Turned out to be a nice sunny day today, albeit a bit breezy. But I did see a ray of hope… a flowering witch hazel tree! Some say it’s Late Winter… I’m gonna call it Very Early SPRING!!!

This morning is all gray & cloudy… but then again, this bright spot decided to bloom overnight for a pop of color in my dining room! It’s the first of several orchid spikes coming up for this year’s re-bloom… just making me want Spring to come even sooner!

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!