In a Vase on Monday - Anniversary Reunion posy

To mark the ninth anniversary of this meme, Cathy who started this off, arranged a zoom meeting yesterday, when some of us met in person.  The challenge for this anniversary was a hand tied bouquet. This post will be linked to hers on her blog: Rambling in the Garden.

I only joined the group in the summer of 2015 some eighteen months after it started, and it has been a delight to have, for much of the intervening time, shared the posies which I had been posting on my blog with a group of gardeners, several of whom I have had the pleasure of meeting in person.  This time distance and time zones were overcome, and Cathy made for a delightful zoom host.

In the UK the autumn has been extremely mild, with some very wet days but also some sunny ones.  On Sunday morning we went for one of our long walks straight from our front door, and as we walked along the hedgerows I was able to pick come material using my folding secateurs which I just happened to have on me.

The idea was to use the material to supplement garden grown flowers.  However when I assembled the pieces it would seem to be an odd blend, so I stayed with local wild flowers/seed heads and tied the bouquet with some green raffia.

Here the bouquet rests on the circular table with the low winter sun catching the detail, and particularly the structure of the seed heads.  The small round seed heads now all dried are Burdock, and indeed they stick even to Demin. Burdock seed heads were the starting point inspiring the invention of Velcro.

Teasels grow abundantly, but I had to hang over one of the dykes on the levels to reach these.  I had not realised that there was a different teasel grown for the fulling industry and many were grown within Somerset.  I came across an interesting article on this topic and have put a link here for future reference.

 

On another side of the posy, the rose hips, and ivy flowers and seed heads can be seen more clearly.  You may wonder why I put in that clunky pieces of tree.  They may become a very rare thing in years to come.  The Ash tree is an iconic tree on the Mendips and along the levels, but is sadly disappearing at an alarming rate, and you cannot walk far but hear the sound of chain saws as the trees are being felled on an industrial scale.  Without their favourite roost and nesting trees we have been inundated with jackdaws, wood pigeons and many other birds, who seek the few remaining trees for shelter etc.

Although a sparse branched shrub at this time of the year the wild spindle tree really stands out with its split berries.  There are a couple of small wooded areas we pass, which I first noticed when we moved here. Spindle wood was used to make spindles again used in the woollen industry.

When I used to visit my grandma she would take me on country walks and point out the special wild flowers, but that was usually in the summer, some we would bring back home to arrange in posies, or press between the pages in a heavy book.  I mostly take pictures now of wild flowers, and this time I had no compunction about picking this material as many of the hedges had been severely trimmed back and these pieces would have been subjected to flaying blades within the next week or so.