Another staple of the September garden, and a sign that autumn is approaching, are chrysanthemums. They are something of a leitmotif in The Provincial Lady novels (together with her infamous hyacinth bulbs), and Jan Struther's novel opens with Mrs Miniver carrying 'a big sheaf of chrysanthemums down the street' and thinking to herself, 'it was lovely, this settling down again, this tidying away of the summer into its box, this taking up of the thread of one's life'. It can be a bittersweet time of year, but one enhanced by flowers like these painted by yesterday's artist, Rose Mead. This is Summer Chrysanthemums in a Blue-Flowered Jug (c.1930), also in the West Suffolk Heritage Service collection. Moyse's Hall Museum, in Mead's home-town of Bury St Edmund's, has around seventy of her paintings.