Bougainvillea glabra 24 October 2026

 

Some might say that I am obsessive about missing my Rosemary who died 6 years ago. As I see it they don’t understand what it is like to have been married for 52 years. In all aspects she was my intellectual equal except she was better at finances.

I noticed today that her Bougainvillea glabra that she planted in a pot was in bloom. It has been in my bedroom since she died 6 years ago.

Both of us were not religious but we did believe in a life spark or force. When I photographed my family I always had my camera close and at eye level and I would ask them to look into the lens. Somehow in those eyes that stare at me in so many framed photographs in my house walls, I can recognize that unique spirit or Platonic essence drawing me into them.

Rosemary and I both believed that when one of our cats would die we would immediately get a new (middle-aged) one. We both thought that something of the dead cat transferred into the new one. The new cat had something of the old cat in him (or her).

To this I can now add how melancholic I get when I look at some of her perennials still blooming in my fall garden. Are they Rosemary sparks beckoning me?

And so these little bougainvillea blooms have a little bit of Rosemary’s spirit, soul or spark.

I can sense her in them. And I cry.                          

Rosa 'A Shropshire Lad' and Aeonium - 23 October 2026

 

Poem 856 – Emily Dickinson

There is a finished feeling

Experienced at Graves—

A leisure of the Future—

A Wilderness of Size.

By Death's bold Exhibition

Preciser what we are

And the Eternal function

Enabled to infer.

One of my everyday routines in the growing season of my garden and until fall is my daily scanning of the plants. I started in the summer of 2001 and I may have at the very least 3000 of them. These scans I associate somehow with my Rosemary, my life and with poems of my favourite poets in English and in Spanish.

Today I saw that my Rosa ‘A Shropshire Lad’ has yet to give up the ghost. I have a plant, a succulent Aeonium that was given to me by a visitor to my late spring open garden to the rose society. My old age is my only excuse for not remembering me who gifted it to me.

I learned Latin in my Roman Catholic boarding school in Austin in the late 50s so I like the sound of se finit.

At this time of the year I always think of Tsleil-Waututh Chief Len George. When he showed me around the burial ground in North Vancouver he told me that there was an idea that if you survived winter you would live for another year. He died on December 7. 

And it is only natural that apply his concept to myself. Will I be around to see the first blooms of A Shropshire Lad next year?

Centre left- Anemone hupehensis 'September Charm' and mystery perennial - 21 October 2026

 

When my Rosemary and I started gardening in our Kerrisdale garden in 1986 I was the amateur. By 1991 she had made me a rose enthusiast to parallel my almost obsessive passion for hostas.

Rosemary was a perfectionist. I mowed the lawn with a reel mower but she would still cut the edges close to our flowerbeds with scissors.

Often when we went to nurseries (and yes this was often) she would notice little details in little plants. She would insist on buying these. I called these Rosemary’s perennials. Now Wednesday, October 21 I noticed two little flowers in a pot that had four plant tags of plants that are no longer dead. This plant is healthy but since it has no tag I have no idea what it is. I decided to scan it with a plant that I bought this year that Rosemary would have instantly liked.

All I can now say is, “Thank God and Rosemary for little things."            

Ted Turtin

Artificial Intelligence and Personal Style in Photography
 

BC businessman Ted Turtin had the audacity to start a light bulb Factory in Burnaby in the early 80s. I have little recollection on how I took this photograph before the invention of Photoshop. I remember that I soldered a wire to the bottom of the bulb and they put several coats of heavy varnish. I could then touch that bottom while the wire was connected with a plug to the wall and not get a shock.

I thought of this photograph when the light on the night table on Rosemary’s side of the bed burned out. I went upstairs to my guest room where I have a drawer full of incandescent bulbs in a large range of watts. When incandescent bulbs were being phased out years ago and being replaced by laser ones Rosemary suggested we buy the supply.

Incandescent bulbs in photography are called tungsten because of the filaments inside made of that metal. In that last century we film photographers knew that when we took colour negative or slide photographs, when they were taken with the tungsten light bulbs in a room the resulting colour would be a warm red one. The reason for this is that daylight colour film was rated for about 5500 Degrees Kelvin. That is the colour of light, midsummer at noon in Washington DC. When Kodachrome was invented the folks at Kodak thought that the US was the centre (not centre) of the world and balanced Kodachrome to that colour temperature.

Believe it or not, all digital cameras today are all balanced to that!

In order to get the “correct’colour of photographs taken in tungsten interiors such as TV studios etc we would use  Tungsten  Balanced colour film.

All the above thanks to Rosemary making me buy incandescent light bulbs.

