Our summer break is over and we now embrace Autumn. Our meeting this week at Bishampton Village Hall was presided over by Sheanagh Hickson who welcomed members and two visitors. After dealing with the business side of the evening Sheanagh then introduced our demonstrator for the evening – Sally Taylor who had travelled from Yate.

Sally's title was “Harvest Home” and she certainly brought the meaning of Harvest as she remembers it in her small village situated close to the River Severn, where she was the local farmer's daughter.

Sally explained that the word “Harvest” was derived from “Lamas (harvest of the fruits) and Mabon (end of the summer).

First came an arrangement depicting harvest time in the hedgerow with all the glory of amber coloured chrysanthemums and white spray chrysanthemums along with a collection of hedgerow greenery.

For her second arrangement Sally brought our thoughts to collecting apples ready to be processed into cider. She used sticks and a variety of greenery including fatsia, Paddy's Pride (ivy), conifer and euronymus to produce the press, followed by very red apples mounted on skewers, cream carnations and red roses to suggest the juice coming out of the press.

Sally's next memory was coming home from school always to find her father up a ladder in the orchard with mother holding the basket to collect the fruit. Her arrangement was three very rustic ladders ascending from a basket. She used bergenia leaves, aucuba japonica, summer jasmine which was twined through the ladders making a background for the red roses and scarlet carnations to climb up, with a base of fuchsia and crab apples.

We then went on to remember the harvesting of the corn crop. Using a lovely large stone pot, we had an arrangement of corn dollies, sheaths of corn, fatsia leaves, old man's beard, bramble and sun flowers (obviously we needed to sun to ripen the corn)

Of course we could not have Autumn without a Halloween arrangement, with the traditional chinese lanterns, pumpkin, proteas and an orange lilly called “giraffe”

Finally the last arrangement was to remind us of the hay making, where the sheafs were usually gathered in by moonlight at the end of very long day. Her log basket was covered in hay to which was added alstromeria, snow berries, an apricot gerbra called “dusty”, snapdragons, corn ears, and a pink rose named “Leila”. Not forgetting the two small bales of hay which finished off the arrangement.

Sally Young gave the vote of thanks to our demonstrator saying how very much we had all enjoyed her humour and sharing her memories of her childhood.

JILL MILLARD