From these plain looking buds come beautiful flowers

I always get excited about buds on my flowers and I know it must seem odd to the uninitiated, but from these small buds beautiful flowers come. As I looked throughout my garden today I saw several reasons to feel joy. Sometimes orchids are dormant for months and have no buds. But if you get their water, sunlight and placement right ( mainly somewhere you can protect their buds from snails, birds and a few other insects who love buds as much as an orchid lover but for an entirely different reason...food.

Thus I became a “shoower” of birds, as in one who shoots them away and sadly an exterminator of snails.
These buds go through stages on their way to becoming beautiful flowers, here are a few pictures of that process.

First, the end stage, the flower.