8 July 2023

When Ralph Rinke brought me his portrait of me on a hosta leaf he left with me with a similiar interest to his obsession of using other methods, unusual ones, of photographic reproduction.

I had his hosta portrait framed and then I embarked on doing an equivalent one that would include my Rosemary (and Alexandra). I chose a photograph that really was not adequate. I should have used a tighter portrait.

First  good effort

On every possible sunny day I would snip a Hosta ‘Guacamole’ because it had a light centre that might reproduce my Rosemary/Ale inkjet transparency.

I think that I will now quit (at least with this duo) and say, in Spanish, “¡Yá! This is a special shortcut word that translates to, “That’s it. I quit.”

Yours truly holding my first camera, a Pentacon F I purchased in 1958 by Ralph Rinke

Rosa 'Emily Carr' & Hostas 'Halcyon' & 'Sunny Halcyon' 6 July 2023

Halcyon Days – Walt Whitman

Not from successful love alone,

Nor wealth, nor honor'd middle age, nor victories of politics or war;

But as life wanes, and all the turbulent passions calm,

As gorgeous, vapory, silent hues cover the evening sky,

As softness, fulness, rest, suffuse the frame, like freshier, balmier air,

As the days take on a mellower light, and the apple at last hangs

really finish'd and indolent-ripe on the tree,

Then for the teeming quietest, happiest days of all!

The brooding and blissful halcyon days!

Perhaps the most elegant hosta (my opinion) is Hosta ‘Halcyon’. It has slender leaves that are curved and if kept in the shade it has a lovely blue coating called bloom. Only recently via Holland was I able to purchase a yellow (gold) sport of Halcyon in my local nursery. 

Hosta 'Halcyon' photographed in my garden in the 90s

With my male cat Niño languishing with cancer at the hospital (I am getting him back tomorrow Friday and he should live comfortably for about a year) I cannot say that I am living a period of calm, usually in the past and often nostalgic (a Wikipedia definition). But the blooming of the Canadian rose Rosa ‘Emily Carr’ was a good enough excuse for a scan and this blog.

Etymology courtesy of Wikipedia

 From halcyon, from Latin Alcyone, from Ancient Greek Ἀλκυόνη (Alkuónē), daughter of Aeolus and wife of Ceyx. When her husband died in a shipwreck, Alcyone threw herself into the sea whereupon the gods transformed them both into halcyon birds (kingfishers). When Alcyone made her nest on the beach, waves threatened to destroy it. Aeolus restrained his winds and kept them calm during seven days in each year, so she could lay her eggs. These became known as the "halcyon days," when storms do not occur. Today, the term is used to denote a past period that is being remembered for being happy and/or successful.

Rosa 'Emily Carr' & Hosta 'Wheee!'

Hosta 'Antioch' 6 July 2023

With the news that my paragon of stability, Niño has cancer I am left with an empty house where his sister Niña is providing me with some solace. Niño will be back home on Friday and with proper care (very expensive) he will live comfortably for perhaps another year.

If anything this has made me more aware of how nothing can be taken for granted.

An example is Hosta ‘Antioch’ happily in a large pot at the entrance to my deck garden. I believe I may have purchased Antioch around 1988. 

Not wanting to take it for granted and remembering how much larger it was in our Kerrisdale garden where both Rosemary and I admired it, I looked at it today with a tad of sadness realizing how much of my stability is going out the window.

Because I have little left to do during the day I have been scanning my plants lots and putting them into double exterior hard drives knowing well it is all an exercise in futility. I must keep doing it simply because the process is fun and does give me a needed distraction.

I am unable to convince my friends of the America Hosta Society that to have generated over15,000 so called “different” cultivars is sort of shooting themselves on the foot. This old hosta is lovely and indeed it does look different and not like those many streaked hostas that seem to be identical and only and expert might tell the difference.

Rosemary is gone, Niño will (statistically) not survive me but I do get a degree of comfort of seeing Hosta ‘Antioch’ providing me with a presence of stability.

Paris quadrifolia & Hosta 'Whirlwind' 4 July 2023

While some might not understand how a woman (my Rosemary), who was from a small town in Ontario called New Dublin, could be as sophisticated as she was, I knew better. She left her hometown as soon as she could; learned French in Laval and went to Queen's University. Immediately, she travelled to Mexico City (by then she had studied Spanish) sponsoring a group of young students in a program called Experiment for International Living.

We met in 1967 and married in 1968.

It was her interest in gardening, when we bought a house with a corner garden in Kerrisdale in 1986, that opened for her (and eventually for me) a serious search into the history of our roses, hostas and perennials and to be absolutely correct in knowing their names in botanical Latin and Greek.

Rosemary developed a predilection for rare, difficult to find (and grow!) perennials.

One of them is Paris quadrifolia which somehow is doing just fine in my garden now that Rosemary is not here to tend it.

As I have explained before I like to scan my plants with companions. It was fun today (July 4,2023) when I spotted Paris. I chose Hosta ‘Whirlwind’ because they are close to each other in the flower bed.

The blog is called Paris Twice because in the late 80s Rosemary, Alexandra, Hilary and I went to Paris. 

Hosta 'Patriot' 3 July 2023

It might be appropriate for me to write this blog today on the eve of the Fourth of July.

It all began in Columbus, Ohio in 1991, sometime in June. I was there for my first National Convention of the American Hosta Society.

Bob Solberg

There was a knock on my hotel room door. I opened it to face a bearded man who looked like an officer from the Confederate Army.

He entered and in a whisper he told me, “Here is your Patriot.”

Hosta 'Patriot' was the exciting revelation of the year in Columbus as in the wake of the termination of the Gulf War the hosta was introduced in a wave of American patriotism.

With the hosta in my hand and with the whispering of Bob Solberg I almost felt I was buying a drug. The price was right for a drug as I shelled out $90.

Six years ago when Rosemary and I moved from our large Kerrisdale garden to Kits, many of my hostas went to my daughter Ale’s Lillooet garden. She might have my Patriot.

A year ago I saw Patriot at a garden centre and could not resist. What you see here is a juvenile plant. The leaves are small and not as rounded as on a mature plant. I could have waited a couple of days for the flowers at the end of the scape (hosta lingo for stalk) to open. I decided that I wanted to write something (for a change) on the positive side and with a touch of humour.

At the Hosta Convention in Ames, Iowa a month ago, my daughter Ale and I sat at a table at the hotel restaurant  with Hosta Journal art director Janet Mills, hosta expert extraordinaire Mark Zilis and with the never former Confederate Army officer but brilliant hosta hybridizer Bob Solberg. Ale was impressed that her father could command the attention of these luminaries. I was, too.

Mark Zilis, Janet Mills, Bob Solberg and Alexandra Waterhouse-Hayward - 8 June 2023