Rosa ' Westerland' 6 June 2024

Dependability is often seen as something that because it is that, then it must be boring.

I met three people in my life that were dependable but not in the least boring. One of them was awfully sexy.

Sean Rossiter was one of the best columnists for Vancouver Magazine. He wrote about city hall (column was called 6th & Cambie) better than anybody. In those days as soon as the magazine was out our city politicians would rush to buy it so they could read Rossiter’s column. From politics he branched out into architecture and he is the sole reason I why I photographed Arthur Erickson so many times and I was forced to learn to shoot architecture. Best of all Rossiter and I loved airplanes so we went to as many air shows as we could find. Our favourite was in the Whidbey Island US Naval Base in Washington State.

Rossiter had a way or talking (he had a radio voice but with little inflection) and never talked down to you. His opinions were balanced and he was well mannered. We both agreed that Carole Taylor looked best in her little red dress.

Mark Budgen was an adopted child born in England. We travelled together to Peru, Uruguay and Argentina on magazine assignments. He was a man of principle not much different than Rossiter but he was a bit more to the left. It was Budgen who served me hardboiled eggs accompanied by Maldon Salt.

He was assigned by Vancouver Magazine’s Mac Parry to interview Pat Carney. Budgen turned down the job saying, “I don’t like her and I don’t agree with her politics.” I still had the job and the writer assigned was a very good one called Robert Hunter. He was a dependable person but he was known to have shot his rifle to the ceiling if his home dining room.

That third dependable person (the sexy one) was my wife Rosemary. Nothing could be ever wrong when she was in charge. In many ways our family kind of collapsed when she died on 9 December 2020.My two cats Niño and Niña are dependable. Niña is kind of sexy.

The rose I am using to illustrate this blog is the extremely dependable Rosa ‘Westerland’. It was the first rose that Rosemary accepted in our Kerrisdale  garden even though she had banished anything orange. This rose became the cover of Canadian Gardening and I believe that since they used one of my early scans (scanograph) it may have been the first one anywhere in the world.

It is a lovely rose as lovely as my Rosemary was. I scan the rose every year (since 2001) many times. I have a good record of its dependability.

When I saw it today (getting the garden ready for the Vancouver Rose Society people who are coming tomorrow) I had conundrum of a problem. Should I leave it (there are 4 other blooms) or should I cut it and scan it?

My Rosemary rarely used perfume, never wore anything for long in one day, and she took daily baths (sometimes we were together in the tub). For my acute sense of smell her scent was lovely. I can report here that Rosa ‘Westerland’ to me smells of synthetic apricot jam. When I first told this to Rosemary she smiled and made me go to Safeway to buy French Bonne Maman apricot  jam.

To Rosemary’s dependability & sexiness I can add she had class.