Helleborus 'Anna's Red' 7 April 2022

A goal in Spanish is meta and has been long before meta in English was taken over by one of the purveyors of social media.

Meta comes from the Greek and it means beyond or after. I like the Spanish version, as goal in English is much too close to the idea of sports.

Because I studied philosophy for a year with the noted RamónXirau in Mexico City in the early 60s I do a lot of that useless thinking that so many relegate philosophy to. I cannot explain to anybody that at this moment in my life I find myself waiting. I used to tell Rosemary that I was WTD (waiting to die) and this made her upset. Philosophically we all do. In my youth, when I was 10, I thought that the only people who won the lottery or died where my neighbours who lived on the other side of the street. As one ages death becomes something entirely more intimate.

Rosa 'Félicité Parmentier' & Rosa 'Easy on the Eyes'

I am not waiting to get a job because I am retired and do not need the money. I am not yet waiting for lab results because I am pleasantly healthy. I do wait for the Sunday NYTimes which promptly crashes at my door Saturday evening at 9:30. I am waiting.

Today I came to understand that there is a purpose in waiting for a spring garden to go into  the transition of summer.

My purpose is homage to my Rosemary. By making what was our garden into my garden, this garden will be a glorious remembrance of her. As St. Luke so eloquently quoted Christ via King James, “Do this in Remembrance of me.”

While it would be impossible to replace every dead plant that Rosemary may have planted I am doing my best to buy plants she liked. Today I bought heucheras, monardas, phlox, and two rare roses, Rosa foetida ‘Austrian Copper’ and Rosa ‘Félecité Parmentier’.

But most important I purchased four hellebores (just once I have not been able to round up any decent poems about them).

Rosemary taught me to add other plants besides my hostas to my botanical interests. She was a woman of detail and particularly noticed the lovely peculiarities of small plants. Most hellebores bloom about now, so come summer, they are gone. So many of us (as I was before) want a glorious summer garden. Rosemary new better and she loved her hellebores. She was in the garden all year.

Rosa ‘Félecité Parmentier’ I bought last year so Rosemary never did get to see this old rose. But it did not survive this year’s winter so I replaced her.

It was not quite sunny today but working in the garden with my Niñoand Niña following me, particularly in the laneway garden I was almost cheerful.

Getting Rosemary’s former garden into shape has given me a sense of purpose, a meta, a goal. I don’t believe in ghosts and yet I do. I feel a presence as if she was behind me when I was digging the holes for the hellebores.

Luckily I only talk the cats as I just might talk to her ghost any day now. Just for this June summer I might have to postpone my WTD.