Cottage Vine

Hello September

As much as I love summer, there’s just something so captivating about the transition into autumn. 

I think September is that month where you never quite know what the weather might do - in this pleasant land we call Great Britain. Some years it surprises us with a cool breeze, and others bring that dreamy 'Indian summer' - like the ones you read about in romantic novels. 

September... I think is a beautiful month where nature gives us a great display of its magnificent colours and somehow shows us that change can be good. 

I say this as someone who struggles with accepting change. It always takes me a little while to get used to something being different - I’m sure some of you can relate? 

I’m looking forward to capturing some glorious scenes over the next month, which I’ll use as inspiration for new designs. 

The inspiration behind Cottage Vine 

The inspiration for Cottage Vine came from my Auntie and Uncle’s house. They’ve lived in the same cottage - a converted stone cow shed in Cornwall - for nearly 40 years. For as long as I can remember, climbing up the side of it has been a Virginia Creeper, which I always assumed was a type of ivy. 

Virginia Creeper is a flowering vine from the grape family - Vitaceae. In summer, it’s a lush deep green, but as we turn the corner into autumn, it slowly transforms into the most stunning natural red. 

As a child, I remember looking up at the side of their stone cottage at this mass of leafy lusciousness! I remember it changing from green to red and asking my uncle, “What is this?” he, in all his horticultural knowledge, informed me it wasn’t a type of ivy at all - but indeed a type of vine. 

My dear Uncle Brad, who has now passed, was a fantastic gardener who loved his vegetable plot and simply adored being outside, tending to his little patch of land. 

I learnt many things from my Uncle Brad. I used to work with him in my mid-teenage years - he was a gardener by trade, and a gardener at heart. 

A vine with meaning 

Back to the Virginia Creeper - the pattern Cottage Vine stems from my childhood memories of my Auntie and Uncle’s house, cloaked in this green and red leafy veil. 

Although it’s not a literal representation of a vine climbing up the side of a cottage, the design is a peeled-back likeness of a kind. In the pattern, the vine is gently making its way across the surface - almost like new growth. 

Cottage Vine can be seen as a symbol of many moments and seasons in our own lives - how its appearance changes from season to season, and how it grows back with strength after being pruned. 

It shows us great resilience. 

I remember how my uncle would give it a hard prune in early winter, every few years, when it had grown a bit too big for its boots. And yet, the following spring, it would begin again - sending out fresh new shoots, delicate leaves, slowly maturing over the year into something beautiful once more. 

Something that had flourished after being cut back. 

New growth after pruning 

There’s a verse in Psalm 103 that says, “As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourishes.” 

The Lord intended for us to flourish - to blossom. 

Sometimes change is an opportunity for new things, for good things - things that can only come from a hard pruning. 

Just like how we grow and learn from our mistakes. How going through trials and hardships teaches us lessons. The things we learn in testing times often stay with us for life. They shape us - and sometimes, they change us. 

Cottage Vine represents the new growth in our lives after a hard prune: A trial we’ve overcome, a difficult chapter we’ve come through. 

It’s a reminder to celebrate the good that can come from new beginnings and fresh starts. 

You could see it as ‘out with the old, in with the new’ - the freedom one can feel after a metaphorical spring clean in their life. 

Let’s be encouraged by the Virginia Creeper and see change as a chance for something good. 

A chance to flourish. 

A chance to blossom. 

With love, 

Megan x