Monday, September 21, 2009


Today I picked up Rebecca and Lauren at school and brought them home for a middle afternoon lunch. I then made dinner for them before we took them home around 8:30. I sat down in my psychiatric couch and told Rebecca that with my Argentine friend Juan Manuel Sanchez gone to Buenos Aires for good and with the recent death of my friend Abraham Rogatnick I need someone with whom I can have an intellectual relationship. I further told her that I needed company to go to dance, theatre and music. “So when I ask you to accompany me to the Friday concerts of the Pacific Baroque Orchestra at St. James Anglican I am not doing this to push culture down your throat but to accompany me as a friend.” I hope this tack works.

The afternoon was a glorious fall afternoon. The little girls played in the garden. Rebecca showed Lauren some of my potted hostas that are in obscure corners. They fed the fish in the pond. I cut some rose hips and scanned them with yesterday’s blooms of Rosa ‘William Shakespeare 2000’. The name may not be as pleasant sounding as Rosa ‘William Shakespeare’ is just as lovely a rose but it is difficult to grow. David Austin removed it from his catalogue. I keep it in my garden and it grows pretty well. It has shut down until next year. The improved one is still going strong so I am now convinced that it is really a very good plant. The hips you see here are from three plants. The single and large light red one, bottom right, is from Rosa ‘Pink Meidiland’. Higher up on the right are the hips from Rosa ‘Complicata’. The bright red ones on the bottom left are from the species rose, Rosa glauca.

On the top right of the scan you can see the handywork of the leaf cutter bee. The leaves are also beginning to lose their colour as the season progresses and the plants wind down. Some rose blooms, particularly the multi-petaled ones like 'St Swithun' and 'Brother Cadfael' will not open. But 'William Shakespeare 2000' seems to be impervious to it all.