Rhododendron augustinii & Hosta 'Autumn Frost' - 9 April 2022

Augustine Henry (2 July 1857 – 23 March 1930) was a British-born Irish plantsman and sinologist. He is best known for sending over 15,000 dry specimens and seeds and 500 plant samples to Kew Gardens in the United Kingdom. By 1930, he was a recognised authority and was honoured with society membership in Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Finland, France, and Poland. In 1929 the Botanical Institute of Peking dedicated to him the second volume of Icones plantarum Sinicarum, a collection of plant drawings. In 1935, John William Besant was to write: 'The wealth of beautiful trees and flowering shrubs which adorn gardens in all temperate parts of the world today is due in a great measure to the pioneer work of the late Professor Henry'

Wikipedia

Wolfram George Schmid – Blue & Yellow

I have written at length how my Rosemary’s favourite colours in the garden were white and blue. But as we both gardened and got older at the same time, she began to appreciate yellows, oranges and reds. But in her warm heart she held on to the cold colour blue.

Rosemary's Blue

Rhododendron augustinii - 9 April 2022

Today 9 April 2022 I could not but notice the almost blue flowers of Rhododendron augustinii. I think her cultivar is most special as rarely do rhododendrons of this ilk ever look that blue.

Because I have time in my hands I decided to do several scans of augustinii remembering my friend (now gone) Wolfram George Schmid who eschewed multi-variegated hostas and preferred the plain green ones. It was Schmid who enlightened me with this statement that I will never forget, “If you put a yellow hosta next to a blue one the blue one will look bluer and the yellow one more yellow.”

Rhodendron augustinii & Hosta 'Dorset Blue' - 9 April 2022

On 8 June I will be going to Minneapolis with my daughter Hilary to the National Convention of the American Hosta Society. I am making a presentation (using my plant scans) on the beauty of hosta flowers. Because of Rosemary’s multi interests in the garden I learned to notice small stuff (not only big and bold hosta leaves) and with our mutual love for roses I took pleasure in looking at how hosta flowers are beautiful in their own way.

These scans go beyond my original purpose, when I started in 2001, of making my scans accurate representations of the plants. Here I delving into the “artistic”.       

Rhodendron augustinii & Hosta 'Island Breeze' 9 April 2022

Gerbera garvinea 'Sweet Fiesta' 9 April 2022

In our old house on Athlone in Kerrisdale I remember telling Rosemary I wanted red geraniums on the window boxes. These geranios reminded of my youth in Buenos Aires. They do not need to be fertilized or to be watered. The proof is that they grow all over Lima in Peru even in empty lots. It never rains in Lima. Here is a link to my blog on Lima geraniums.

The look on Rosemary’s face told me that my choice of plants for our window boxes was low-brow. But she did humour me for many years until I learned the difference between geraniums and her hardy geraniums. Here is a link to one of her favourites.

In our perennial garden Rosemary did not eschew annuals. She loved quite a few of them. Because they die I am almost at a loss in replacing her annuals in our Kits deck garden. Some of the pots have plant labels so I am able to look for replacement plants. In other, cases like in the scan here, I remember some of the annuals she loved. This is gerbera daisy ( I bought it just a few days ago) that is extra hardy. There are more buds that will open soon so I was not too sad to cut this lovely one for the scan.

With flowers and hosta leaves emerging I find that I have a new sense of purpose that makes me a tad less melancholic. I have been working in the garden, taking advantage of the sun or at least non rainy cloudy days.

As I wrote here, my desk is very important. I write my daily blog. But I must add that my Epson scanner on my left as I write this is a Godsend in my life.

I have amassed about 2000 scans since I started in 2001. For the first three years I stored them on CDs. I am now almost finished putting those CD scans into two external hard drives (one is a copy). I have no idea if anybody will be interested in my plant scans when I meet my maker. But at the very least, like working in the garden and taking Niño for his daily walk, it keeps me in close proximity to sanity.                                                                                                                             

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.                                                

On Rosemary’s side of our bedroom closet she has quite a few cloth and plastic bags from places like MOMA in New York, Italian museums in Venice and Florence and a few from Buenos Aires. Every once in a while I become curious and I inspect their contents. What I found today is what I would call a love letter to and about two cats.

Niño & Niña

Rosemary wrote this letter of instructions to the Kerrisdale Veterinary Hospital on the day that we were going to fly out to Venice. We dropped Niño and Niña off and I never noticed Rosemary’s lovely love letter.

When a loved one I lived with for 52 years died, I was left with memories of a garden, photographs on the walls and our bed with that empty spot where she spent so much time in her last weeks before she died on December 9, 2020.  But I am thankful that I was also left with Niño and Niña.

Seeing her lovely handwriting now hit me straight through the heart. 

It reminded me of an incident some 20 years ago at the Kerrisdale branch of our Bank of Montreal. I was sitting in front of a young Chinese woman who was helping me on some queries. I looked at her writing and I immediately said, "You are Roman Catholic, you are from Hong Kong and you went to a nun’s school."

She could not believe how I could possibly have known. I was correct. It was her handwriting.

How will future people my age, many years from now, experience what can only be felt so poignantly by looking at the cursive writing of one’s dear spouse? 

Seeing that handwriting, and sharing the day with Niño and Niña, now are about the same. Both are intimately connected to my Rosemary.

I only wish that Rosemary had been less reserved and had written to me a letter such as this one.