28 May 2025

In Spanish I like the fact that nouns have genders. In English you have companion but in Spanish my Rosemary was my compañera. It is and it sounds more intimate.

La palabra "compañero" proviene del latín "compāgnus", que significa "el que come pan con otro". Esta palabra está compuesta por "cum" (con) y "panis" (pan), de donde se deduce que "compañero" era originalmente el individuo con quien se compartía la comida, especialmente el pan.

The word “compañero’ comes from the Latin “compagnus” which means “cum”(with) and “panis” (bread). So a companion is someone you share bread with.

The word compartir (much lovelier than share) is from that root “to share the breaking of bread”

All the above is my excuse to put here my scan, done today, of Rosa ‘A Shropshire Lad’ which grows in my back lane garden with one of Rosemary’s clematis. The sign is long gone. Rosemary had the intelligence to figure out all the different kinds of clematis and how they had different pruning schedules. Somehow they survive in spite that I don’t prune them.

Rosemary was keen on putting plants together as companions. She avoided the idea of a garden that had roses in one place and her perennials in another.

In my Kitsilano garden the plants are so close together that you cannot see the dirt. Hosta expert Wolfram George Schmid called this kind of gardening shoulder to shoulder.

Wolfram George Schmid - the Giboshi Man 

After having had so many of these gardening friends as companions it is impossible for me not to walk in the garden, and without trying, the associations happen. Their faces are like ghosts. So many are now gone.

Rosa 'Westerland' 27 May 2025

Who would have predicted that when Rosemary not too gently pushed me to attend a meeting of the Vancouver Rose Society in 1991 that I would be hired by Canada Post in 2001 to choose four stamps that represented Canada & to photograph them ? So, not that anybody would care in this 21^st century, I have four Canadian stamps under my belt.

My Rose Stamps

There was another first for me. In the beginning of 2006 when I had been scanning my roses for a few years I sent a query to the art director of Canadian Gardening. The answer I received from the pleasant female art director was, “Alex try to contact people who publish calendars.” I thought that was it but a few months later she got back to me and my scan of Rosa ‘Westerland’ was on the cover. I was paid well but for me what is important is that I believe that my rose scan would have been the first scanograph in any magazine.

Canadian Gardening cover 

With Rosemary and my mutual interest in roses and gardening we had for years such a beautiful garden in Kerrisdale that busloads of Americans would come to see it and our garden made it in the US publication Better Homes and Gardens.

All this happened because of Rosemary.

Today I noticed a fallen petal from Rosa ‘Westerland’ that has an unusual look. I can imagine that it is a secret message from the rose. Folks when they see my rose scans ask me, “Alex, how do you do it?” They are startled when half-jokingly I tell them that when I walk in the garden some of my roses communicate that I should cut them then and there and scan them.

If anything all I can assert here is that Rosemary had microscope eyes in the garden. She noticed all those little details about plants, even the smallest. Somehow he talent rubbed off on me.

In this 21st century I believe that people have become more gullible. When I tell people that I am a rosarian (rose enthusiast) they ask me if I belong to a secret society that has strange handshakes. 

Rosa 'Double Delight' - 18 May 2025

 Raspberry Flummery

In our Kerrisdale garden we had a circular rose bed and one of my favourite roses was a hybrid tea rose called Rosa ‘Double Delight’. Rosemary, the snob that she was, poo-pooed hybrid teas. She preferred old roses and English Roses. But she liked Double Delight. To begin with it has an unusual colour combination and to that a most lovely and strong scent.

Somehow that rose did not make our move to Kitsilano. To my surprise on Easter Sunday my youngest granddaughter told us that she had discovered a new garden centre. It was not new as it was Mandeville Garden Works, a place where Rosemary and I often went to. But while there I found a healthy Double Delight.

Waiting for it to open, I discovered another lovely attribute of the rose. The yet-to-open blooms are excitingly interesting to look at. Since I did not dare cut one of the unopened blooms to scan it I had to (!!) photograph it. Years ago I told myself I was never going to photograph individual roses. I used my Lensbaby equipped Fuji X-E1 digital camera and I am happy with the results.

Rosa 'Double Delight' 25 May 2025

Left - Rosa 'Westerland' - right Rosa 'Princess Alexandra of Kent' and bottom Rosa 'Charles de Mills' 26 May 2025

Even though I was raised by a liberal mother and grandmother and my father, while born in Buenos Aires, was an English gentleman, they did not completely remove that Argentine machismo which in this century is defined as that of a male chauvinist pig.

But in some ways I was not a total macho man. I never was interested in having a motorcycle, growing a beard or a moustache.Only once did I buy and drive a macho car. It was a terrible Maserati Biturbo. I learned my lesson then.

The person who was singly responsible in making me the more moderate man that I am, was my wife Rosemary. I did not know at the time that now we would have defined her as a proto-feminist.

I got an inkling when our second daughter was born. Rosemary told me, “Alex, our daughter is going to be called Hilary because I want her to have an epicene name (I had never heard this word before). It will be up to her to make her name gender specific.”

In the years that followed until she died on 9 December 2020, my Rosemary made all the financial decisions and pushed me to be the good gardener that I am now. She steered me away from "manly"pursuits.

Today as I was looking at my roses and came up with a theme to write about. My roses have gender but I will have to be careful how I unfold the concept.

It is easy to figure out that Rosa ‘Charles de Mills’ is a he and Rosa ‘Princess Alexandra of Kent’ is a she. But what of Rosa ‘Westerland’, could it be possibly and "it" or a more modern "them"?

When I look at my  male cat Niño I see in  him old fashioned male attributes. On her sister Niña I see (impose perhaps?) the idea that she is dainty and feminine like Rosemary. I have no idea if all this is correct in 2025.

But I do think and thank Rosemary for the fact that I can call some of my roses by their epicene names.