Rosa 'Margaret Merril' 2 September 2022

“Caminábamos con Borges por un barrio de quintas, en Mar del Plata, y de pronto sentí un olor que me conmovió. Borges me dijo que los recuerdos que más nos emocionan son los de olores y gustos, porque suelen estar rodeados de abismos de olvido: hay que oler el mismo olor para recordar un olor, hay que sentir el mismo gusto para recordar un gusto (no ocurre así con imágenes y sonidos). ¡Con qué emoción volvemos a oler el mismo olor que por última vez olimos en tiempos lejanos, en lugares a los que nunca volveremos!”

We were walking with Borges in a neighbourhood with country farms in Mar del Plata and suddenly I was felt a smell that moved me. Borges told me that that the memories that we most felt are the smells and tastes, as they usually surrounded by gulfs of forgetfulness: you must smell the same smell to remember a smell, and one must feel the same taste to remember a taste (that does not happen with images and sounds).  With what emotion we return to smell the same smell which we experienced for the last time in our past in places we will never return!” 

Adolfo Bioy Casares recounting a walk with Jorge Luís Borges.

I understand the above well as I remember the last time that Rosemary sniffed our Rosa ‘Margaret Merril’ in our old garden. It did not survive and I was not able to find one to buy until after Rosemary had died on December 9 2020.

She would not have known and I do know, thanks to Goggle as to who Margaret Merril was.

 

Margaret Manton Merrill

Margaret Manton Merrill (1859 – June 19/20, 1893) was a British-born American journalist, writer, translator, and elocutionist. At the age of twenty, she became the founder, owner and editor of the Colorado Temperance Gazette. She stayed in journalism for twelve years, where her noted successes were in the line of stories for children, while she likewise made translations from such diverse languages as Scandinavian and Sioux.

Wikipedia

Rosa 'Margaret Merril' (aka HARkuly) is a white-blend Floribunda rose cultivar developed by Harkness Roses in 1972 and introduced into Great Britain in 1978. It is the winner of multiple rose awards, including the Geneva Gold Medal and Rome Gold Medal and the Hague and Auckland Fragrance awards. 

Wikipedia 

Not explained anywhere is why the rose's name has one less l in in Merril.