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Pink supermoons and phlox flowers

Tonight a ‘pink’ supermoon will brighten up the night sky over Dedham. April’s full moon is known as the ‘pink moon’ not for its colour, but after pink phlox flowers that bloom in the springtime. In Path to the Orchard, a cluster of phlox flowers can be seen in the foreground of the picture. Munnings writes of both full moons and phlox flowers in his autobiography:

“I looked into the sun doing this. A girl in white linen hat and apron leading him across the picture along the path by the river at Mendham. Clumps of white and crimson phlox in the garden were the foreground; blue water, trees and the lawn fence on the far bank the background.”

“…One night, going home at a merry trot, singing “Landlord, fill the flowing bowl”, my steed shied at the full moon reflected in a puddle of water, and left me sitting in the road. But my glad song went on as I did the remainder of the journey on foot, as jolly as ever, and found the riderless, foolish mare waiting outside her stable. Happy, pleasant, far-off days!”

Sir Alfred Munnings, An Artist’s Life 1950.

Path to the Orchard, 1908. Oil on canvas.