Saturday, June 29, 2024

Rosa 'Mary Magdalene' - 29 June 2024

 

To survive in this century without conflict with people I never deal with the subject of politics and religión. My views are private.

I was raised as a Roman Catholic and I was sent to a Catholic boarding school in Austin, Texas where my teachers were Brothers of the Congregation of Holy Cross. This is the congregation that runs Notre Dame in Indiana.

I believe that these Brothers taught me very well and to this day I feel I am at an advantage because they taught me to think.

You do not have to believe in the bible, Christ or anything else involving Christian knowledge of  the ins and outs of Catholic doctrine.

I must add that while St. Thomas Aquinas and St Augustine were both saints, they were also philosophers and good thinkers.

As an example on how the instruction of religion by Brother Edwin Reggio, C.S.C. made me able to think, it had to do that his class was really one of theology. You can believe it or not but Catholic doctrine is interesting and discussing it can lead to Eureka moments.

Brother Edwin told us that the only suspicion that Christ may have known how to write is only present in one incident in the New Testament. Mary Magdalene (as the harlot) is about to be stoned. Christ kneels and scribbles(writes?) on the ground and says:

 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

 At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

“No one, sir,” she said.“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.” John 8:7-11

When Brother Edwin told us that I was fascinated. I have never forgotten.

In 1992 I read in Spanish José Saramago’s The Gospel According to Jesus Christ. Because in this novel Saramago has Mary Magdalene teach Christ how to be a man (in bed), the author was pilloried. He left Portugal for the island of Lanzarote. When Saramago received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998 his erstwhile fans in Portugal asked him to return. He did not.

Lanzarote - Saramago - 1922 - 2021

All the above is but a preface to show my scan of the English Rose, Rosa ‘Mary Magdalene’ which I adore as it has that magnificent scent of myrrh. I like it for another reason that is reinforced both by Brother Edwin telling us the St. John quote and Saramago’s account of Mary Magdalene as a fine woman.

The rose emerges pink (the harlot!) and fades after few days into a saintly white? I wonder if David Austin knew this when he named the rose.  

 

 

 

 

Friday, June 28, 2024

Sorbaria sorbifolia and Hosta 'Paul's Glory' - 28 June 2024

 

In my garden

Between us, Rosemary and I could remember the name of most of the plants in our garden. It helped that we had plant labels. These labels mysteriously disappear or fade. A couple of days ago I spotted a lovely plant and I had no idea what its name was. I sent a picture to my daughter Alexandra in Lillooet. She could not remember.

There is lots of melancholy when I cannot remember the name of the plant because I cannot consult the expert. My Rosemary is gone.

Hosta 'Neptune' & Rosa 'Benjamin Britten' - 28 June 2024

 

I went to Southlands Nursery today looking for Graeme Bain, who has a phenomenal memory. He identified the plant as Sorbaria sorbifolia. It's common name False Spirea.

I scanned the plant with two hostas. The first was Hosta ‘Forbidden Fruit’. The second hosta was Hosta  'Paul's Glory''. That set me thinking on writing this blog and finding some connections.

Here they are:

My mother because she lived in that other century she had no access to many records of composers of the 20^th century. She told me, “Alex, the English had not good composers after Henry Purcell."

Hosta 'Neptune' & Rosa 'Benjamin Britten' 28 June 2024

 

By the early 70s, after my mother died, I had discovered Benjamin Brtitten, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Edward Elgar. When I heard Gustav Holst’s The Planets I was hooked. My favourite planet was Neptune. And so I found a connection between my scan and my love of English music.

But, I must add to this, a photograph I took of Graeme Bain about 25 years ago. I photographed him with bamboo as he was then interested in ornamental grasses. 

Graeme Bain

 

 

A further connection was composer Benjamin Britten, so I scanned my English Rose, Rosa 'Benjamin Britten' a few times with Hosta 'Neptune' which brought  Benjamin Britten and Gustav Holst together for this blog.

Sorbaria sorbifolia & Hosta 'Forbidden Fruit' 28 June 2024

Thursday, June 27, 2024

 

Susan Musgrave 1986

 

When I became aware of this poem (below) it brought back all those memories of my several contacts with Susan Musgrave. She and Gerry Gilbert provided me with an introduction to poetry in Vancouver and since then I have been a fan of poetry.

Susan Musgrave 

Poetic Justice in Vancouver 

Stephen Reid 

Gerry Gilbert

I grieve that poets like her, Parliamentary Poet Laureate George Bowering and first Vancouver Poet Laureate George McWhirter are not given their due. I have lost trackof Evelyn Lau.

I would have never taken so many photographs of those poets had I not had the direction (firm it was) from Vancouver Magazine’s Malcolm Parry.

 

Susan Musgrave

"Personal Effects"

the wrenching nature of personal effects when the person they belong to has already lost so much… Lynn Crosbie

 

I go through what I have left of you: a Glad bag

full of syringes, the scorched glass cylinder

— you buy a rose in a tube at a gas station. Take the cork ends

off the tube and throw the rose out the window —

you called a straight shooter, scraps of Brillo pads,

Chore Boy, your brand of choice, a piece of coat hanger

to pack the steel wool into the tube. Condoms, assorted

colours. A tourniquet. A bag of bottle caps called “cookers”:

"You put the dope in it, cook it up and mix it around, then you

draw it into the rig and slam it.” How much

you taught me; how much I resented having to learn.

