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| Rosa 'A Shropshire Lad' 24 August 2025 |
With rue my heart is laden – A.E. Housman
With rue my heart is laden
For golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lipt maiden
And many a lightfoot lad.
By brooks too broad for leaping
The lightfoot boys are laid;
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
In fields where roses fade.
My friend, Vancouver logger poet (as he was called) Peter Trower made me appreciate Housman’s A Shropshire Lad. I have written quite a few blogs linking Trower and Housman to my beautiful English Rose, Rosa ‘A Shropshire Lad’.
In the 90s during the gardening craze penstemon was quite well known, primarily because the variety Penstemon digitalis 'Husker Red' which was named the Perennial Plant Association's Perennial Plant of the Year in 1996.
Because my Rosemary was a pleasant plant snob we had it in our kitchen bed in our large garden in Kerrisdale. It is long gone and forgotten.
My friend Alex Summers, who died some years ago was working on a mimeograph machine in 1966. He was printing the newsletter of the American Penstemon Society. While he was doing this (so he told me) he thought, “I hate the smell of this machine and I really don’t care for penstemons.” He quit and in 1968 he started the American Hosta Society (I am a card–carrying member).
To this day with all those hostas in my gardens I think of the history (they originated in Japan and Korea) of hostas and I met many of the hybridizers. Unlike that penstemon, my hostas have the faces of my friends and a rich lore.
That is more so with roses. Their names, their origin, their history and especially their place in literature (including Shakespeare) and poetry makes me connect my rose scans with all that.
I can say that thanks to my Rosemary who gently pushed me to become a member of the Vancouver Rose Society, I have become quite literate.
