Rosa 'Ballerina' left & Rosa 'Darcey Bussell

 

Evelyn Hart

The beauty of plants, and especially of roses, is that if your investigate their history, you learn history.

Some years ago I gave my youngest granddaughter Lauren (she was dancing at the Arts Umbrella Dance Company) my Rosa ‘Ballerina’ when we moved from our large Kerrisdale garden to our much smaller Kitsilano one.

Somehow Lauren lost interest in roses and recently her mother (Hilary ) “returned” Ballerina. I planted it on my laneway garden hoping it would bloom as I wanted to scan it with another rose, English Rose, Rosa ‘Darcey Bussell’. Why?

I found out that Darcey Bussell is a most famous English ballerina who retired in 2007.

This blog enables me to relate the one rose with the other and also gives me the opportunity to place here my most favourite dance photograph, that of Evelyn Hart.

Rosa 'Sweet Juliet' 21 June 2024

 

Working in my garden without the presence of my Rosemary is not a happy occasion in spite of the distraction of watering, deadheading, removing yellowing leaves and pruning my once only blooming roses.

Most of the plants seem to have in some way the face of Rosemary. An example is the lovely blooming (today) English Rose, Rosa ‘Sweet  Juliet’. I have had it for many years. We might have purchased it around 1992/93. It was a vigorous rose even then and it seemed to do just fine in part shade. Here it gets lots of sun so it is blooming like the Dickens.

The rose reminded me of seeing the 1936 film Romeo and Juliet with Leslie Howard and Norma Shearer. My mother loved all films with Leslie Howard so she took me to see them.

Around 1966 I was much in love with an Argentine girl when I was in Buenos Aires doing my military service in the Argentine Navy. I thought I would impress her and inspire her by taking to see Romeo and Juliet. After the film she said, “Alex, those two are much too old to be Romeo and Juliet.”  I was shocked.

Now looking at my Sweet Juliet I could tell the Argentine girl (she died in 1987) that I fell in love and married my Rosemary when we were under 26. She was my Juliet.

English Rose Rosa 'A Shropshire Lad' 21 June 2024

I was born in Buenos Aires and raised there until I was 11. We then moved to Mexico City and I subsequently I lived in Veracruz, Nueva Rosita Coahuila and went to high school in Austin, Texas. I did my military service in the Argentine Navy (with that important ceremony of swearing allegiance to the flag). Then I married my Rosemary in 1968 In Mexico City and moved with our two daughters to Vancouver in 1975. It was in Vancouver where I cemented my career as a photographer. I became a Canadian citizen.

All that background affects my feeling of where I belong and most important the identity of who I am.

I am jealous of my roses and my two cats. They are what (who?) they are.

Because I studied philosophy for two years in Mexico City College (1962/63), I was drawn to Plato’s world of ideas. We only see a vague and uncertain reality. The reality that is out there is something that we cannot ever see. Plato’s world is a world of essences outside of our grasp.

You may have something. What can you take out from it that will then eliminate its somethingness?

After years of gardening and having cats I now believe that cats and roses are essences that suffer no human confusion. Both cats and roses in a shorter lifespan mimic our longer one. With a rose from bud to its petals falling off, it is a sort of human lifespan in a nutshell.

My fellow members of the Vancouver Rose Society look at their roses and bring them to our meetings always at that point when they think the rose is at its perfect state.

Since I started cultivating roses around 1990 (with gently prodding from Rosemary), the weather and other circumstances have shortened the lifespan of some of my rose plants.

But I now, today June 21, 2024 believe with certainty, that my scans of roses (not photographs) somehow preserve that essence of what they are. Some of my friends question my assertion that these roses when I am looking at them in the garden tell me, “Alex, I look pretty good and not for long. Cut me and scan me.”

No woman will ever replace my live Rosemary or the Rosemary of my memories. At my age I am not interested in other women.

But with cats there is a difference. Every time we suffered the grief of dying cat Rosemary and I knew that the quickest cure to a dead cat is a brand new one. The new cat ameliorated the depression over the loss of our dear cat.

Why is that? I believe that a cat, in its essence (a cat is a cat is a cat), somehow in death transfers that essence into the new cat. There is something of all our previous cats in Niño and Niña.

I believe that I can say the same. A rose, is a rose, is a rose (in all its essence).

Lychnis coronaria & Rosa 'Winchester Cathedral' 20 June 2024

 

Rosemary, the woman with an exquisite gardening taste, sometimes championed lowly plants that other gardeners would ignore. If there is one plant in all my Kitsilano garden that is Rosemary it has to be the white Lychnis coronaria. She would have never accepted the shocking pink one that English gardener Christopher Lloyd adored.

In the Kitsilano garden the lychnis grows as a companion for my potted roses. They get along just fine. If I don’t deadhead the white flowers the seed pods mature and magically self-sow and come back every year.

Today I chose to scan the lychnis with the white English Rose Rosa ‘Winchester Cathedral’.

