15 May 2021

It was around 1948, when I was 6, that I suddenly discovered I was an individual.

My mother taught at an American high school in Belgrano R in Buenos Aires. She had friends and someone gave her a bag of candy corn. She would hand me some five or six of these delicious candies not available in Argentina. 

I wanted more.

I noticed one day that she placed the bag in her armoire. When she was not around I decided to help myself. I went into the armoire and fished the bag out. But, there was a mirror, on the full length on the inside of the door.  I felt a guilty at what I was doing and I glanced into the mirror. I was suddenly hit by the knowledge that the image on the mirror was me and that I was me. And that I was not anybody else. I have never forgotten. Perhaps because when my mother found out of what I had done she gave me a whipping with a chinela (a Filipino/Chinese slipper).

Seventy three years have transpired since that incident. I took this selfie in the guest bathroom in May when the idea of this blog began to germinate.

It is astounding to know that so many things, people, events, experiences have happened in all those years and that I am able to go back to the candy corn incident with some degree of wonder.

Somehow I am trapped with an idea that came to me in the middle of the night some weeks ago about Rosemary. The idea I hear in my head is, “Because she was she is.” And then in Spanish (to be is ser, as in existence, and estar, as being in a physical space), “Soy porque estoy,  ella no es porque no está.” This translates to, “I am because I am here, she isn’t because she is not here.” That duality of the verb to be in Spanish makes it all feel more complex. It must be, this idea of being and nothingness.

It is intersting to note that Piazzolla wrote a lovely work called Oblivion. This word, it is in English, has no direct or exact translation into Spanish and Piazzolla knew this. The closest is "not to remember or to forget". Every night I try to think of the concept of oblivion (not being). I get nowhere.

Oblivion - Astor Piazzolla

All the above is about self-consciousness and it is hard to grapple (every day now) that I am aware of her presence because she is not here.

I turn on my computer and the image on my monitor is a photograph of both of us. The photograph is real. She is alive (and was) when I took it. It takes me to my knowledge of early photography and how photographers would be close to a dying person in an attempt of capturing that fleeting moment when the soul left the body. It never happened for them. Now with the proliferation of photography the power of the image, of the portrait is almost gone.

But it is not gone for me. I am, I am me, when I look at myself in the mirror. My Rosemary is, because I can see her in the mirror of my mind.

Rosa 'Westerland' 18 June 2021

 Many of the plants in my garden be they roses, perennials, trees, ferns, hostas, etc have human faces on them. Perhaps they were given to us by a friend or I knew the hybridizer. Some like the Gallica Rose, Rosa ‘James Mason’, conjure the face and voice of the actor.

The plants that were my Rosemary’s favourites, which she originally bought and planted, of course remind me of her. But there is one that is very special. This is my (am having a hard time alternating my with our now that Rosemary is no longer present physically in the garden) orange rose, Rosa ‘Westerland’.

Rosa 'Westerland'

When we arrived at our Kerrisdale home and garden in 1986 there was a little circular rose bed in the middle of the back garden. We subsequently enlarged it. In it there was an orange/red Hybrid Tea Rose called Alexander which was introduced by Harkness in 1972. Rosemary did not like it. She told me that she did not appreciate showy colours and had a preference for white or blue. General Alexander was demoted and then banished.

Nothing changed until the beginning of this century around 2005 when I brought Westerland. I told rosemary that it had a strong scent that reminded me of synthetic apricot jam. She sort of accepted my purchase but told me to plant in the laneway garden.

From that point on other red, orange or yellow flowered roses came into the garden. But Westerland was a rose that made Rosemary smile.

This rose is for me the face of Rosemary. It is a healthy and aggressively tall grower. Today I decided to scan a big display as an excuse on reminiscing about the time I shared with Rosemary in our garden. 

Which will always be our garden.

Rosemary - 1968

After meeting my Rosemary in Mexico City in 1967 we would drive to visit my mother who lived in the Mexican port of Veracruz. That trip from the 7300 ft altitude of Mexico City always brought us two surprises as we approached sea level. One was the lovely smell of the damp heat by the time we hit Córdoba, Veracruz and the other was the noticeable increase in noise propagated  by the heavier atmosphere.

My mother had no air conditioning so Rosemary lived in the shower. After walking hand in hand on the malecón (Spanish for a boulevard by the sea) we would lie on the bed with no clothes. This was and is an added luxury that the tropics bring to life and to sex.

From my Filipino mother I learned the trick to keep cool in a hot night. This was to wrap your legs on a pillow. This prevented your legs from making contact and there would be no sweating. She said that this pillow was called the mistress.

