28 May 2025

In Spanish I like the fact that nouns have genders. In English you have companion but in Spanish my Rosemary was my compañera. It is and it sounds more intimate.

La palabra "compañero" proviene del latín "compāgnus", que significa "el que come pan con otro". Esta palabra está compuesta por "cum" (con) y "panis" (pan), de donde se deduce que "compañero" era originalmente el individuo con quien se compartía la comida, especialmente el pan.

The word “compañero’ comes from the Latin “compagnus” which means “cum”(with) and “panis” (bread). So a companion is someone you share bread with.

The word compartir (much lovelier than share) is from that root “to share the breaking of bread”

All the above is my excuse to put here my scan, done today, of Rosa ‘A Shropshire Lad’ which grows in my back lane garden with one of Rosemary’s clematis. The sign is long gone. Rosemary had the intelligence to figure out all the different kinds of clematis and how they had different pruning schedules. Somehow they survive in spite that I don’t prune them.

Rosemary was keen on putting plants together as companions. She avoided the idea of a garden that had roses in one place and her perennials in another.

In my Kitsilano garden the plants are so close together that you cannot see the dirt. Hosta expert Wolfram George Schmid called this kind of gardening shoulder to shoulder.

Wolfram George Schmid - the Giboshi Man 

After having had so many of these gardening friends as companions it is impossible for me not to walk in the garden, and without trying, the associations happen. Their faces are like ghosts. So many are now gone.