read that you want to wait until the roots are at least an inch or two before detaching the baby from the parent plant, but this one's roots stayed way too small. The parent plant deteriorated quickly and by the time I realized it had died, the baby was already starting to shrivel as well. Unfortunately I left for vacation the day after I finally separated the baby and so I had to set it down in a completely inhospitable situation (just on top of another orchid's soil, and the air was so dry the whole time I was gone. Perhaps if I had been home I could have spritzed it every day, or at least construct a more appropriate atmosphere for it.).
So now I am down to three orchids. At my peak I had five. I think my apartment is very unideal for orchids, which is why the smaller ones seem to struggle to develop here. If I get any more orchids, I'm going to have to develop some sort of terrarium-like environment for the winter and perhaps take more rigor in maintaining them. For now, I'll just let these more mature orchids take their course.
