Re the snapdragons - the pinkish fumes are not always pumping so you may have to wait for a while before they show up. Also your sims' needs could be decreasing faster than the snapdragon can increase them.
It might be worthwhile downloading Windkeeper's OFB extracted craft objects at
MTS2 if you wanted to play around with snapdragons that definitely work and save you having to keep getting your sims to make the flowers. Just remember to go into collections for Build mode though and not Buy mode in order to get the objects.