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| Rosa ' Reine Victoria' Summer 2001 - Rosa 'Shropshire Lad' 17 May 2020 |
Perhaps on day of early summer 2001 in our old Kerrisdale
garden I was bored. I was admiring a beautiful, hard to grow Bourbon Rose
called R. ‘Reine Victoria’. A couple of years later it died as most Bourbon roses do not
like our rainy springs. They also need full sun or the tight and complex bud
will not open.
I cut a couple and went into my living room where I had and Epson
Perfection1640SU flatbed scanner. I placed the rose and scanned it at 1600 dpi
at 100% size. I did not put the date on the saved file. That important part of
my now thousands of plants scans became my personal rule.
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| Rosa 'La Belle Sultane' 17 May 2020 |
The beauty of the scan wowed me but I saw other
possibilities. It had to do with the fact that since I have always had a well
calibrated monitor I could make sure that my plant scans showed accurate
colour. When one takes pictures of roses and other flowers in a garden with
either a film or digital camera, the pictures will be affected by the fact that
cameras are sensitive to ultraviolet light. Many plants reflect that and there
is more UV light in the shade and in cloudy days. Photographs of flowers will
not always be accurate because of UV.
I thought that by scanning my roses for the record (and
through the years many of our roses died because our large garden had lots of
shade and few sunny spots for the roses) I would have a record that I could
share with other gardeners. But this was not to be. When I explained to folks
that my photographs were not photographs but scans and that I was a
scanographer they would quickly lose interest.
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| Rosa 'Sir Thomas Lipton' 17 May 2020 |
I have now persisted with this task of scanning the plants
of our gardens. I have rhododendrons, hosta leaves, host flowers, bulbs, weeds,
ferns, iris, camellias, many of Rosemary’s rare perennials, and whatever else I
thought would make an interesting scan.
I have no idea of what will happen when I depart to join
Rosa ‘Reine Victoria’ wherever she might be. Will this be some kind of valuable
legacy? I think not. I will just keep on.
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| Mystery rose, possibly Rosa 'Dr Huey' 17 May 2020 |
But now in these days of being able to fiddle and muddle I
decided to try some other ways of scanning our roses. I have used an opaque
white plastic sheet either one (underneath on the flatbed glass, or also with a
second one on the top. They are tough to fix as after the scan I have to spend
lots of time removing the blemishes that are ingrained in the plastic sheets.
These scans may not be accurate but they are beautiful
nonetheless.
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| Rosa 'Shropshire Lad' 17 May 2020 (opaque screen on top) |
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| Rosa 'Sombreul' 17 May 2020 |
