While cleaning up the “remains” from my Holiday Home Shows… I’m finally taking down shelves… and I’m finding that my neglected orchids have apparently been doing just fine without me! With my dining room window covered with shelves, my plants unfortunately get “wedged” in between the shelves & window and get very little attention for quite awhile! So imagine my surprise today when I found several of my orchid plants sending up new flower spikes already!!! So I’ve watered, cleaned, propped ’em up… and I’m now looking forward to some fresh new orchid blooms coming soon!!!

My Thanksgiving Cactus was pretty much right on schedule… maybe a week late! But it’s doing great now. I’m sure it is all about the handmade pottery flowerpot that it’s living in! Well, at least that’s my story.. and I’m sticking to it…

A few more flowers popping up on the back porch…
a hanging basket of mini-petunias that survived the Halloween snowstorm!

Down the street there’s a beautiful hydrangea bush with these big, beautiful flower clusters. Luckily, I cut off a couple stems before the big Halloween snowfall… and now they’ve dried perfectly & maintained their green color. A perfect addition to my green stamped & soda-fired vase!

I’ve been busy setting up shelves all over the place for this weekend’s HOLIDAY HOME SHOW… including in the dining room where several of my orchids live. So they’ve been enjoying some new lighting & clean space to spread-out more! At least until the shelves get covered with pottery in a couple days!!! Pack ’em tight… make room for the POTTERY!!!

After our “freakish” Halloween snowstorm, I thought that flowers on my back porch were done for! But lookey here… a few more red gerber daisies blooming! Sure, they might be a little worse-for-wear from the weather… but still a pretty splash of color!

Simple white flowers working their way through the piles of fallen leaves.

Yes, the snow did them in… the plants are completely frozen, sagging, mushy & dead! However, I did “save” two flowers for a quick ikebana vase! The last two for this season… and hoping to “up my game” for next year with even more & bigger dahlias!

So I was scrolling through Instagram earlier today and ran across this post.
And I thought to myself… “Wow, that flower looks a LOT like the dahlias I have blooming at home right now. And I wonder if mine will survive yesterday’s snow at all?!”

And then I looked closer… it also looks like my condo… also looks like my bricks… like my basement window frame… my dahlia plant… my tomato cage… wait a minute… THAT IS MY DAHLIA!!! Blooming but struggling under the snow!!!

Turns out Sarah walks her dog Sheryl past my place regularly, and has been enjoying my dahlias all Fall. Who knew???… That the “runner-up-in-my-eyes” on THE GREAT AMERICAN BAKING SHOW would be posting pictures of my dahlias on her Instagram?! Small world!

And just for the record… the snow did them in!!! Got home tonight and the plants are frozen, wilted & DEAD!!! Hope I can still save the tubers…

After this morning’s trip to the GreenCity Market, Rikke came home with another beautiful “broken” dahlia bloom FREE from the flower vendor. Good thing Rikki has an ikebana flower vase at the ready to show-off her newest blossom! Giving new life to a flower-head originally headed towards the trash. Beautiful save!!!