Left & bottom Helleborus 'Honeymoon' - Right - Helleborus 'Wedding Crasher' - 22 March 2026

 

In 2018 I went to New York City with my Rosemary. Our hotel was very close to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We arrived when it opened. We were there to see the Michelangelo exhibit. After spending an hour there I asked Rosemary if she would be interested in seeing the David Hockney. We went to it. I then told her about the Rodin. We went to it. Expecting finally a “no” I asked her if she was interested in a exhibit of medieval armour. She went crazy taking photographs of the horse armour.

We left when the museum closed.

The next day it was the Frick, the Guggenheim and MOMA. I will never understand how dense I must have been to have been married (in 2018 it was 48 years) so long and never have known her keen interest in the arts.

Now five years after my Rosemary died today I found out my further dumb density of my brain. Rosemary’s hellebores were always “Rosemary’s hellebores”. Since her death I have come to love them with my scans of them and the obvious fact (I was dense about that) that hellebores are in bloom in February/March when nothing else is.

The scan here is of two hellebores that Rosemary planted together. Do you think that the names and the fact that they are close in the bed is an accident? Is it an example that my Rosemary had a keen sense of humour?

Yes. And the idiot I am.