In a Vase on Monday: a History Lesson

I have chosen roses to go in my Monday vase this week because they are the most floriferous blooms in the garden at this point in mid-June. There are two varieties, growing together in the gallery border, and both seem to have done better this year than before – behind the gallery fence is the woodland which blocks sun from the south, so the roses only get the morning and late afternoon sun. However, our neighbours cut some of the lower branches from their huge mature beech over the winter and perhaps this allows more light to filter through.

The darker pink rose is ‘England’s Rose’, the lighter is ‘The Mayflower’; both are David Austin roses and they are joined in the glass cylindrical vase, housed in its own metal holder, by some sprigs of frilly Alchemilla mollis, a perfect Elizabethan ruff for these very British roses.

Also accompanying the roses is today’s prop, a vintage picture book entitled ‘Britain’s Story, Told in Pictures’, over 450 of them, all line drawings. It doesn’t have a publishing date, but the Modern History section features people and events from the 1930s, so it is clearly pre-WW2. I hadn’t checked before I chose it as a prop, but am pleased to say it does include pictures of the Pilgrim Fathers and the Mayflower, which carried a group of ‘pilgrim’ families from persecution in England to America in 1620. I knew that many did not get through their first winter, but didn’t realise that those who did survive only did so with help from the local indigenous population, and that a joint celebration of the first harvest led to the concept of an annual Thanksgiving. I hope US readers will forgive this generalisation of an important historical fact…

You never know what you are going to learn next on IAVOM! If you would like to pick blooms or other material from your garden and weave a story around them we would love you to share the result with us on IAVOM, so please leave the usual links to and from this post.