Today and tonight, June 17, it has been a hot day. My onboard Chevrolet Cruze thermometer informed me that it was 28 Celsius most of the day. Now in bed I knew I had to get up to write this. Why?

I was on the bed, no clothes, with my mistress between my legs. The cats were on the empty space once occupied by Rosemary. The smell of the roses was wafting through the open window. I was instantly transported into those early days of 1967 and 1968 with Rosemary in Veracruz.

So I got myself up from my delicious and luxurious slumber (but a lonely one) and here I am at my computer writing on how one of the sexiest events of my lifetime was being on the bed with Rosemary on a hot night. Vancouver is not Veracruz.

But it will do.

Rosa 'Tess of the D'Urbevilles

A Red, Red Rose

By Robert Burns

O my Luve is like a red, red rose

   That’s newly sprung in June;

O my Luve is like the melody

   That’s sweetly played in tune.

So fair art thou, my bonnie lass,

   So deep in luve am I;

And I will luve thee still, my dear,

   Till a’ the seas gang dry.

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,

   And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;

I will love thee still, my dear,

   While the sands o’ life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only luve!

   And fare thee weel awhile!

And I will come again, my luve,

   Though it were ten thousand mile.

My Rosemary was ambivalent of any colour that was not white or blue in our garden. But as we became enamoured with roses, the colour red began to grow on her. Because we tended to like old roses and English Roses red became one of her favourites while she disdained my liking of pink roses.

The redness of a red rose is never a stable given. The red can be all shades of red including those to me indeterminate carmines and vermillion. Red Gallica roses have a lovely way of aging from their original red to purples and even metallic grays.

The scan here is of the English Rose ‘Tess of the d’Urbevilles’.  Even if you have read Hardy’s novel (I have) the images your mind might conjure are of Nastassja Kinski in Roman Polanski’s 1979 film by that name.

While I might enjoy the sight of a penstemon it is only the rose (and some of my hostas) that transport me sort of like Emily Dickinson said, “To travel far, there is no better ship than a book.”

 This red rose is one that my Rosemary never saw. But like cats, red roses have redness that follows and is integral to their rosiness. She would have understood.

Digitalis purpurea 'Camelot White' 15 June 2021

 Since the death of my Rosemary on December 8 2020 life in my Kitsilano home has been one of trying to cope with the loss of someone who was with me (or I was with for 52 years. When my mother died in 1972, in my presence and that of Rosemary, she had been part of my life for 30 years. What that means is that at least ¾ of my existence I shared with Rosemary.

There is nothing anybody can say or any counsellor that can help in finding a solution to deal with that loss.

Luckily I have two attentive daughters and two cats, Niño and Niña who attach themselves to me like glue. They are so good at it that I use them to blame (or use them as an excuse) for the fact that in this 2021 I have rarely blogged my daily bitácora. It is not that I have no blog ideas. I just keep postponing it from one day to the next.

For a long while in the weeks preceding the 5 and 6 June open garden to members of the Vancouver Rose Society (hosted by my daughter Hilary and co-hosted by a most friendly Niño) I kept myself busy making the garden as perfect as I could.

But that was melancholic task. I would stop and notice this or that plant that Rosemary had put in or seeded. It felt so intimate, almost as if I had been rummaging through her unmentionables drawer (not that I ever did).

My most salient delaying tactic excuse has been that May and June are the traditional plant scanning months. I have scanned and scanned and even gone beyond the original purpose which was to make the scans accurate images of most (if not all) of the plants that lived, died or survived our gardening since 1986.

I have even done scans which, in all honesty, are “artsy fartsy”. In some cases I have combined plants that were part of Rosemary’s odd snobbery of liking certain wonderful plants and others that may have been considered weeds, except Rosemary pointed out that they had lovely blue flowers like Centaurea cygnus.

So I will remove that lethargic rose thorn that affects my blog block (I hope) with this blog on the common foxglove, Digitalis purpurea ‘Camelot White’.   

In our former Kerrisdale garden, this lowly (but tall) plant was relegated to our laneway garden. Any plant that emerged (the plant seeds itself so you never know what will emerge from one year to the next) in any colour that was not white Rosemary would remove.

There are three of these in our Kitsilano laneway/garage garden growing under very rare Old  Garden Roses.

I did not feel too bad in cutting off this digitalis knowing that the folks of the Vancouver Rose Society will not be returning this year and that this plant may unbottle me into writing more about coping the loss of the love of my life.