In Mexico these bulbs are called focos and in my Argentina they are bombitas.

I have never quite understood the expression “falling in love”. I have rarely used it. In my 52 years with Rosemary I don’t believe either of us ever told the other, “I love you.”

In those 52 years I wrote one Valentine Card to her.

But I remember one evening in particular in Mexico City in the apartment of my friend Raúl Guerrero Montemayor. I had met Rosemary on December 15, 1967 and before we married on 8 November 1968 we crashed and lived  in  his upstairs loft. We slept on the floor.

In that memorable evening Rosemary was leaning on the side of a fireplace and she was looking into space with those sad eyes that were (I understand that now) a trademark. To my chagrin I never asked her about them and from whom she inherited them.

I am now sure that at that moment I fell in love, or came to love her, or was attracted her in more than just wanting to have sex with her.

Now 6 years after her death I miss that constant companionship. I miss the fact that we had similar cultural and reading interests. I miss that she was more than my intellectual equal. I miss her perspicacity for finances. I never did understand compound interest. I miss holding her hand and smelling her behind her ears. I miss that we shared brother and sister cats that slept with us. I miss that she would tell me in the morning, “Alex make the bed neat for the cats.” I miss her telling me, “The kitty litter smells. You have to change it.” I miss watching her get dressed (and undressed). Yes I miss sex with her but I miss those magical preliminary moments.

Yesterday I changed the bed linen and I had a complete bath. I miss the joint act of both of us getting into a clean bed with clean sleep wear or none in hot summers.

I miss all the desserts she used to make while I cooked the meals. I miss driving with her to concerts, films, theatre, and other cultural events. I miss being in bed and both of us reading novels of the same author (Andra Camilleri was one of them). I miss getting into our tub bath together, on opposite ends and playing with our toes.

I miss the family life we seemed to have before she died. Christmas dinners were magical. I made the roast beef and vegetables and she made the desserts.

I miss how she was my travel agent. From our bed with her iPhone se booked hotels and plane fares that were the cheapest. I miss walking with her in Venice, Firenze, Guanajuato, Madrid, Mérida and Paris. I am not too sure I will want to now travel alone anywhere.

I am surrounded by my portraits of her around my house. They make me miss her more as I miss her when I see some of her tiny perennials in our garden. I miss driving with her to nurseries and how with her supreme knowledge of plants would notice plants that would pass me by.

When I drive my Chevrolet Cruze I miss her  occupying the passenger seat. I have coined the expression “her absent presence”.

My male cat Niño died this last May. He was my cat and Niña was hers. Niño’s death is almost as terrible as my missing Rosemary now. I talk to her cat Niña, “Niña Muchi (my endearing addition to her name) do you remember Rosemary?  Do you rember Niño?”

Niña now clings to me all day. We share; I am sure, our awareness of the death of those two.

When I get into my car or I am walking down the stairs I find myself saying out loud, "The quiero mucho." - I love you lots.

Niña is 16 years old. I want to stay alive, at least until she dies. Then I can meet my oblivion and share it with my Rosemary.                        

Rosa 'A Shropshire Lad' 16 October 2026

21 October 2026

Inmigrants who come to Vancouver want to have a new house or apartment, a brand new car and everything they own must be shiny.  

Their children once they have lived her for a while come to understand the concept of antique cars and newness is no longer so important.

I remember that when I bought my Asahi Pentax S-3 at Foto Rudiger in Mexico City in 1962 (because I had little money to buy a new camera) I was attracted to the look of this black camera showing its underlying brass.

But I was not always enamoured with the idea of perfect newness. Scuffing my brand new shoes was a slightly devastating happening as putting that dent on the new car.

A photograph that I took of my two young daughters in 1979 sitting on a multi-coloured bench of the Royal Hudson has been in my bedroom for years. A week ago I noticed how much the print had faded. I had printed it in my home darkroom in Burnaby. I have the original negative so I could have scanned it and made a new inkjet. I chose to remove the print from the frame and scan that and then I fixed it. Somehow while the new print might be correct in colour and contrast there is something of the original which attracts me to the instant I snapped the photograph.

Six years after the death of my Rosemary I remember her as that young woman I first met in 1967 while my portraits of her in months before she died are attractive to my eye and in particular one where she is smiling holding her cat Casi-Casi. I have it on my oficina door. I smile when I see it.

The framed family photographs on my home walls are all reminders of how time passes and sometimes without our noticing the changes.

To begin with an illustration for this blog I have as evidence a rose Rosa ‘A Shropshire Lad’ in all its pristine glory and then as it faded days later.

How that rose went from de pe a pa (Spanish from here to there) is reminded of how the final change is death.