Thanksgiving Flowers

 If you are seeing the below flowering plant at this time, you are looking at a Thanksgiving Cacti!

Yep, there is a Christmas Cacti and also an Easter Cacti!  They are looking different in their leaves but the flowers sure look the same!

My neighbor, Tammy, has quite a collection and display that I was admiring last year.  She gifted me a white one but no blooms have appeared.  I did a search on the internet to see if I could figure out the problem and it appears it has been getting too much sun light at this point in time.  Well, I do have some plant lights providing supplemental light to my violets, which has been great for them, but not so great for my Thanksgiving Cacti!  So, I recently moved it so it would only get the normal daylight this time of the year and am hopeful it will stimulate it to bloom in time for Christmas!  

Tammy's Thanksgiving Cacti

WISHING YOU ALL A SAFE AND HAPPY THANKSGIVING!  Our family as elected to stay within our individual family households and hold a ZOOM visit this year. This is only the second Turkey Day I have had without some family with me, so it will seem a bit lonely.  But our goal is to have many more Turkey Dinners with us still all together from now on!  May your family also enjoy many more!

  Yes, I have some lefsa waiting for some turkey stuffing and gravy to join it!

It is going to rebloom!

 About a year ago I purchased my first orchid with a goal of it reblooming!  

And then later I purchased a few more and have patiently been watering and fertilizing them and anxiously looking for some sign my goal might even happen!  A year is a long time to be patient!

A few days ago I noticed what appears to be buds forming!  I am so excited!  I will be sure to post pictures of it when it is in full bloom later!  And that will probably be midst this long winter and its challenges to find excitement while enduring this pandemic!  

I did attend a free seminar on orchids at our local garden center last winter, which gave me lots of encouragement with this new adventure.

This morning on Facebook I spotted a free seminar on the internet that looks interesting, so you can also check it out if that is interesting.  My friend, Joan, has a big collection of orchids and they were all the lower priced ones and they all are beautiful reblooming freely!  

 Information on Free Orchid Class CLICK HERE

Unique Totem Pole Yard Art

 I have made a few of these totem poles yard art myself but this one is really unique and personalized to fit the recipient!

My neighbor, Marty, called me to come over and see what her creative sister made for her!

Wow, what a special sister to be designing Totem Poles to fit her sister's life interests!  

This one reflects many of Marty's interests:  At the bottom are two turtles (one hatching) representing her annual task of helping Blandings Turtles safely cross the roads to the Mississippi River when they hatch!

The dog represents her long involvement in rescuing aging small dogs (20 of them often with 6 at one time) and giving them love and special care until the end of their lives.  

 The star at the top is a recognition of her special Faith.

 The flashlight represents her extensive collection of flashlights!

 The red knife represents the knife she has always carried in her pocket!

The baseball tells about her passion for The Twins Baseball Team!

Denny is going over to see how it can be attached to the railing on her deck!

Feathered friends visit our living room window!

We don't have many trees in our yard to attract birds, but we do have feeders hanging just outside our big window area in the living room.  Our bird bath is kept open year around, thanks to a heater, so we get bird visitors in the winter for sure!   Feeding them is Denny's passion and we enjoy their visits daily!  This one was recently taken from inside when we had a nice bright woodpecker visitor!   Our boys, enjoy these visitors also and eagerly look forward to the shades opening in the mornings!

Colorful idea for Fall Yard Art!

While on our Fall Color Leaf Peep Drive this year, I found this colorful display of old bikes decorated with paint and flowers for fall!

I couldn't decide which ones I liked the best, so took pictures of them all for you!

Actually this is a great idea for any season if you have an old bike available to decorate!  Once upon a time on a garden tour there was one location which had at least five bikes spread about her garden beds, and they were cleverly mixed in so you could have fun hunting for them!

SE MN Fall Color Drive 2020

SE MN Mississippi River Valley is usually about their peak in color in Mid October.  This year we missed the peak by about a week, but when the morning sun was hitting the bluffs, it was lovely!  I love looking at those awesome old homes built so close up the steep Wisconsin bluffs!  Apples for sale were abundent resulting in a few apple pie purchases!

This year we decided to take in both some of the Wisconsin side with the Minnesota side so we headed to Lake City, MN drove south to Wabasha and crossed the Mississipi River into Wisconsin then drove south to cross back into Minnesota at LaCrosse and then headed SW to Rushford for lunch before heading north to home!  203 miles and 5 1/2 hours of some familiar sights and some new sights including lunch at the Norsland Lefsa Manufacturing place with an awesome bakery and lunch service!  So, a bonus for me, I took home half a dozen, fresh off the griddles, lefsas!  I won't list the bakery goodies that jumped into our car tho!  Sandwiches and soup was so welcome by 2:00 PM!  

Baby Croton a year ago.....

A year ago I won a darling mini Croton plant in a ceramic pumpkin as a door prize at our Shades of Green Hosta Society of SE MN meeting!

I enjoyed it during the winter on my kitchen table with a collection of other mini plants which I called my winter garden!   Spring came and the Croton is a tropical plant so I moved it to my Beach Scene Fairy Garden and enjoyed it all summer long outdoors!  As I was picking up Fairy Garden elements to pack away until next spring, I noticed how healthy this little Croton was and how much it had grown so I quickly replanted it into an indoor pot and sprayed it with insecticide so it didn't bring any little friends inside.

I found the little ceramic planter it originally came in, filled it with some fall leaves to set next to it and am once again enjoying it on my kitchen table for fall color!  And, I happen to know the person who had donated it as a door prize, so now I have a daily reminder of a very special friend to remember with a smile every day!