Rhododendron 'Golfer' July 17 2017

Rhododendrons have a great reputation in my city of Vancouver because they thrive in our cool and rainy weather. Some Rhododendrons do not like harsh direct sunlight.

Many of the rhododendrons here have lurid colour of red, orange and shocking pink. Those colours seemed to be the only available until Nixon went to China and the subsequent opening of the forbidden kingdom.

There are rhododendrons with other colours and quite a few that have scent. One of my faves Rhododendron decorum has white flowers that smell of ripe watermelon.

After their burst of flowers in the spring rhododendrons can be boring. But that should not be the case. Many have interesting leaves with indumentum. This is a covering of little hairs, fuzzy at times like the inner ear of a cat. The indumentum can be on the bottom side of leaves and it is then called tomentum.

In years past I used to take my then young granddaughter Rebecca to the rhododendron walks in VanDusen and at the UBC Botanical garden and I taught her to rub the underside of rhododendron leaves. She was charmed.

Not too long ago I visited my plantsman friend Alleyne Cook and his wife Barbara (a plantswoman) at their garden in North Vancouver. I spotted an interesting smallish rhododendron (notice how I avoid that ugly word rhodo) with an almost white tomentum. I asked him what it was. He replied, “Golfer.”  I asked again and he repeated himself. I asked again and he finally shouted (with his New 

Zealand accent, “Golfer!” I got the message.

I really never want to document (a word used by many photographers which I do not like) garbage or the ugly.

When I scan the plants of my garden particularly my roses I want to do it when they are at their most beautiful prime.

I purchased Hosta ‘Neptune’ last year at Thomas Hobbs’s Southlands Nursery. I was attracted to its narrow and very blue leaves. In our newish Kitsilano garden there is little room so I placed it in an area that got very little light and it was hidden from view by a large hosta. By the time I remembered the plant did not look too good and it had been eaten up by aggressive slugs that were not put off by the thicker substance leaves of this plant.

I was in a fit of extreme and lonely depression. I was living in a pension in a suburb of Buenos Aires, Beccar. I decided to feel sorry for myself in the best way I could. I put on Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue. My depression plummeted. I put on Astor Piazzolla's Milonga del Angel. It became worse. I discovered that it almost felt good. Since then I periodically have sought melancholy as a sort of perverse pleasure.

These days in July when the phone does not ring I ask my Rosemary this question, “How is tonight different from last night?” She is unable to answer. I somehow feel that whatever usefulness I once had towards my family is now gone. I could very well simply disappear into that oblivion we have given so many names for.

But there is always an escape from that melancholy. To escape it one has to look for it to assert one’s ability to disagree with it.

That moment happened when I read this review of a book that was published in 1979, Black Tickets by Jane Anne Phillips. The very recent review (?) by Dwight Garner in the NY Times.

What caught my eye was this at the end of the review:

In the ways that its young women are caught between worlds, it evokes for me a line from one of Edna O’Brien’s short stories: “I am far from those I am with, and far from those I have left.”

Rosa 'English Elegance' July 14 2017

When I think of roses or look at the ones in my garden I think of them as gender specific. I think of them as women. Even that lovely rose Rosa ‘Charles de Mills’ is a woman.

To me a rose is like a beautiful woman. I have to look, stare if possible (difficult in this era were that could be misconstrued as sexual harassment).

In the morning, in the afternoon and when the sun is going down as I did this evening my roses are like dogs in a pound.

Some years ago our boxer Antonio had to be put down. Rosemary was in tears. We went to the Mexican SPCA in Mexico City with the idea that we would leave with a dog. We looked at a cage that had many barking dogs. They seemed to be wanting our attention and perhaps in dog language they were saying,”Adopt me.” There was one slate gray terrier type, not too pretty that was not barking. She was mournful. You can guess that we took Mouche (the colour of a common fly) home.

My roses are like barking dogs. They must be saying to me, “Look how pretty I am. Scan me.”

Today it was the English Rose Rosa ‘English Elegance’.

