Rebecca Stewart - May 2003

Rosa 'Mrs. Oakley Fisher' - 3 June 2025

"We read not only because we cannot know enough people, but because friendship is so vulnerable, so likely to diminish or disappear, overcome by space,time, imperfect sympathies, and all the sorrows of familial and passional life." Harold Bloom - How To Read and Why (2000).

This book is by my bed and has been since 2005. These days it is particularly in my mind as I lose friends and family by death or they just fade away. They might get rid of their landline or move elsewhere without saying goodbye.

My daughters call me every once in a while. But my granddaughters now influenced by the happenings of this century do not.

Today I noticed that my Rosa ‘Mrs. Oakley Fisher’ was in bloom. It is not an easy rose to grow. Since my original back in Kerrisdale I may have had five of them. The latest is one of two I purchased from Rogue Nurseries in Oregon.

It was around 2002 that I first saw it at Janet Wood’s garden. She was the president of the Vancouver Rose Society and a friend. As I was leaving I spotted a little yellow rose. I asked her and she told me that it was a single hybrid tea rose called Mrs. Oakley Fisher. Such was the influence of the rose over me that I told Wood, “I am going to go home and make some toast with unsalted butter and apricot jam and I will have it with a large mug of Earl Grey Tea."

I told Rosemary about the rose but she was not interested as she did not like yellow or orange in the garden. I bought the rose anyway and a year later I photographed our eldest granddaughter Rebecca (8 she was) with it while wearing a Mexican sailor dress. That rose, because of the photograph, ushered in yellow into our garden and Mrs. Oakley Fisher became one of our favourite roses.

Two months before Rosemary died on 9 December, 2020, she told me, “Alex you will need to buy three large terracotta pots and some dirt as I think we will need them." I did not connect this with the fact that our little yellow rose had died.

It was in the beginning of February 2021 that the doorbell rang and I found a box with three roses. One was Mrs. Oakley Fisher and the other two were similar.  This was a posthumous gift from Rosemary. I cried.

By then our family had fractured and I saw little of my daughters and my granddaughters pretty well disappeared from my life. Rosemary was our family glue.

I live with my two cats missing, every day the presence of my Rosemary and the warmth of all those family gatherings we used to have.

Today when I did see that little yellow rose I noticed that it was missing a fifth petal (or it has what looks like a very small one) and I immediately equated the rose with my granddaughter’s now almost permanent absence.         

29 May 2025

The song by Violeta Parra, Gracias a la Vida is one that Rosemary and I first heard in Mexico City in a radio station that featured Latin-American folk songs. I used the title in a series of photographs that I took of my granddaughter Rebecca with her ballet teacher Andrea Hodge.

Gracias a la Vida 

Now at 82 in the footsteps of a statistically soon-to-happen oblivion I find myself calling people I have not heard from for many years. My intention is one that I like to call “tying up loose ends”.

The photograph illustrating this blog which I recently shot with my Fuji X-E1 equipped with a Lensbaby (thank you Jeff Gin) made me realize how lucky I was to have met my Rosemary in Mexico City in 1967. She had that rare vision of knowing where one was to live and she made us (our two daughters) move to Vancouver in 1975.

It was in Vancouver where:

1. I learned to be a good photographer.

2. We educated our daughters in Maillardville so that they could learn French.

3. Rosemary made us move to a large house with a corner garden in Kerrisdale.

4. She strongly persuaded me to become a gardener like her.

5. She made excellent financial decisions so I now live in Kitsilano with no money worries.

6. If I became a good portrait photographer is all to the fact that Rosemary never told me not to buy equipment I needed and she especially taught me how to photograph hands.

7. She promoted our travel and in particularly with our two granddaughters. Perhaps in a the future they just might appreciate what Rosemary did for them.

8. I have a few illnesses and each of my every two weeks arthritis pen costs $800. Canada and my BlueCross pay for it. I believe I could not live anywhere else without that medicine.

9. There is a stability in this country and in Vancouver (except for the Vancouver mantra “expect delays” that really is not to be found anywhere else.

10. That view of our city that I took on 29 May is proof that Rosemary was always right.

I will always be thankful to my life and to what Rosemary did with it.

Rosemary's Clematis - 2 June 2025

Left Rosa 'Susan Williams- Ellis' right Rosemary's white Clematis

The genus name Clematisis from Ancient Greek κληματίς : clēmatís, ("a climbing plant") from κλήμα : klḗma – 'twig, sprout, tendril'. Wikipedia

My Rosemary had a fondness for clematis. She alone was able to navigate the complex problem of the fact that different varieties had a myriad of pruning schedules. With her gone, I have no idea what to do with them but they do keep blooming, to my pleasure.

When we would go to nurseries there would invariably be a desk with a couple of senior master gardeners. Rosemary would look in my direction and with her finger she would indicate I should not say anything. But I would ignore her.

I would ask the women, “How do you pronounce c-l-e-m-a-t-i-s?” They would invariably reply, “Klémaahtis.” I would then ask them, “How do you pronounce c-l-i-t-o-r-i-s?” It was then that I would inform them that both words came from the Greek and the emphasis was in the first syllable.

It is for the above reason that I smile when I spot Rosemary’s clematis in my Kitsilano garden. One of them, you will note in the scan, looks exactly like a white rose.

Definitely Rosemary was a garden snob and some of her snobbishness rubbed off to her husband.

Rosa 'Princess Alexandra of Kent' 1 June 2025

1 June 2025

Perhaps by the end of the 80s my Rosemary and I opened our garden to garden clubs and to friends. By the 90s Americans in buses would come to see our garden which eventually became a feature in the magazine Better Homes and Gardens.

Opening our garden was thus a yearly tradition in which our daughters and granddaughters would be present.

After Rosemary died on December 9, 2020 I have kept opening my garden every year to the Vancouver Rose Society. Before her death, we would work for weeks before getting it ready and buying little perennials and annuals to fill holes.

I opened the garden this weekend. My youngest daughter baked all kinds of sweets and I made my signature English-style cucumber sandwiches and iced tea. But something was different that left me with melancholy. Somehow while my eldest daughter Alexandra helped me out for a couple of hours on Saturday, Hilary, my youngest daughter had commitments (she is selling her house) and could not be present. And my two granddaughters, now living firmly in this century probably think I am just an old man. I missed seeing them.

My male cat Niño, who is very social, was in attendance and I had quite a few people come. Once people left I was left with an empty feeling. I could not compare notes with Rosemary. I settled on the beds and my two cats got on top of me. They were her cats, too. I was filled with a melancholy that nothing will change. Tomorrow my eldest daughter is coming in the morning. I am looking forward to that. Meanwhile I will be eating cucumber sandwiches for some time.

To illustrate this sad blog I chose to cut the English Rose, Rosa ‘Princess Alexandra of Kent’.  It measures 5 inches and I did not want to cut while people were coming to the garden. It was one of Rosemary’s favourites as the name coincided with Alexandra.

I have no idea how I can possibly get rid of my emptiness except to understand that oblivion will soon beckon. Meanwhile I have Niño and Niña, who cuddle with me every night. They give me a  reason for a continued existence.