December's Presidents' Message

Hello POS Members and Friends,

Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year to everyone!! We hope all of you had a nice and safe Thanksgiving. This has been a difficult and challenging year for all of us. The COVID-19 pandemic has created havoc in our lives, our families, and all societies. It has disrupted nearly all facets of our daily life. With the recent surge in COVID cases across the nation and our dropping down to the purple stage in San Diego County, we should prepare for another challenging year. Like many of you, we miss seeing everyone's smiling faces and chatting with you at the meetings. Fortunately,  advances in vaccine development are looking encouraging as are the ongoing efforts to develop effective treatments for those affected by the virus, particularly at early stages. Let’s hope these advances are successful and make 2021 a better year than 2020.

We are not aware of any of our members coming down with COVID, however, we did experience a loss of one of our beloved members, Susan Johnston, to cancer on September 30th. We sincerely hope and pray that all of you remain safe and healthy for the upcoming year. We can’t predict when our in person meetings will resume, but it probably won’t be until late 2021 or early 2022.

POS and SDCOS will continue our joint Zoom meetings and culture classes, both of which have been very informative. We believe our members have enjoyed the programs and speakers that we sponsored. On January 5th 2021 one of our favorite speakers, Ron Parsons, will share with us  his new talk  on 'Rare & Oddities of the Orchid World'. It should be an exciting  talk so please mark your calendars accordingly.

Last month, Ken Jacobson gave a nice presentation on the “Oncidium crispum group”. We are also appreciative of the SDCOS members who volunteered to put on the culture classes. Last month, John Oswalt of SDCOS gave an informative talk on Reverse Osmosis water and how to build an RO system. We learned that it isn’t that expensive to build/install a system and ongoing maintenance is minimal. Thank you, John, for your time and effort. We have  access to John's  presentation for those of you who missed it.   Please contact Alex if you are interested in receiving a pdf of the presentation.

We will not have a Zoom meeting  or Culture Class in December and, of course, will not have a Holiday Dinner this year. There are no Orchid Shows planned in the area that we are aware of. However, our local vendors will continue to hold periodic open houses so we can continue to add beautiful orchids to our collection and support these growers.  Andy’s, SVO, and Casa de las Orquideas are having Open Houses this month so please refer to the ads on pages 4-6 below for details. Our vendors continue to grow plants, but have limited outlets to sell them so please consider treating yourself to some holiday orchids to add to  your collections.

In closing, we hope all of our members and friends remain healthy, upbeat and optimistic about the future. As always, Bill and Alex are available to listen to your suggestions, questions and concerns. Please call Bill at 760-931-0502 or Alex at 760-529-5814 or e-mail them at billtcwong@att.net or anadzan@mac.com .