A Winter Surprise
Thursday, December 08, 2016
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| Hydrangea macrophylla 'Ayesha' December 6, 2016 |
Sometime in the late 80s my wife Rosemary took me to a
meeting of the Vancouver Rose Society. We sat on uncomfortable chairs and after
some boring announcements re-memberships, etc we watched over 100 badly taken
slide of roses. I told Rosemary, “You brought me for this?”
Rosemary wasn’t entirely wrong as I soon developed a strong
interest in roses and in particular old roses and English Roses. But I swore at
that first meeting that I would never ever photograph roses or any other plants
and flowers.
Unfortunately I was hired by garden magazines to shoot
gardens. This I did and I enjoyed using my 6x7cm format Mamiya RB-67 loaded
with Kodak Ektachrome.
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| Rosa ' Reine Victoria' |
It may have been 15 years ago when I happened to think
about cutting a rose from my garden (Rosa
‘Reine Victoria’). It must have been beginner’s luck because the result after I
scanned it on my flatbed scanner the results were breathtaking. Since then I
have scanned most of the roses (over 90) of our garden plus just about every
other flower of note. In many cases I will do scans of a rose through its
flowering season and I can observe how size and colour varies with the season,
sunlight or Vancouver rain.
Today, December 6, 2016, I happened to look at our deck garden, (we left our
large corner not garden 8 months ago. I brought two hydrangeas. One of them Hydrangea macrophylla ‘Ayesha’ like most
other hydrangeas bloom in the summer. I leave the old spent flowers (they look
pretty nice anyway) and I don’t cut them off until spring. The surprise is that
on one little branch there was a brand new flower which will certainly not
develop in size or colour as it snowed yesterday and there is more coming.
And yet there is beauty in this scan. It is the beauty of
a possibility not to be attained until next year. Meanwhile I will put the
bloom in a vase inside. Hydrangea flowers last a long time in water.
