Monday, October 19, 2020

Aconitum carmichaelii 'Arendsii' 19 Octobwe 2020

 

 

Aconitum - Wikipedia

The Greek name lycoctonum, which translates literally to "wolf's bane", is thought to indicate the use of its juice to poison arrows or baits used to kill wolves. The English name monkshood refers to the cylindrical helmet, called the galea, distinguishing the flower.

Today October 19 there are no flowers in our garden. The roses are gone and English Rose Rosa ‘Benjamin Britten’ has buds that will not open.

But our (really Rosemary’s) Aconitum carmichaelii ‘Arendsii’, a tall plant, is out in all its blueness.

 

Brother Cadfael’s Monkshood

Sunday, October 18, 2020

 

A couple of my recent blogs re the astoundingly beautiful Susan F. have led me to think about my life now that I am 78.

El zaguán del infierno 

nunca podrá ser fea

I took these photographs many years ago and luckily I was not tempted to use lights in my studio. I took advantage of the light coming from the window and reflecting back from the opposite white wall. Most of the pictures I took on my yet-to-be-refinished psychiatric couch. I have no memory on how I met Susan except that it was sometime at the end of the past century in the confines of the Exposure Gallery on Beatty Street. Those days were simpler, I believe, and I could go up to anybody and tell them my name. They would instantly connect me with many of the local magazines and there would be a level of trust there so that I could pass my business card and ask, “Would you pose for me in my studio?” This was then not deemed as sexual harassment. 

 

 

Many now may look at the pictures of Susan and perhaps call them boudoir photographs. I would not in the least be insulted as I think that people now have lost that idea of photographic style.

There is a consistent look of melancholy in my photographs of Susan. I have no idea as to why this was something she wanted to project.

 

 

I look back at these photographs and I can confidently state here that somehow they have made me the person I am today. I also believe that I doubt that anybody has since been able to look into Susan’s soul with a camera. I may have had some small talent then, but the excellence of these portraits is all to do with the fact that Susan let me in for a glimpse.

 

 

I am a lucky man. My only regret is that this sort of photographic session is definitely now in my past and nobody would now step in for something like it. And would I be able to pass my business card at my age without some sort of feeling of repulsion from the person I would be attempting to hand my card?

 

I doubt it. Take the memory and run.     

 

 

Saturday, October 17, 2020

 

The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry's cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.

The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I'll put a trinket on. 

Emily Dickinson

In scanograph above:  Rosa 'Complicata' hips, top left Rosa 'Abraham Darby', centre Rosa 'Princess Alexandra of Kent' and below Rosa 'Shropshire Lad' 17 October 2020

Because I lived in Argentina during my formative years, my perception of the seasons has always been reversed. Christmas day in Buenos Aires was usually the warmest day of summer.

Then in Mexico the seasons were really two, one was a rainy one and the other was a dry. It has only been in these 45years in Vancouver where I am finally (!) settling to the idea of the Canadian seasons.

But the problem persists as the concept of Thanksgiving (the harvest side of it is important) and Halloween are alien (still so!) to me. While I love squash soup but my Rosemary does not, I do not care for anything related to the pumpkin or the turkey.

Fall in our Kitsilano garden for me (Rosemary is silent about this) is one of watching the inevitable deterioration of our plants as they bid us goodbye until next year. So hope is in the air and this is all but forgotten in the dark, rainy and cold Vancouver winters. Hope returns in the spring.

Because I am an old man and I know that a new pair of shoes will sooner or later get a scuff or that a new car will be inevitably bashed somewhere, I have come to appreciate the handsomeness of plants (not taking into consideration fall leaves) as they decline. Some of my hostas are lovely with their yellowing and the unopened buds of some of my English Roses look just fine to me.

Our Rosa ‘Complicata’ (formerly complicata) is now a virtual tree and it is full of rose hips. Some are blackened as they are past their prime. And randomly there is plenty of “unsightly” black spot.

I like the idea of scanning these rose hips with three of my most faithful roses at this time of the year. They are Rosa ‘Abraham Darby’, Rosa ‘Princess Alexandra of Kent’ and Rosa ‘Shropshire Lad’.

I have no idea if my Buenos Aires-born father had a love for roses. I do know that my grandfather Harry and grandmother Ellen were both born in Manchester. I love the fact that I was able to find this lovely essay on fall from a 19^th Century Manchester Guardian.

 

From the archive, 11 November 1840: The gentle melancholy of autumn

There is an "even-tide" in the year - a season when the sun withdraws his propitious light - when the winds arise, and the leaves fall, and nature around us seems to sink into decay. It is said to be the season of melancholy; and if by this word be meant that it is the time of solemn and serious thought, it is undoubtedly the season of melancholy; yet it is a melancholy so soothing, so gentle in its approach, and so prophetic in its influence, that they who have known it feel, as if instinctively, that it is the doing of God.

