Rosa 'Sombreul' & Rosa 'Souvenir du Docteur Jamain" - 12 May 2025

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.

Today, a few days after Mother’s Day, I still feel melancholy for all those mothers in my life, my abuelita, my mother and my Rosemary who not only mothered two girls but often mothered me.

Hiding behind in my lane garden was an open Rosa ‘Souvenir du Docteur Jamain’ and in my deck garden there was that white rose with yellow undertones called Rosa ‘Sombreul’.

I find it elegantly appropriate that these two roses share my scan. I have written about Rosa ‘Sombreul’ and how she is connected to a woman who had to drink blood (or was it wine?) to save her father from the guillotine. 

Blood or Wine?

Rhododendron stenopetalum 'Linearifolium - 11 May 2025

Strange as it may seem the island of Rhodes is named after the Greek word for rose or rhodon. Rhododendrons were perhaps given that name because of a similarity to the colour of roses. But both rhodos and roses share an inability to produce a pure blue flower.

I wrote about that here. The Kaponga Man

 Because now there is a constant surprise of roses blooming in my Kitsilano garden I thought I would give some of my other plants a chance to show off. I now have only two rhododendrons. One is called Rhododendron augustini ‘Marion MacDonnell’ and the second one is strange fellow as he does not look like a rhododendron. It is Rhododenron stenopetalum ‘Linearifolium’.  I scanned it with one of my most unusually variegated hostas, Hosta ‘Snake Eyes’

Alleyne Cook’s very large Rhododendron augustinii ‘Marion McDonnell is past its bloom a week ago. I miss this man and most of the other plantsmen and plantswomen who were experts in that other century. Now when I want to ask a question about my roses or hostas I look at myself in the mirror.

Yesterday I went to Lee Valley Tools to get metal plant labels. Sometime in the beginning of June I will be opening my garden on a weekend for the Vancouver Rose Society. I will make my splendid  cucumber sandwiches accompanied my iced tea from scratch.

Tomorrow Edward The Russian Handyman is coming to replace the rotting slats on my deck.

As I get the garden ready I can sense my Rosemary behind me reminding me of this or that.

Rosemary Waterhouse-Hayward & Filomena de Irureta Goyena de Hayward with our daughter Ale in Veracruz 1968

 Touched in my memory

In praise of a Jewish mother

There are next to no people that I know who knew my mother. One of them was that other mother, my wife Rosemary.

They first met, before I married Rosemary in Veracruz,  around Christmas 1967. From that point on they became the best of friends and there never was that idea that my mother was on of “those” mothers-in-law.

In 1972 my mother died in bed in our home in Arboledas, Estado de México. Rosemary and I both heard her breathe in and then not breathe out. In one of those strange Mexican happenings, we could not find a doctor nearby so a veterinarian came over and said, “Está muertita.”

We were so poor that my mother’s funeral was paid for by Rosemary’s parents. On her tombstone I had inscribed “Sursum Corda” something that my mother would often tell me when I was depressed. It means in Latin, from the Latin Mass, “Lift up your heart.”

I cannot stop here without mentioning that I became a successful photographer in Vancouver because of the mentorship of three mothers. They  were my grandmother, my mother and Rosemary.

The only mother left in my family is my Burnaby daughter Hilary who today will have brunch with her two daughters.

I must add that in Spanish the word “matriz” stand for womb. But it is also used as “casa matriz” or the headquarters of any company. In Spanish we certainly know where we come from.