Filomena Cristeta de Irureta Goyena Waterhouse-Hayward & Rosa 'Benjamin Britten' scanned 5 May 2026

With most of my friends, family and people I worked with (here in Vancouver) mostly all dead, their faces crop up in my memory randomly.

It was a few weeks ago that it dawned on me that I had many framed portraits of my family but only one, a little on of my mother where she is with my Rosemary and baby Alexandra in Veracruz. I remember driving with Rosemary and Alexandra in our VW to Veracruz so my mother would see how the newborn had grown. On the way I took a curve much too quickly and we turned over. Rosemary and I survived it well because we had installed some new-fangled shoulder seat belts. Alexandra was inside a wicker basket that had a hood so she was fine, too. A couple stopped and the man offered to drive our Beetle (it was drive-able once we had its wheels on the ground to Veracruz and his wife took us in her car.

Veracruz - 1969

I decided to set the record straight. Alexandra (we call her Ale, pronounced ahleh) recently gave me a lovely antique frame. I printed a picture of my mother to fit and carefully cut it to fit the oval frame.

It is difficult for me to explain the difference in seeing a framed picture on a wall as compared to scanning the portrait of my mother. While it was taken for some school annual when I enlarge it in my monitor there is a form of intimacy that happens.

Because my father was of English heritage (his father had been born in Manchester) I was often told of it. My mother and father took me to the Teatro Colón sometime around 1949 where I first heard Britten’s A Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra Op. 34.

When I spotted a yet unopened English Rose, Rosa ‘Benjamin Britten’ and noticed how lovely it looked I decided to combine it with my newly framed photograph of my mother.

And as I have often repeated in these parts, in the Veracruz photo I can imagine (as they are not well seen) how both my mother and Rosemary had beautiful legs.

I inherited my mother’s. 

P.S. I was one of the few who knew my mother's second name Cristeta. She hated it. I regret that I was never curious enough to know who gave it to her. 

Rosa 'Zepherine Drouhin' -  3 May 2026

My Rosemary taught me early on in our gardening to be BC or botanically correct. The rose I scanned today is called Rosa ‘Zepherine Drouhin’. In proper botanical nomenclature the species name is capitalized and italicized. The cultivar name is placed between single quotes.

Those who do not know would say that this rose is probably the last one in the catalogues as the name begins with a z. They may add that it is one of the few roses that does not have thorns. Unfortunately that person would be wrong in the second opinion as roses have prickles and not thorns.

In Spanish a thorn is an espina but in proper Spanish botanical nomenclature Zepherine Drouhin has aguijones.

It could be that my Kitsilano deck is warmer than in other parts of the city as I have many roses in bloom right now when they usually bloom in June.

I used to have a lovely Hosta 'Zounds' which was the last in all hosta catalogues. Here with Rebecca in our old Kerrisdale garden on the right is Zounds. Somehow when we moved to Kitsilano it disappeared.

Rosa 'Sir Thomas Lipton' 4 May 2026

The Rosa 'Sir Thomas Lipton' is a hybrid rugosa rose named to honour Sir Thomas Lipton (1848–1931), the famous Scottish tea merchant, philanthropist, and America's Cup yachtsman. The cultivar was introduced in 1900 by Dr. Walter Van Fleet, a prominent American breeder. It is a hybrid of Rosa rugosa alba (a white Japanese rose) and the polyantha rose 'Clotilde Soupert'.

I found these two blooms today. I overlooked them yesterday when they would have had a tidier look. This rose always brings back memories of living with Rosemary in Mexico City from 1967 to 1975 when we moved to Vancouver.

In our Mexico City, good English tea was not to be found anywhere. Whenever we had friends or relatives coming from the US and Canada we would ask them to bring us Lipton Tea. Often what we got were teabags. I must confess here that we re-used them. I swore that once in Canada we would never do that and we would have the best tea available. For years I have had at least 10 tins of the best varieties of loose tea. Now unfortunately I have been losing my sense of taste and while I have a huge tea ball I have to imagine what my tea tastes.