A few days ago, and the summer of the year was grateful, and every element was filled with life, and the sun of heaven seemed to glory in his ascendant. He is now enfeebled in his power; the desert no more "blossoms like the rose;" the song of joy is no more heard among the branches; and the earth is strewed with that foliage which once bespoke the magnificence of summer. Whatever may be the passions which society has awakened, we pause amid this apparent desolation of nature. We sit down in the lodge "of the wayfaring man in the wilderness," and we feel that all we witness is the emblem of our own fate. Such, in a few years, will be our own condition. The blossoms of our spring, the pride of our summer, will fade into decay; and the pulse that now beats high, with virtuous or with vicious desire, will gradually sink, and then must stop for ever.

When the winds of autumn sigh around us, their voice speaks not to us only, but to our kind; and the lesson they teach us is not that we alone decay, but that such also is the fate of all the generations of man.

In such a sentiment there is a kind of sublimity mingled with its melancholy; our tears fall, but they fall not for ourselves; and, although the train of our thoughts may have begun with the selfishness of our own concerns, we feel that, by the ministry of some mysterious power, they end in awakening our concern for every being that lives. Yet a few years, and all that now bless, or all that now convulse humanity, will also have perished. The mightiest pageantry of life will pass, the loudest notes of triumph or of conquest will be silent in the grave; the wicked, wherever active, "will cease from troubling," and the weary, wherever suffering, "will be at rest."

Under an impression so profound, we feel our own hearts better. The cares, the animosities, the hatreds, which society may have engendered, sink unperceived from our bosoms. In the general desolation of nature, we feel the littleness of our own passions; we look forward to that kindred evening which time must bring to all; we anticipate the graves of those we hate, as of those we love. Every unkind passion falls with the leaves that fall around us; and we return slowly to our homes and to the society which surrounds us, with the wish only to enlighten or to bless them.

Let, then, the young go out, under the descending sun of the year, into the fields of nature. Their hearts are now ardent with hope; and in the long perspective which is before them, their imagination creates a world where all may be enjoyed. While they see the yearly desolation of nature, let them see it as the emblem of mortal hope; while they feel the disproportion between the powers they possess, and the time they are to be employed, let them carry their ambitious eye beyond the world.

More Emily Dickinson 

If you were coming in the fall 

 Purple Haze 

Yellow she affords 
A sepal, petal and a thorn
Her breast is fit for pearls  
I would not paint a picture
November left then clambered up
You cannot make remembrance grow
November
the maple wears a gayer scarf 
We turn not older with years, but older
Now I am ready to go

 A melancholy of a waning summer
Just as green and as white
It's full as opera
I cannot dance upon my Toes
a door just opened on the street 
Amber slips away
Sleep
When August burning low
Pink Small and punctual
A slash of blue
I cannot dance upon my toes
Ah little rose
For hold them, blue to blue

 

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

 

Echinacea purpurea - 14 October 2020

While a day of sun in our fall Vancouver may cheer me up a tad I cannot think but by the Native Canadian idea (and in many other countries, too) that in the fall we reflect on the concept of surviving one more winter to live for a spring day. When you are 78 like me, thinking perhaps that my Rosemary might be a widow soon I get satisfaction in enjoying the colours of our hosta leaves as they fade and decay into that temporary oblivion of all perennials. I also love the look of flowers like in these Echinacea that are definitely past their prime but somehow surprise me with a sober elegance as they bid me goodbye.

 

And Emily Dickinson gets the idea of missing somebody in the fall. I tell Rosemary every day if we will be alive to travel when we can travel. I miss my Argentine family and the sweltering heat (I love heat) of our favourite Mérida in Yucatán. Will all that happen? The doubt in Dickinson’s poem feels right.

 

If you were coming in the Fall,

I'd brush the Summer by

With half a smile, and half a spurn,

As Housewives do, a Fly.

 

If I could see you in a year,

I'd wind the months in balls---

And put them each in separate Drawers,

For fear the numbers fuse---

 

If only Centuries, delayed,

I'd count them on my Hand,

Subtracting, til my fingers dropped

Into Van Dieman's Land,

 

If certain, when this life was out---

That yours and mine, should be

I'd toss it yonder, like a Rind,

And take Eternity---

 

But, now, uncertain of the length

Of this, that is between,

It goads me, like the Goblin Bee---

That will not state--- its sting.

 

 More Emily Dickinson
  

Purple Haze 

Yellow she affords 
A sepal, petal and a thorn
Her breast is fit for pearls  
I would not paint a picture
November left then clambered up
You cannot make remembrance grow
November
the maple wears a gayer scarf 
We turn not older with years, but older
Now I am ready to go

 A melancholy of a waning summer
Just as green and as white
It's full as opera
I cannot dance upon my Toes
a door just opened on the street 
Amber slips away
Sleep
When August burning low
Pink Small and punctual
A slash of blue
I cannot dance upon my toes
Ah little rose
For hold them, blue to blue