MARILYN CORNWELL: Mairlyn's Photos - Nov 11 2026

All those wreaths I've made - likely more than 200. And I don't know anything about why they are usually round.

I think of Olive and Laurel wreaths around the heads of Romans. Etruscans also used ivy, oak, myrtle, wheat and vines. They were crowns there. Romans wore golden wreaths as crowns.

But how did we get to putting them on doors and things like that? Think Christmas and Epiphany as the Christian celebrations. They were on walls or doors or in windows. They could be put up in gardens, fields and pastures for protection and blessing.

And the symbolism of wreaths as funerals and war memorials - that too started in Ancient Greece to represent a circle of eternal life. The evergreen wreath represented the victory of the eternal spirit over death.

So the Poppy Wreath I made with the green background would be in this tradition. But for Remembrance Day, the black one seems better. It was purchased by a lovely couple who volunteer at Nelles Manor and he puts up a wreath for every occasion - this one goes up for a few days each year.