This blog fills one of my last holes so that is why the scan done today Monday is in the blog for May 2.

Camellia japonica 'Silver Wings' - 1 May 2026

One of the advantages of living in this century is our ability to instantly find the etymology of words. Some might say that knowing facts is not having knowledge. I would differ by saying that the association of a fact with personal experience becomes some sort of knowledge.

My mother and grandmother were born in the Philippines. Today I scanned this recently purchased Camellia japonica ‘Silver Wings’ for big coin. The flowers are 5 inches wide. I decided to look up the origin of the word camellia.

The word camellia originates from the Latinized surname of Georg Joseph Kamel (latinized as Camellus), a 17th-century Moravian Jesuit botanist and missionary. Botanist Carl Linnaeus named the genus in 1753 to honor Kamel’s work documenting plants in the Philippines, though the plant is native to East Asia. Wikipedia

So now I have this interesting association between the camellias that my Rosemary loved and my Filipino mother and grandmother whom Rosemary met in the late 60s and early 70s.

A fact that I happen to know about Linnaeus is that he named the sexual parts of clams for those of human women. I won’t explain further.

A further etymology of the Spanish word camellón  which is the centre part that divides a two-way highway is that it indeed comes from the camel. Since the highway ridge is higher it mimics the camel's hump. Spanish for camel is camello.

Rosa 'William Lobb' 3 May 2026

William Lobb was a 19th century English plantsman who actually made it to British Columbia but is famous for having introduced South America's Araucaria araucana. In my books he is the man who discovered a plant that looked like something women have that men do not. This is the link - Lobb's Clitoria

In my back lane garden I have an old rose called William Lobb. It is a moss rose that is an old rose as it was introduced in 1855. The first modern rose, a hybrid tea called Rosa ‘La France’ appeared in1867.

Moss roses have particular texture that is unique. Here you will see the underside to understand why it is called a moss rose.

While I scanned this rose on 3 May I am placing this blog a few days back fill some holes. 

Rosemary & Niño - 22 March 2020

One of the strangest New Years Rosemary and I ever had was around 1987 at Gary Taylor's Rock Room on Hornby Street.The entertainer that evening was Roy Forbes (then known simply as Bim). I was astonished that at midnight he took out a paper from his shirt pocket which had the lyrics of Auld Lang Syne which he obviously did not know. After finishing he sprayed Rosemary and I (we were, unluckily, in the front) with an entire bottle of Möet & Chandon. But the strangest part of the evening were three very young Polish sailors who kept smiling at me. I told Rosemary that I felt uncomfortable and that we should go home. As we were leaving the sailors caught us on our way out and told us in a terrible broken English that I was the spitting image of Roman Polanski. They asked for my address. For years we received Christmas cards from them.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

and never brought to mind?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

and auld lang syne? – Robert Burns

These lyrics have been in my mind as they contain that troublesome word acquaintance.

In Spanish the word is conocido (a person known). For me I have friends and then people I know who I call acquaintances.

In this 21^st century and in this year I can write here that most of the people I ever knew are dead or have disappeared. In my mind most of the time now is what Harold Bloom wrote in his book How to Read and Why (2000):

"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."

Since my Rosemary died on December 9, 2020 I have not found anybody I can confide my inquietudes (a fine Spanish word for existential concerns). I would tell her that many of the people I call on the phone have a synthetic woman asking, “What is your name and the purpose of your call”. I answer, “I am Alex and I am his friend.” I am then told to hold while she(it) will see if the person is available. She(it) will invariably return  to tell me that the person is not available.

To add further to what happened after my Rosemary died I can say that to my granddaughters I am not a grandfather but a useless old man.

My family, a family that showers me with warmth and cuddling attention are my cats Niño and Niña. Both are 15 years old and I suspect that Niño may die in the next two months.

Because of my advanced age I am not interested in meeting up with a woman. The only one I want is dead.

Is it too late for me to make new friends? In the atmosphere of the times I believe that is not possible. I will have to persist with my past memories of the friends and family I had.