Rosa 'Mrs. Oakley Fisher' & Hosta 'First Frost' 8 June 2026

Today June 8, the folks at EJ Phone Repair solved the problem of not being able to place photographs in my blog. Mike came to my house and in under 3 minutes solved the matter. It seems that my Google Blogger was no longer compatible with my Firefox Blogger. He switched it to Google Chrome and voilà.

For many days I was completely depressed and felt like my life was just waiting to die. More than ever I was realizing that in my daily tasks writing my blog is an element of stability. My blog, particularly now in the gardening season, enables me to place my plant scans as an excuse to write something.

At first Mike and Chris at EJ Phone Repair suspected that my 22-year-old Dell CRT monitor was the problem. They lent me a 28 inch wide Acer monitor. The problem persisted. One it was solved they sold me the splendid 28 inch wide Acer for little money. While this blog is being placed June 8 I am writing this June 9.

Today I had the pleasure of taking my Dell monitor to Kent Street where I gave it a fond goodbye as it served me well. The new Acer has been previously calibrated for colour but I will be hiring a gentleman named Harris to calibrate the monitor, my scanner and printer shortly. 

I am a happy man.

Rosa 'Emily Carr' 4 June 2026

I have found a roundabout method to place photographs into my Blogger blog. I scanned this lovely rose and then sent it to myself by email. I clicked on the scan and I was given the chance to  share it. This I did in my Facebook page. Once there I copied it and then pasted it here. It worked. This is awfully elaborate but it means that I will be able to write a few blogs before the chaps from EJ Phone Repair on Monday can sort through my problems.

Niña, left 7 my departed Niño (May 12) right

 I am unable to put new photographs into my blog. I can put old photographs. This means that I can at least write my daily blogs. It is a slight relief. The folks from EJ Phone Repair will come to my house on Monday to see if my problem can be resolved. Meanwhile I will post these blogs.

The word imagination comes from the Latin imaginatio, meaning "the forming of a mental image". It entered the English language in the mid-14th century via Old French. Here is how the concept breaks down: Root Word: imaginari (to picture oneself / represent) Core Source: imago (an image, likeness, or ghost)Deepest Origin: The Proto-Indo-European root aim-, meaning "to copy" or "to imitate"Historically, the term was heavily tied to the philosophical concept of "making the absent present," or conjuring up a mental picture of something not currently being perceived by the physical senses.

Roots and Breakdown Image (imago): Refers to a likeness, appearance, or reflection.-ation: A suffix denoting an action or process. Combined, it literally means "the process of creating a mental image."Interestingly, imago shares a Proto-Indo-European root that means "to copy". Therefore, at its very core, imagination is the mind's ability to copy, recreate, and manipulate impressions from the physical world to form entirely new concepts.

In the last few months I have seen famous medieval paintings or paintings up to the 19^th century that move because people have been using AI.

I believe that what makes us human (I do not think cockroaches have that ability) is our ability to “create a mental image”. Furthermore this might lead to the  diluting of human imagination.

Now I avoid all that knowing that when I post one of my photographs or plant scans in this blog, that these images are mine and have no connection to AI.

The photograph here is followed by the original. The original photograph is a b+w almost-portrait reflecting my falling in love with Estela in Great Expectations when I was in the 5^th grade and not liking her mentor Miss Havisham. The colour image is the result of me using my phone to photograph the framed portrait on my living room wall. With my 22-year-old Photoshop 8 I added a bit of saturation.

It was through my imagination and the not so gently pushing of the art directors I worked with (and Vancouver Magazine editor Malcolm Parry) that I developed a personal style which is just about disappeared in this century. An identifiable personal style is the Holy Grail of photography.

Now as few photographers want to face people, talk to them, find mutual connections before taking their portraits (and perhaps using a good studio light) we are left with street photography. I think that particularly in Vancouver, if Fred Herzog would return from the dead, he would be not in the least inspired to take his street photographs as all the bright colours and neon lights are gone.

Worse than sitting at the Van Dusen Flora Hall to watch 100 bad slides of roses (as I did with my Rosemary in 1991) would be to see 100 projected contemporary street photographs taken by local photographers who are no match for that decisive-moment-Guy that was Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Having a personal imagination is important.

Rosa 'A Shropshire Lad' 2 June 2026

Below is an old blog that involves a magnificent poem by now gone poet friend Jamie Reid. I had many poet friends but they are all dead. Jamie Reid made me appreciate A.E. Houseman through his A Shropshire Lad. Every time this prolific rose blooms in my backlane garden I remember Reid.

