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| Rosa 'Abraham Darby' 11 June 2024 |
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| The scanning setup - 11 June 2024 |
My Rosemary gently but insistently dragged me (pushed me?) into being a gardener. We moved into a large corner house with garden in 1986. Sometime around 1990 she told me, “Alex, tonight we are going to the Floral Hall at VanDusen Botanical Garden for a meeting of the Vancouver Rose Society."
Long long after we arrived I told her, “Rosemary I am sitting on an uncomfortable folding chair looking at over 100 bad slides of roses. Why did you bring me here?”
Ten years later I was a relatively good gardener and I was hooked on old roses. In the summer of 2002 I was bored on a hot day. My grandmother would have told me, “Alex suck on your elbow.” I opted for cutting a rose, a lovely Rosa ‘Reine Victoria’. I placed it on my scanner and I lucked out as the result was fabulous. Important for that first scan (and subsequently for the rest including this one of perhaps over 3000) was the presence of my art deco lamp on my Edwardian desk. Both are now in my Kitsilano oficina.
I believe that thanks to Rosemary and the Vancouver Rose Society I have rarely taken any photographs of my individual plants or roses.