Buds! We have buds!

The tiny spike that I showed two months ago has been making excellent progress. In fact, we now have three well-formed buds. Given that I started from pollinating the mother plant back in early 2009, it has only been four years to get to this point.

Reminds me of a quote from "Duck Soup" by the Marx Brothers.

Treasury Secretary: "Sir, you try my patience!"
Firefly: "Don't mind if I do. You must try mine sometime."

Anyway... Here is a photo of the plant as of today:

Here is a picture that shows the underside of one of the leaves. The reddish color tells me that it is getting enough light. It also shows the label - the date indicates the last time it was repotted (October 2012).

In the next picture, you can see that I don't directly clip the spike to its support. I've damaged a few that way, so now I use some blue plastic (non-adhesive) tape along with a spring clip. The tape is specifically sold for tying up plants.

In this last picture, we simply have a close-up of the buds. They look very healthy to me. Hopefully, by next month we should get to see what they look like. I can't wait!