Rosa 'Sombreul' & Rosa 'Souvenir du Docteur Jamain" - 12 May 2025

Red and White

by Carl Sandburg

Nobody picks a red rose when the winter wind

howls and the white snow blows among the fences and storm doors.

Nobody watches the dreamy sculptures of snow

when the summer roses blow red and soft in the garden yards and corners.

O I have loved red roses and O I have loved white snow—

dreamy drifts winter and summer—roses and snow.

Today, a few days after Mother’s Day, I still feel melancholy for all those mothers in my life, my abuelita, my mother and my Rosemary who not only mothered two girls but often mothered me.

Hiding behind in my lane garden was an open Rosa ‘Souvenir du Docteur Jamain’ and in my deck garden there was that white rose with yellow undertones called Rosa ‘Sombreul’.

I find it elegantly appropriate that these two roses share my scan. I have written about Rosa ‘Sombreul’ and how she is connected to a woman who had to drink blood (or was it wine?) to save her father from the guillotine. 

Blood or Wine?

Rhododendron stenopetalum 'Linearifolium - 11 May 2025

Strange as it may seem the island of Rhodes is named after the Greek word for rose or rhodon. Rhododendrons were perhaps given that name because of a similarity to the colour of roses. But both rhodos and roses share an inability to produce a pure blue flower.

I wrote about that here. The Kaponga Man

 Because now there is a constant surprise of roses blooming in my Kitsilano garden I thought I would give some of my other plants a chance to show off. I now have only two rhododendrons. One is called Rhododendron augustini ‘Marion MacDonnell’ and the second one is strange fellow as he does not look like a rhododendron. It is Rhododenron stenopetalum ‘Linearifolium’.  I scanned it with one of my most unusually variegated hostas, Hosta ‘Snake Eyes’

Alleyne Cook’s very large Rhododendron augustinii ‘Marion McDonnell is past its bloom a week ago. I miss this man and most of the other plantsmen and plantswomen who were experts in that other century. Now when I want to ask a question about my roses or hostas I look at myself in the mirror.

Yesterday I went to Lee Valley Tools to get metal plant labels. Sometime in the beginning of June I will be opening my garden on a weekend for the Vancouver Rose Society. I will make my splendid  cucumber sandwiches accompanied my iced tea from scratch.

Tomorrow Edward The Russian Handyman is coming to replace the rotting slats on my deck.

As I get the garden ready I can sense my Rosemary behind me reminding me of this or that.

Rosemary Waterhouse-Hayward & Filomena de Irureta Goyena de Hayward with our daughter Ale in Veracruz 1968

 Touched in my memory

In praise of a Jewish mother

There are next to no people that I know who knew my mother. One of them was that other mother, my wife Rosemary.

They first met, before I married Rosemary in Veracruz,  around Christmas 1967. From that point on they became the best of friends and there never was that idea that my mother was on of “those” mothers-in-law.

In 1972 my mother died in bed in our home in Arboledas, Estado de México. Rosemary and I both heard her breathe in and then not breathe out. In one of those strange Mexican happenings, we could not find a doctor nearby so a veterinarian came over and said, “Está muertita.”

We were so poor that my mother’s funeral was paid for by Rosemary’s parents. On her tombstone I had inscribed “Sursum Corda” something that my mother would often tell me when I was depressed. It means in Latin, from the Latin Mass, “Lift up your heart.”

I cannot stop here without mentioning that I became a successful photographer in Vancouver because of the mentorship of three mothers. They  were my grandmother, my mother and Rosemary.

The only mother left in my family is my Burnaby daughter Hilary who today will have brunch with her two daughters.

I must add that in Spanish the word “matriz” stand for womb. But it is also used as “casa matriz” or the headquarters of any company. In Spanish we certainly know where we come from.                       

In my longish life I have only owned two bicycles.

My first one was given to me by my grandmother in Mexico City in 1956. It was a Raleigh. My mother, who put the photograph here in our album, did not date it but my guess is that it was near Christmas as I was photographed with a Santa Claus and the instant picture taken was bought by my mother.

It was at that time, when on my birthday, someone insisted in giving me a croquet game as a gift. I thought it was a game for girls. But with my friends, we invented the game of bicycle polo using the croquet mallets and the ball. We played the game on our street Sierra Madre which was in the nice neighbourhood of Colonia Chapultepec. Across from my house were a couple of boys that played with us. Their father had been a famous army general called General Rincón Gallardo.

That Raleigh made itself all the way to Nueva Rosita, Coahuila in 1957 when my mother was hired by American Smelting and Refining to teach in a two room schoolhouse there to the children of the engineers and employees of the company. My mother taught 8^th, 7^th and 6^th grade. I had the unusual bad luck of being in the 8^th grade with five other boys. She was hard on me.

One of the privileges of living in what was called la Colonia Americana is that we were given horses to ride. My horse refused to do anything leaving the stable. When I managed to get it a couple of miles into the desert it would only then gallop home. I stopped using the horse and accompanied my friends on their horses with my bike. I had a special liquid in the inner tubes that instantly repaired the desert leaks caused by spiky plants.

Once I got married in 1968 I found that while Rosemary could do anything.One thing she could not do and had not done as a little girl was ride a bicycle. That would explain why I did not have second bicycle until 7 years ago before we moved from Kerrisdale to our Kits duplex.

I made one mistake in my very nice Trek Bicycle which has a rubber belt instead of a chain. I bought it (feeling very English) with only the famous (at one time) 3 gear Sturmy-Archer hub.

Of late I cycle one hour every day. Those 3 gears mean I have to put extra effort when I ride my bike on the steady uphill going West at Point Grey Road. I take my Fuji cameras and shoot pictures. I ride all the way to Jericho Beach and back. Now when I place my head on the pillow at night I go to sleep instantly. This feels awfully good.

My daily bike ride, and going around the block with Niño, have become something of a purpose and order in my day that still seems vacant without the presence of my Rosemary. 

In the mid 80s I took a photograph of a cyclist (he pressed the shutter, not me) that I am most proud of as this was shot before Go-Pros existed.

 https://blog.alexwaterhousehayward.com/2007/10/today-rebecca-lauren-rosemary-and-i.html

Nelson McLachlan

Iris - 9 May 2025

Iris

by William Carlos Williams

a burst of iris so that

come down for

breakfast

we searched through the

rooms for

that

sweetest odor and at

first could not

find its

source then a blue as

of the sea

struck

startling us from among

those trumpeting

petals

In the last few days I have obsessively been scaning iris in as many ways as I can. Today I went to a house on Point Grey Road and cut an iris on the sidewalk flower bed. I returned two hours later with two printed scans. Nobody answered the door. I returned twice after but I believe that the people living in the opulent house must be on vacation.

In the past I have blogged many times on the iris. Below are links to some of them.

 Whispers of Passion

Squeezing the juice from an iris 

A slash of blue 

Rosemary's Angel Wings

Iris Art for Myself

Blue and lavender Iris 

Inspired by Georgia O'Keeffe 

T is iris sir 

Iris on my dinner plate 

Sweet Iris 

Iris