The Flower Festival - watch out for the rant!

So today we went to the Flower Festival as planned. I thought that there weren't quite as many arrangements this year as there have been in the past, but as the theme this year was celebrating the flower arranging club's 60th year maybe a few of the members have become inactive in one way or another recently. 

So generally there were all the themes you'd expect for celebrating and a few outliers. Here's part of the one for a new home

Nice I thought

There was a wedding one and a retirement one and one for passing your driving test and, rather unusually I thought for a flower festival in a Church of Scotland church, one celebrating Gay Pride. Here it is

I am quite proud of the fact that it was there, as I can think of churches where to say it wouldn't be welcome would be to put it mildly.

There was a wedding one which I didn't take a photograph of but which had to my mind an unusual feature. It was based on the flower arrangers own wedding back in 1968. Included in the display were the hats worn to the ceremony by the mothers of the bride and groom. Now is it me? or who does keep a hat for 51 years? 

This was one dedicated to the Venice Carnival. It reminded me that, because of the OH's general reluctance ever to cross the border into Italy again after our first visit in 1980, we have never been to the Venice Carnival, even though our elder son has. And I'd quite like to go. Mind you I can't lay that all at the feet of the OH. He's quite happy to go to Spain but we've never made it to Seville for Semana Santa and we'd both like to do that. I wasn't quite sure how the Venice Carnival really fitted the theme but the arrangement was fun

Now I'm going to rant. This is the one for a new baby.

See the blue side, all big and strong and eye catchingly tall? And the pink bit sheltering beside it on a lower level and much less noticeable. I don't even need to rant do I? In any case, why do blue and pink at all? Just do lemon or apricot or green, none of which would cause people to be cross about the gender stereotyping implicit in the arrangement. 

Bur because I do not wish to end on a sour note here's a photo of our favourite this year

Guy Fawkes. I should have taken the photo straight on, but what can I tell you? There was a cruise liner in town today (there again, what day in summer is there not?) and the Cathedral was packed. So it was tricky to take photos. This does not do the Guy Fawkes arrangement much justice, but you can see the guy, the flames and a couple of the fireworks. 

And flower festival wise, that's it for another year. It's fun and one of the few things here I make a particular point of going to each time and I always enjoy it. So that's something to celebrate, isn't it?