Crambe maritima & Rosa 'Souvenir du Docteur Jamain' 21 July 2025

 

I stepped from plank to plank – Emily Dickinson

I stepped from plank to plank

  So slow and cautiously;

The stars about my head I felt,

  About my feet the sea.

I knew not but the next

  Would be my final inch,—

This gave me that precarious gait

  Some call experience.

My grandmother, María de los Dolores Reyes de Irureta Goyena often quoted from the 19^th Argentine prose poem – El Gaucho – Martín Fierro , “Mas sabe el diablo por viejo que por diablo.” That translates to “The devil knows more not because he is the devil but because he is an old man.”

And because I am an old man about to be 83 soon, I think of stuff that is obvious. The word routine (I have a pretty inflexible daily one) comes from the idea of taking the same route. Is that obvious? Jorge Luís Borges liked to write about obvious stuff. He once said that in order to remember you must first forget.

Part of that daily routine of mine that is one that I cannot avoid is to associate so much of what I see in my house and garden to my memory of Rosemary.

Most of my plant scans somehow I always connect to her. Today’s scan is of one of her fave of all grey plants (she loved grey plants) of Crambe maritima  which I combined with one of my re-blooming (the correct botanical term is remontant) red roses, Rosa ‘Souvenir du Docteur Jamain”. I did this combination as it is about her and about me. She did introduce me to be interested in roses. This scan is about our shared experience, one we had for 52 years.

Every moment of my daily routine is to remember what I have lost.