Rosa 'Souvenir du Docteur Jamain' - 4 June 2025

In my files I may have at least 600 very beautiful women who posed for me sans clothing.

For years I was obsessed with the idea of using photography to express exactly what eroticism was all about.

Now that I am 82 I tell people that I am much too old to be a dirty old man.

I am tired of seeing women in yoga tights. I am tired of red-carpet cleavage and near nudity. I tell people how I miss my Rosemary and that she is the only woman I am interested in. And that she is dead.

Because of celebrity idolatry I wonder why there is this obsession of pairing photographs of very young female actresses with one where the question might be, “This is what she looks like now. You will gag.”

It would seem that we are obsessed with perfect youth.

In my Vancouver Rose Society monthly meetings, and in the upcoming yearly Rose Show on the 15^th of June at the Floral Hall of VanDusen Botanical Garden there is an emphasis on perfect roses in their prime.

When I look at some of my roses in my rose garden that are a bit past I notice how some of the red roses become black. Others, to me, are beautiful as they are, even if not in their prime.

There was no way that my Rosemary could have looked, a few months before she died as when I first saw her mid-December 1967. I look at myself in a mirror and I see an old man.

I believe we have to bring back an appreciation for becoming old with some sort of style.

Note the beauty of the roses that I have scanned here.

And to end this there is something that I did do a month ago. Our Chevrolet Cruze (we purchased it 7 years ago) had all kind of dents. Rosemary would have been upset looking at it. I spent good money, in her memory and had all the dents removed and the car painted. I know that she would have smiled and would have been delighted. But then cars are cars but old people and old roses are just plain old.