Published at 11:06, Thursday, 05 April 2012

OUR president Vivienne Postlethwaite opened the meeting and this month’s demonstrator was Ros Harrison from Ulverston.

STILL BLOOMING: The Whitehaven Flower Club committee with founder member Dorothy Casson, third left at the front during the club’s 50th anniversary celebrations at the St Begh’s Social Club.

This is the third time she has been with us and this was the first demonstration of the year of our 50th anniversary.

Ros had represented the North West area last year in Torquay. She is a florist and the business has been in the family for 45 years; she took over the florist side three years ago herself. Her dad is going to retire so they are having a big sale in the garden centre that they run.

Her parents had gone down to Torquay with her and her her dad had been introduced into the world of flower arranging. Although he was only doing the carrying and lifting, he said it was his worst nightmare – a room full of 400 flower arrangers all chattering at the same time! He decided there must be a name for them and went through a list of collective nouns. He decided on a flurry, then a gaggle and ended up with a frenzy of flower arrangers, it had been so noisy.

At Houghton Towers, Ros had helped to carry a lot of the props in for people and flowers and she was known as a munchkin with it being a yellow brick road theme. She only found out last minute that she was actually doing a design as well.

She told us some stories through the years of her experience as a florist while she was doing her arrangements. There were a lot of lovely spring flowers, daffodils, tulips, hyacinths as well as carnations, roses and lilies in a multitude of colours.

It is her husband’s 40th birthday this year and she is taking him to London to see Les Miserables, their favourite musical. She had not realised that it was in the middle of the Jubilee celebrations so the travel is costing her twice as much as it should have done.

Since she was with us last time Ros has become a a foster parent to a young boy so a lot of time is taken up running the three children to various activities during the week. Things can be a bit hectic at times. We had a lovely afternoon and she did some fabulous arrangements.

Our next meeting is going to be our fiftieth anniversary lunch at Armathwaite Hall so we are all looking forward to that. A trip to Highgrove in June is also in the process of being organised.

Published by http://www.whitehavennews.co.uk