Phalaenopsis Violacea Alba
I took a many year hiatus from orchids (about 12 years) and just got into things around the start of the year. Once back into things, I learned of some of the developments in plants that I had happenned while I was away. One of those things, relevant to this board was the line breeding of Novelty Phal Species, in particular line breeding success with the indigo "blue" types. I searched around and found nothing local, so I bought a nice mature Phalaenopsis Violacea var Indigo (with good parentage) that I could hopefully bloom and see this color in person. I got it and repotted it even though I was cautioned not to repot new plants, but it absolutely needed it. I trimmed off a fair amount of old dead roots and pulled out all of the old media and put it into something a bit more open of a mix.
Two months later I had a bunch more new roots and a couple more leaves and also, most importantly, a new spike. My first orchid to bloom since I got back into the hobby. As things progressed, I waited for the bud to deepn in color and start showing me that "blue"... Instead, I ended up with this guy, which I truly like, but was not planning on for sure.
The first pic shows it's first flower, nice sized at somewhere around 5cm. Now that I'm growing it a little cooler, the flowers are a hair under that size, but are a lot flatter (and it's thrown another spike). Not sure how people judge these flowers, but I think it's a good representative of the species, very well balanced and full - especially compared to what I've seen of the albas out there. Not what I had planned to get initially, but a good flower nonetheless - and fragrant to boot. Just thought I'd share.
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Starting over's soooo exciting, having the sensation of a new flower opening is much more intensified still 
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