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Sunday, July 14, 2019

Summer Movies 2019: Language of Flowers

It is time again for our summer movie series, where we watch films in which plants play the starring role! This summer we're going back for a few more episodes of the British cozy mystery series, Rosemary & Thyme. The series aired from 2003 to 2007 and delighted many as the two appealing gardeners, Felicity Kendal as Rosemary Boxer and Pam Ferris as Laura Thyme, solved mysteries while running their landscape business. We watched several episodes during the winter movie series (see And No Bird Sings, The Gongoozlers, and Aqua Cadaver). I had to go back for more!

By the third episode of the first season, Rosemary and Laura are building their business and getting to know each other. They each have their strengths, both in landscaping and solving mysteries.


The Language of Flowers (Season 1, Episode 3)

In this episode, Rosemary and Laura have been employed by Frances Caldecott to restore a cascade (waterfall) that was designed by famous local landscaper, Fanella Goffe, who died tragically decades earlier. The setting is a mansion turned health spa, run by Frances's grown children, Katie Caldecott Prichard and Jeff Caldecott. Frances is known to be difficult to work with and stingy with her money.

Rosemary and Laura get right to work figuring out why the cascade mechanism no longer works. Frances insists that all plants be replaced as well, so Rosemary and Laura visit the local nursery to select water-loving plants. There they meet Maggie Goffe (florist, and daughter of the designer Fanella Goffe) and Pete Farmer (her assistant), and learn more about the Caldecott family. Later, during a planning meeting with Katie, they come across the book "The Language of Flowers" that the family published as a birthday gift to their mother, in honor of her deceased husband and their father, Edwin Caldecott, using his manuscript and illustrations.

Rosemary and Laura are invited to dinner at Frances Caldecott's cottage with family and friends. When Frances doesn't appear to greet her guests, a search reveals that she was strangled in her office with a tree tie. Later her valuable jewellery is stolen, and Rosemary, Laura, and family members are questioned by the local police. Rosemary and Laura start looking for motives and clues.

Rosemary turns to "The Language of Flowers", and learns it is based on Medieval love poetry and Christian symbolism, all mixed up with a floral code that was used to send secret messages during the Victorian era. Soon, Laura deciphers the floral code for the cascade plantings, and Laura's son, Mathew, a police inspector, comes for a visit bringing valuable information about a family member with a criminal past.

Meanwhile, Laura unlocks the mystery of the cascade mechanism, but discovers information that gets close to the truth, and is almost killed for it. Rosemary and Laura pull together all their clues to figure out the family secret that caused Frances Caldecott's recent death and Fanella Goffe's early death. The crime is solved, and Rosemary and Laura unveil the working cascade with its new plantings.

If you'd like a little entertainment, while powering through a triple-digit heat spell or seeking relief from an abundance of summer garden chores, I recommend this series. I found it on DVD in our local library and available for purchase online. I also found the synopsis of all episodes on Wikipedia, and filming locations on Wikimedia (more to keep you busy)!

The Language of Flowers: love, birth, death and vengeance:
Dicentra spectabilis or Asian bleeding heart (secret love)
Oreganum vulgare or sweet marjoram (birth)
Campunela carpatica or funeral bells (death)
Aconitum vulparia or wolf bane (vengeance)



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