Summer is over in my area. Almost 5 inches of rain have already fallen at my house. To cope with the seasonal change outdoors, I rely on fresh flowers indoors. I keep them everywhere, and they are also all over my Day of the Dead Shrine. Because cut flowers are so expensive and persihable, I use a quick and dirty trick to milk an extra day or two out of the vase life. Take a pair of sharp scissors, as sharp and pointy as you can find, and just trim all the wilted petals from the back. This flower not only has ugly petals, powdery mildew is growing on it- ICK! Carefully cut all the damaged parts of the flower off. Finally, give the stem a fresh cut at the bottom and voila! As you can see in the photos, removing all that gunk from the flower even made the sun come out for a moment!