Some years ago my granddaughter Rebecca and I went to the Playhouse Theatre to experience a matinée performance of the Turning Point Ensemble (in association with Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad and the SFU Contemporary Arts) of Erik Satie's Relâche. As we entered I spotted a friend. "Rebecca I want you to meet a poet, he is a member of the Canadian Communist Party." With a smile on his face Jamie Reid said," I am not a member of the Canadian Communist Party. I was a member of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist)." Reid handed me a copy of his latest poems. In it I found a poet who had collaborated with Satie in his Furniture Music:

 homage to max jacob

I was severely mistaken in writing to a poet acquaintance that

Max Jacob took his own life.

In fact, it was only and maybe merely his afterlife he took, and he

took it deliberately as a Catholic, which he had become by

choice, not birth.

After converting to the Church of Rome, he joined the gang of

Poets and artists on Montmartre in order to sin disgracefully, so

he said.

It was not for this reason that the Gestapo later arrested him and

put him in the concentration camp where he died of lung

disease. It was because he had been born a Jew.

His conversion therefore completely failed to save his life.

I hope my poet acquaintance, who told me he feels his own

work is most like Max Jacob’s, does not come to suffer a similar

fate.

May he contrive to enjoy all sins untramelled, no matter how

considerable, without feeling any need for punishment, as did

poor Catholic Max.

May I, too, live in hope

to do the same, dear,

merciful God.

From homages by Jamie Reid, January 2009 by permission from author.

Rosa 'Souvenir du Docteur Jamain' - 1 June 2026

This past Saturday and Sunday I opened my garden to the Vancouver Rose Society. My Rosemary and I did this every year and we also began opening our garden in Kerrisdale from the early 90s. People from the US would come in buses to see it.

This time many of my invited friends came, but only 10 members of the Vancouver Rose Society showed up. What this means is that I will be eating my homemade cucumber sandwiches, my youngest daughter Hilary’s cookies for days. This morning I heated the Mexican hibiscus tea (agua de Jamaica) for breakfast instead of my normal black tea.

The Vancouver Rose Society has Victorian era standards of what makes an ideal rose for a rose show or to bring it to a meeting. It has to be pristine and perfect. I am slightly at odds as I also like a rose that is past its prime. An example of this is illustrating this blog.

I did remove as many yellow white spot leaves from my roses for days. I get little black spot as I spray my roses in early spring with copper sulphate. This is allowed as it does not affect insects or pollute the environment. As I did this I was pushed to do as perfect a job as possible by that Rosemary that is always there when I am in the garden that I used to call our garden.

Ex-Vancouver Magazine receptionist

It was in Buenos Aires when I was 8 years old that an American little girl came for a visit with her mother. This happened because my mother was teaching physics, chemistry and algebra at the American School outside the Belgrano R train station.

The little girl asked me, “Do you want to see it?" I must have answered in the affirmative as she showed what made me different from her. To this day I am not quite sure why so many women have not only showed me all that but wanted me to record it all with my camera.

 I took my first series of nudes (from the waist up) of my Rosemary in 1969 because of the idea of taking her portrait of her with our first daughter Alexandra. Right after I don’t remember the circumstances but I photographed her without our daughter. Those images with her haunting sad look have been in my memory and one of them is framed and on the opposite wall from my bed where she stares at me even when I turn of the lights to go to sleep.

Rosemary's Portrait on My Bedroom Wall 

In 1977 in Vancouver I was just beginning to work (free-lance) at Vancouver Magazine when I took some nude photos that coincided with some I took on Wreck Beach.

It was at Vancouver Magazine that a receptionist who was quitting (I have now forgotten her name)  asked me if I could photograph her in the nude. The two pictures you see here are in a file with the negatives under the name ex-Vancouver Magazine Receptionist. Both the photos from Wreck Beach and one of the two here I used Kodak b+w Infrared Film. It was sensitive to red so you might note that in one of the shots her lips are lighter. I soon learned to going to London Drugs and buying purple lipstick that rendered darker when I used this grainy but skin smoothing film.

Of late I have been reading a lot how all those medieval, renaissance and up to our present times paintings of nude women are called and explained as male-gaze art.

There seems to be no record if any of those thousands of women ever were the ones who asked to be painted in the nude.

I frequently look at myself in the mirror and I ask myself why so many women have asked me (and keep asking to date) to be photographed sans clothing. What can they see in my face?

And then there is that question that nobody seems to know the answer to which is why do they want to be photographed like that.

One answer may have been the call I received from this woman: “ Is this Alex Waterhouse-Hayward? My name is ….and I need to have some pictures taken. I am a fitness instructor at the YWCA and I want to be photographed in the nude. I have a great body and I want it recorded before nature takes it course.”