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| Rosa 'Dr. Huey' - 15 May 2024 |
Rosemary was a strong willed person who would go back to our
old Kerrisdale house to retrieve some of the plants we had left behind when we
moved to Kitsilano. I did not have the heart or the stamina to return to a house
that represented a rosy past (over 100 old roses, in fact). Even today I try to
avoid driving on 41st Avenue so as not to see the Athlone Street
sign. This is more so now since Rosemary like our old garden is gone. A similar situation is followed by Joan Didion. I read in her The Year of Magical Thinking that she avoids going to the neighbourhood where she and her husband John Gregory Dunn.
One day a year before she died she brought a rose shrub and told me, “Alex, I found it in our back lane.” A few months later it bloomed. It was multipetalled (not quite that of an English Rose) and it had a yellow centre with yellow stamens. We had never had such a rose. I thought about it and came to this conclusion:
Rosa 'Dr. Huey' is a variety that was bred by Captain George C. Thomas in 1914 and introduced in 1920 by Bobbink and Atkins. It's a Hybrid Wichurana.
That rose was used a lot as a root stock for “better” roses that were grafted to it. Whatever rose we had had in that back lane had died and Dr. Huey simply did its thing. This rose grows all over the United States for the same reason. It is aggressive.
And yet is lovely and very fragrant. It is in a pot in my garden so it is not going to take over or bring my house down!
I started blooming yesterday and I smiled but was saddened at the same time. It survived. Why did not my Rosemary survive?
But the will to live of Dr. Huey, its beauty, its grace is all Rosemary.