Lychnis coronaria

ROSE CAMPION, DUSTY MILLER, CROWN-PINK, MULLEIN PINK, LAMP FLOWER

syn. Agrostemma coronaria, Campion rosea alba

Family: Caryophyllaceae

Pronounced: LIK-nis ko-ro-NAH-ree-uh

he thick woolly leaves of this species were once used as lamp wicks, which contributed to its Genus name—Lychnis—from the Greek word, lychnos, meaning lamp. In addition, the bright pink-red flowers glowed like flames of fire. Because the lively blossoms of the species flowered on his feast day, Christians dedicated the plant to John the Baptist. They were reminded of the Bible verse—Luke 1:79—"to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace." It is believed the epithet coronaria, comes from its meaning crown; however, it could be a derivative of the French word, campagne, which means country.

This species is an old favorite of gardeners; even Thomas Jefferson grew them in his gardens, and gave the earliest American citation of the plant in 1767. A drift of these silvery species crowned with neon jewels are not suitable in a pastel themed landscape. In his book, "Garden Flowers", Christopher Lloyd dared his readers to "… allow the magenta-flowered Lychnis coronaria to seed itself around a colony" of Crocosmia 'Lucifer'. I haven't taken the dare myself, but can visualize a festival of fiery attention grabbers wildly dancing for our appreciation.

Although Lloyd had no use for pastel variations of L. coronaria, he thought the white campion (Lychnis 'Alba') was a great choice for a pastel and white garden. However, Louise Beebe Wilder had a different idea when he wrote it was "fine but far less beautiful." Me? I prefer the snowy white blossoms on silvery stems in my garden, and admire the fiery jewel-toned species in other people's landscapes. I planted it only once, when I first moved into my home before the turn of the century. It seeds true every year, because I don't grow another species in the garden for it to cross with. Hence, L. 'Alba' usually seeds true with white flowers. Another variety, L. 'Angel's Blush' has pink centers, and sometimes my white campion will show signs of pink centers, which looks similar to L. 'Angel's Blush'.

Considered a perennial, many gardeners treat it as a short-lived perennial or biennial. In my garden, these plants thrive on benign neglect; they seed themselves into areas that receive little to no supplemental watering or fertilizers. Allan Armitage noted in "Herbaceous Perennial Plants" that in northern areas the flowers were brighter, because our night temperatures are much cooler than in his southern location. The plant makes excellent scaffolding for sprawling Clematis recta.

Lychnis coronaria is a first-rate cut flower. Harvest the stems when one or two flowers are open, or pull the entire plant up and strip the foliage off. The flowers will last between five to seven days in a vase. Debbie Teashon

The campion white

Above the grass

Her lamp doth light

Where fairies pass.

Softly they show

The secret way

Unflickering glow

For elf and fay...

Excerpt from the poem “The Lamp Flower”, by Margaret Cecilia Furse.

Lance Henriksen - November 1997

Today I had an extemporaneous visit by my friend Christopher Dafoe. Most people now text you to inquire if you may be available a few days into the future for a visit. Chris called me when he was outside my door.

As we chatted over strong coffee that I prepared I reminisced in my mind the distinct pleasure  had working with him when he was the Vancouver arts reporter for the Globe and Mail.

Very Good at Being Bad

There was something about his low key voice, pleasant face with a smile that made famous people open up to him without him saying anything.

An added pleasure of working with Chris is that he allowed me to be present for the interviews. This meant I could observe the quirks and movements of my soon-to-be subjects. I would be ready to snap my photograph as I usually had my medium format Mamiya RB-67 on a tripod and whatever lights I would use were plugged in and waiting.

Most of our subjects were in hotel rooms but Lance Henriksen granted the interview in a movie trailer parked on a Vancouver street.

The colour picture here is an Ektachrome 100S which I re-scanned a few minutes before writing this. The b+w photograph is a scan of an 8x10 in my file.

I am enclosing a scan of the tear sheet  (this is what they were called in the past century and we photographers would include them in our portfolios).

When I look at these portraits of the man I feel sad. I was a teacher in Mexico City before my Rosemary and two girls moved to Vancouver in 1975. My mother and grandmother were teachers as was Rosemary. Here in Vancouver I taught  photography (The  Contemporary Portrait Nude) at Focal Point that used to be on 10th Avenue and closes years ago. I feel that even though I am 81 I have lots of information that I could convey to students. I was good with film cameras and I am good with digital. I could teach about both photographic worlds. Alas nobody would hire me now because I am old and will die with lots of relevant stuff in my head.

In the case of the colour portrait I used a small softbox fired by a studio flash and I had an additional light (filtered with what we called a grid that narrowed the beam of light) as a hair light. Nobody would do this now.

Additionally few now understand the use of a camera at the same height as the person being photographed which results in good eye contact.

The lens was a 140mm macro lens which in 35mm format would be equivalent to an 85mm. This means I was not too close that would have resulted in his nose appearing much bigger. Many in that century considered the 85mm a portrait lens.

Few now know exactly what a macro lens is. If you photograph a one inch stamp and measure it in your shot film, the stamp will also be one inch. That it is a close focusing lens is ancillary. Most lenses are designed to be sharp at infinity and deteriorate at close. A macro lens is the opposite.