Wow (What I Just Got in the Mail).

Raise your hand if you think you could persuade your employer to buy you 30 pairs of dress shoes. I didn't think so. It's because you don't work at the Atlanta Botanical Garden. During ORCHIDdaze.

Not that I plan on wearing any of these. Oh no. We have something else, something outrageous, in mind for ORCHIDdaze: Surreal Beauty, our ten week orchid display opening Saturday Feb 9.

Why should shoes be simply footwear? In a surreal landscape shoes could be anything, pop up anywhere, in strange and unexpected juxtapositions.

The month of January is the run up to ORCHIDdaze, and if I have given you the impression with my relatively infrequent posts of late, that January is a quiet, feet-up-on-the desk month, with our greenhouse staff in post-holiday, post-postprandial comas, then I have misled you. My apologies. January is crazy busy. Or rather, January is busy and I'm crazy... Anyway, this year's display is shaping up to be the best ever. And I can't wait to show you what happens next to all these shoes.

My actual greenhouse footwear in the foreground. How's that for a striking juxtaposition?

For future reference: if you want the immediate attention of a mostly female workforce, try unpacking 30 boxes of fancy shoes all at once.