 

And your journal, the entry you wanted me to hear

when we met for coffee at Habit: Chapter One:

The Sober Years.  I said, “Aren’t you jumping the gun,

baby?  You haven’t even been to rehab yet?”

You looked at me with those round eyes

that seemed to say don’t ever stop believing

in the goodness of this world, and said, “Mum,

that was age zero to eight. Remember?”

I remember. The moment you were born, how you

popped out of me, two weeks late, like a tiny, shiny

lifesaver. The first time I gave you a bath, then

lifted you from the water and balanced you

on the palm of my hand, where you quivered

like a soap bubble. I wondered then how I would bear

the weight of it, but for that moment I knew what it felt like

to hold all that mattered in the palm of one hand.

 

Wednesday, June 26, 2024

Rosa 'Winchester Cathedral' & Rosa 'Darcey Bussell' 26 June 2024

 

Red and White

by Carl Sandburg

Nobody picks a red rose when the winter wind

howls and the white snow blows among the fences and storm doors.

 

Nobody watches the dreamy sculptures of snow

when the summer roses blow red and soft in the garden yards and corners.

 

O I have loved red roses and O I have loved white snow—

dreamy drifts winter and summer—roses and snow.

 

In the years (since 2001) that I have been scanning plants and principally the roses of my garden I have wanted to find a justification by mating the scans with personal experience or by finding rreferences in poetry and in prose. I have written at least 100 blogs inspired by Emily Dickinson poems and almost as many by my favourite Argentine author, Jorge Luís Borges.

I am 81 and in this stage of my life I can assert that my knowledge of poetry is almost formidable.

Today I wanted to scan these two English Roses. The white one is Rosa ‘Winchester Cathedral’ and the red one Rosa ‘Darcey Bussell’( an English Ballerina.

There is something to be said about the usefulness of search engines. I placed “the red and the white – poem’ and found this lovely poem. Now thanks to these two roses the poem is in my memory.

On 5 October 2022 I scanned these two roses.

 

Tuesday, June 25, 2024

Rosa 'Scepter'd Isle' & Rosa 'St. Swithun' - 24 June 2024

 

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars. This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England. Landlord of England art thou and not king. Gaunt, Act 2 Scene 1 – Richard III – William Shakespeare

 St. Swithun (or Swithin; Old English: Swīþhūn; Latin: Swithunus; died 863) was an Anglo-Saxon bishop of Winchester and subsequently patron saint of Winchester Cathedral. His historical importance as bishop is overshadowed by his reputation for posthumous miracle-working. Wikipedia

 

Sometime in the early 90s Rosemary came from the yearly summer VanDusen plant sale and told me, “Alex I saw a rose today at the Phoenix Perennials booth that I must buy. The woman who owns the company told me that I can go tonight when the plant sale closes and I can get it.”

The rose that Rosemary brought was an English Rose called Rosa ‘St. Swithun’ that had an unusual smell the English call myrrh. When I looked up who St. Swithun was I found out that when his body was moved from one church to another it rained for almost 45 days. That legend persists. Because he was Bishop at Winchester Cathedral I also have the English Rose, Rosa 'Winchester Cathedral'. Not the lovely odd little bits of rose pink in some of the petals.

Rosa 'Winchester Cathedral' - 24 June 2024

Because we adored the myrrh scent we bought several English Roses with that smell. One was Rosa ‘Scepter’d Isle’.

The above is to introduce the topic of my Englishness. My father was born in Buenos Aires but his father Harry and mother Ellen Carter were from Manchester.  Until I left for Mexico in 1953 in my Buenos Aires neighbourhood of Cohglan (an English railway engineer), I was el inglesito (the little English boy) my two best friends were Miguelito el italiano and Mario el alemán (German).

I have a distinct memory of June 2, 1953. My mother called me to lunch and told me to wash my hands and knees (I wore short pants as I was 11). I answered, “Mother I cannot. I am listening to the coronation of my queen,”

When I returned to Buenos Aires in 1965 to do my military service in the Argentine Navy I was quick to tell my friends that the white lines in my sailor collar uniform represented the battles the Nelson won. Every month I would donate blood to the British Hospital for two reasons. With the proof of the donation I was given a free day from service and the hospital treated me to a thé completo which included toast with Devon cream.

My uncle Freddy Hayward (born in Buenos Aires) always wore his St. Andrew’s Scot School blazer and smoked on his English pipes. Since I also smoked a pipe he gave me a lovely and valuable English Bewlay pipe. I would be invited for tea on Sundays and my Aunt Iris would make fabulous devilled ham. The English of Buenos Aires were called Anglo/Argentines and they acted more English than the English.

Thus depending on the day, to this day, I sometimes feel Argentine, Mexican, Canadian and yes English.

In one of my kitchen drawers I have over 10 varieties of very good English loose tea. For years my breakfast has started with a large and strong mug of tea. Like the English I add little milk.

My mother had a keen sense of smell and she constantly would smell the back of my ears and would tell me that I smelled like an en Englishman. To this day I can remember my father’s smell which was combination of the Player’s Navy Cut Cigarettes he smoked, his Harris Tweed jackets and the Argentine brand of whiskey called  Old Smuggler.

But since my grandmother in Spain I am undecided whom I like more, Shakespeare or Cervantes. 

As a last note, when I took my granddaughter Rebecca to meet my first cousin and godmother Inecita Kuker I told her, "Rebecca, Elizabeth, the queen of England has the same accent as Inecita. I can say this to you because Inecita was born before the Queen.