3 June 2021

Working in the garden in the last couple of months I have been hit with the bittersweet sight of plants that Rosemary put into pots and never told me about. I call them her posthumous surprises. There is this lovely lily that opened up just a few days ago in the morning and dazzled me. It is tempting to keep this garden as a monument to my Rosemary but some plants have not dealt well with the extreme heat and I will not mourn their passing. Luckily I am never alone as Niño and Niña follow me. They disappear only when I unroll the hose to water the plants.

Sonnet 15: William Shakespeare

When I consider everything that grows

Holds in perfection but a little moment,

That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows

Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;

When I perceive that men as plants increase,

Cheered and check'd even by the selfsame sky,

Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,

And wear their brave state out of memory;

Then the conceit of this inconstant stay

Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,

Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay

To change your day of youth to sullied night;

And all in war with Time for love of you,

As he takes from you, I engraft you new.

Kevin Loring - Photograph - Alex Waterhouse-Hayward

My eldest daughter Alexandra in 2007 left Vancouver and bought a one acre property in Lillooet. When my Rosemary and I went there for the first time we could not understand why anybody would have to suffer such heat. In the middle of the night it all seemed like a nightmare. In the end we know she made a good decision.

Since then Ale has happily taught elementary school there and when we moved from our large garden in Kerrisdale to our present little duplex in Kits, Ale’s garden became a refuge for all my Gallica Roses and hostas. They are happy there and they seem to tolerate the temperature extremes.

Depending how we went to Lillooet either by the Whistler/Pemberton road or by Highway 1 we would drive (the Highway 1 route) through the little town of Lytton.

Today as I have read of the fire conflagration that has virtually destroyed the town and much of its First Nations neighbourhoods past the Fraser and Thompson Rivers.

And there was only one thought that came to my mind and this was of writer/actor Kevin Loring who is from Lytton and wrote a lovely play, Where the Blood Mixes about his town. My Rosemary and I went to the opening of his play at the Kay Meek Centre. I wrote about, see below.

Where the Blood Mixes Inside My Heart 

Residential School play  - Children of God

More on the Children of God

For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again

Lillooet - The Blood Mixes in My Heart

In a city with a poor memory I wonder how many others will remember Kevin Loring and his play (the only one ever written about Lytton I would guess).

Olena

Poetry has always frustrated me. In school, particularly in high school we were given extra points in class if we memorized a poem. I never tried. In elementary school I remember my mother making me repeat lines, over and over so I might memorize the assigned poem. It was terrible and I know I must have cried at my futile efforts.

While I am able to write an efficient blog and for quite a few years magazines and newspapers paid me to write I have never attempted writing poetry.

I love poetry and film but never have I been tempted to shoot video. I am happy with one photograph at a time.

I look at these two pictures of Olena that I took with my Fuji X-E3 at the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020 and I wish I could write an accompanying poem that might go hand in hand with them.

Once the half-tone process was invented at the end of the 1870s photographs could now appear in newspapers, magazines and books. Until the bottom fell out from g8ood journalism and magazines a few years ago photographs and illustrations shared space because the combination added context to both the copy and the image.

Now in this 21^st century perfect photographs with no copy have no context and in my opinion they fail. Even a lousy photograph of a cat if followed by information on the cat and the opinion of its owner works for me. Those pristine photographs, with equipment references in detail, leave me cold.

The vertical photograph of my friend Olena for me elicits a strange feeling of Eros. I played with making her skin more blue, less blue, more yellow, less yellow and with different degrees of red. But there is a mystery in the pose that I could never shoot again. This one was off the cuff and it worked. To put a purpose before shooting something like this would defeat the process.

The second photograph is my recent obsession with getting an accurate skin colour. I believe I achieved it partly because Olena has infinite patience for work methods.

Now, the above is not a poem. But it will have to do.         

Eryngium x zabelli 'Big Blue' & Verbena bonariensis - 30 June 2021

Wearing my wrist watch on my right wrist has helped to remind me to appear positive when folks ask me how I am. I try to answer in a chipper way but 7 months after my Rosemary’s death to me it seems it was only yesterday.

Those who were raised as Roman Catholics or anybody who has researched the Virgin Mary may explain that while you pray to God when you “pray” to the Virgin Mary it amounts to this, “Because you are His mother, you have an understanding and good connection. You are a fountain of influence. Could you intercede for me and tell Him to help me with this problem?”

Thus she is someone you go to intercede for you when you are weighed by bureaucracy.

These days I see my Niño and Niña as a direct connection to Rosemary. They somehow intercede (they are living go-betweens) for me as they and I shared her. Niña, who really was exclusively Rosemary’s cat, does not leave me alone. If I sit down she wants to climb on my lap - ditto when I am in bed. She meows at me all the time for attention.

While one of my daughters visits me twice a week and the older daughter will eventually drive from Lillooet, now that traveling is allowed, my two cats are a constant reminder of our former connection with our mistress that was Rosemary.

The same happens when I work in the garden. Plants are not moving and living animals. That is true. But every plant in this Kits garden has Rosemary’s face on it. And many, just like the cats, have this intimate connection with her. She planted them; she fussed over them, she watered them and protected them.

I can think, that when this pandemic is over, that I may travel to Buenos Aires to see my family. But since I went with Rosemary at least four times, the city is no place that in my memory does not have her living presenc. It is a place we shared and enjoyed. How will I handle the trip?

The scan for this blog features two of Rosemary’s faves (and mine, too). We both loved the prickly blue eryngium.  We have had eryngiums in our garden since the late 80s. Our all-time favourite was Eryngium giganteum ‘Miss Wilmott’s Ghost’.

The other plant is an annual that seeds itself and can be invasive. It is Verbena bonariensis. This is the only plant in our garden that comes from Argentina and South America. Rosemary has always grown it knowing that I would understand her gesture.

Scanning these two plants today came with a large dose of melancholy.                  

Rosa 'Betsy Sinclair' 29 June 2021

One of the pleasures of being a gardener is to discover a new plant and particularly a new rose. Today I went to Mandeville Garden Works to meet up with Vancouver Island rose grower Robin Dening. He was delivering his one gallon potted roses which are carefully propagated by this man who is all good manners and grace. It is no surprise to me that when he grows his roses they like him (I believe in this sort of stuff). The new rose I bought is named after his wife, Betsy Sinclair.

Dening has been on a hiatus until recently. He somehow weathered the storm of the decline in nurseries when people started buying barbecues for their condominium balconies instead of plants. For years I visited his lovely nursery, Brentwood Bay Nursery, which was not far from the Victoria ferry terminal.

It was neat to see Dening in his then trademark white hat tending to his plants.

Like America, Dening is back. He has a relationship with Mandeville Garden Works manager Darrell Dzielke to whom he bring his healthy plants.

Robin Dening at Mandeville Garden Works - 29 June 2021

This is a very good thing for Lower Mainland rose gardeners. We will no longer have to depend on buying iffy roses that come from either Texas or back east.

But added to the pleasure of chatting with Dening (he had to leave in a hurry to catch a ferry back to Victoria as he had to water his plants due to the terrible heat) was to finally see his own rose Rosa ‘Betsy  Sinclair.

Of the rose all Dening could tell me is that he found a tiny seedling a few years ago and it grew to be this rose with very nice scent and a delicate apricot colour that my Rosemary would have loved.

Sometime this evening I will plant my Betsy Sinclair. I tip my hat to the grower.