Litle Mary Arnold, Cori Caulfield & yours truly at the Firehall Arts Centre  July 10 2017

My friend dance dress designer “Little” Mary Arnold and her paramour Peter invited me to attend the Dancing on the Edge Festival –Eddge 4 this past Monday at the Firehall Arts Centre. We had one purpose and that was to witness dancer Cori Caulfield dance. We had not seen her do this for some years.

In my amateur view of dance in Vancouver I would state that only the (alas!) now gone to Toronto Day Helesic, and Crystal Pite (when she danced) were her equal.

The whole night was a frustration for me as I could not put my camera to eye to take pictures. My camera is noiseless and I use no flash but somehow I suspected I would have been ejected if I had tried. So I took a few with the camera on my lap (unfortunately the person’s head in front of me was in the way).This is my only apology for the lousy photographs.

As an aside I sometimes wonder if one has photographed dance since 1991 I would be given some slack. That is not the case.

The evening began with (excerpt from) Squin) with my Cababayan Ralph Escamillan. His solo performance was truly on the edge. I found it a tad difficult to follow even though I knew how tough it was for him. In the end I came to accept the performance as unique. In modern dance one must be challenged. I was. Not clear in the program but I believe that the music which synchronized and at times purposely unsychronized with the dance was the work of Stefan Seslija.

The second segment was in three parts. It was called The Poets and it featured a solo performance of unique tap dancing by Cori Caulfield’s sister Hailley. The second was by the young students of Cori Caulfield’s Dance School.

We were all eyes for the third part featuring a performance that was slow and hot (for a hot day) that oozed with eroticism. I had never quite seen Cori Caulfield do anything like this before. We were charmed.

Next in line was Compass with Olivia C. Davies as solo dancer and with Rosemary Georgeson (storyteller) narrating the beginning.

This work was dark and mysterious. It involved moves that were not graceful. Perhaps her moves as explained in the program were to state a hard and difficult narrative.

 

Since I have lived in three countries as a boy and a young man before Rosemary, our two daughters and I moved to Vancouver in 1975 I have varied memories of the trees, plants and flowers of my youth.

One of them is based on a memory (few details) about being 12 years old and being taken by my mother to visit her friend Mrs. Marjorie Sullivan in Buenos Aires. In her patio she had a large tree that had luminescent and very big white flowers that had a scent like no other. I know now that  it was a Magnolia grandiflora. It is called the Southern Magnolia in the US as it is the state flower of Lousiana and Mississippi.

Those who read these blogs know I am crazy about old roses and their scent. There is one, a white English Rose, Rosa ‘Fair Bianca’. While I cannot discern the taste of wine and its fragrance I do know my plant scents. This rose is a combination of lemon, Pernod and (very important!) magnolia soap. Its scent is defined by the English as that of myrrh.

In our old home in Kerrisdale (1986-2016) we had a Magnolia grandiflora ‘Little Gem’ which never did flower. We moved it to our current little garden in Kitsilano in the hopes that the move might coax it to bloom. It died last fall.

It has bloomed! And it will bloom for at least two more months. Of the scent I can only state that it is like no other.

In this digital age I wondered why a genus that is at least 20 million years old would have scent. It seems that while there were no bees there were beetles. The flower is designed to take the brunt of a beetle attack. I can only add here that beetles must have had (and have) a keen sense of smell (an elegant one, too!). Wikipedia came to the rescue with that answer of beetles.

Some years ago Rosemary and I went to North Carolina to a American Hosta Society Convention in Durham. We visited the Sarah P. Duke Gardens. As soon as we got off our tour buses the sweet smell was wonderfully overpowering. All (and there were many) Magnolia grandifloras were in bloom.

Somehow that our new magnolia has bloomed has given me the hope that our sojourn in what is left of our life in our Kitsilano home will be a most pleasant one.

For more info on the magnolia there is this citation inWikipedia.

The bloom of the magnolia is very white. As it ages it becomes light pink. After a few days it gets to be brown and it then falls of.