The Flower Festival 2018

Regular readers may remember that I was less than ecstatic about the flower festival last year, and hoped at that time for something a bit more conducive to floral interpretation than the 900th Anniversary of the Martyrdom of St Magnus had proved to be. Well,  my wish was granted and this year's theme was inspirational women. It's a wide field, a fact that was reflected in the subjects chosen for depiction. 

I did not take pictures of all the displays and I'm not going to post all the pictures I took but there was some amazing work.

This was Sylvia Wishart, an important Orkney-born  artist.

Boudicca, or Boadicea as the program had it. Not sure what she inspires - homicidal hatred of Italians in togas perhaps? Great colours though.

Grace Darling. This was probably our second favourite.

The next three show parts of our favourite, a very large exhibit dedicated to J K Rowling. Rowling is such a dedicated Unionist that mostly all she inspires in me is uncomprehending rage, but that said she is a bit of a role model for girls I think and a lot of thought and hard work had gone into an excellent display.  

 don't you just love the floral owl?

This I'm going to beef about. Every year there are small 'filler' displays between the main ones; a little something on the pillars and some other scattered arrangements. They aren't generally themed, but this year they were. The pillars all had shoes filled with flowers, as above. The larger pieces all incorporated what I might call 'wedding hats'. This struck me as both silly and wrong. Women are about more than shoes and hats. In fact, women's feet and heads have been  subject to fetishism by male hierarchies altogether too much; feet binding, veil wearing, hair covering, so it seemed  out of place to have these shoes and hats in an exhibition that was supposed to be all about inspiring women.  

But I don't want to end on a negative, so here is one of several beautiful tributes to the Suffragettes, whose struggle for the right of women to vote truly is inspiring.