Next Meeting Wednesday 6th December at 7.45 in the Sports Pavilion, Watlington OX49 5BZ Speaker: Timothy Walker This meeting will be our Christmas social - we will be serving wine as well as tea and coffee, also mince pies and nibbles so do come if you can.
The title of Timothy’s talk is the Twelve Plants of Christmas. This is a very personal take of the plants that feature in the celebration of Christmas as well as those plants that turn up in the Bible account of the birth of Jesus. Apart from the pear tree in which sat the partridge, there are no plants in the 12 days of Christmas according to the folk song. Sadly, even that reference is erroneous, because partridges are ground dwelling birds. And yet at Christmas we are surrounded by plants. This talk puts the record straight and rewrites the plant-blind zoocentric song replacing partridges with poinsettias, and maids with mistletoe.
Last month Sandy Primrose returned with his talk titled A Tale of Two Poppies. The two poppies are the opium poppy and the red British Legion Remembrance poppy. We heard about how the use of the opium poppy goes back to ancient times and how the British Empire played a very unedifying role with opium in the nineteenth century. We also learnt about the history and origins of the red poppy as a symbol of Remembrance.
Plant Table There will be NO plant table this month. Website Don’t forget our website has a list of all the speakers for the year and copies of our newsletters and subscription and visits forms - http://www.watlingtongardeningclub.co.uk If you missed a meeting there is also a write-up of each talk. It also has various links including to Benson Gardening Club and Bledlow Ridge and Lacey Green horticultural societies whose meetings we can attend as guests.
Next Meeting Don’t forget there is no meeting in January so our next meeting is on Wednesday 7th February when Andrew Mikolski will talk about Hellebores.
The committee would like to wish all our members a peaceful Christmas and a Happy Gardening New Year.