Wednesday, February 04, 2026

Hellebores 4 February 2026

 The hellebores ( I can only name three of them) are middle top, Helleborus 'Wedding Crasher', right, niddle yellow, Helleborus 'Wedding Crasher' and bottom right, Helleborus 'Honeymoon Blue'.

 

Camellia x williamsii 'Donation' - 4 February 2026

 My garden that until five years ago used to be our garden is a constant repository of memories of Rosemary that I cannot escape and do not want to escape. If she is not going to be around in bodily form, being with her memories in my head is a distant second best.

Today it was an overwhelming delight of flowers that when nothing blooms in February were out in force. There were five of her hellebores and her most favourite camellia, Camellia x williamsii ‘Donation. This camellia came from our old garden in Kerrisdale.

Because I was a sort of second-best kind of gardener it was Rosemary who insisted something interesting should be noticed all year, even in cold winter months.

Hellebores are not difficult to grow. You do not have to fuss over them as I might with my old roses.

There is one unfortunate fact. I have plant labels for only three of the five hellebores. At one time I would have been most upset. Now I realize that just enjoying them and having some to scan is all I need on a sunny Wednesday evening.

I feel good today as I was able to go on my bike on my hour cycling to Jericho Beach. Then I went to Safeway in that bike and purchased a very thick $35 steak and some red peppers to barbecue. Even though I am an Argentine (and certainly not a vegan) I rarely eat meat these days. It was a feast and I then cut up into little pieces some of what was left and my Niño and Niña enjoyed them.

All in all a fine day that I shared with my cats and with my memory of my Rosemary.

 

 

Monday, February 02, 2026

 

 

 The Great Expectations of Judy Brown

 

In 1964 while going to Mexico City College I feel for a short blonde called Judy Brown. She was coldish but did pose for some photographs. In those days Agfa made a very fast film called Isopan Record. I decided I would photograph her with the light of match. It worked out well. The school year ended and I never saw Brown again.

 

 

There is something about photography that somehow it allows one (me) to relive past moments of my life. I can scan Brown negatives (I have them to this day) and write a couple of blogs showing the match photographs.

But even better I can try the technique many years later and even modify the technique. In the last few weeks I have been writing blogs that feature photographs that I took of Rosemary in Mexico City in 1969. She was nude and I cropped for my sense of family good taste.

I found (I had forgotten) three shotsm where unlike Brown, she is holding a candle. Because this century has the bonus of me being able to combine the technology of the last century (the b+w negs I took of Rosemary)  with the technique of putting one negative on top of the other and then scanning them with my Epson V700. I call these scanner negative sandwiches without mayonnaise. The trick is to pick negs from the same session.

I believe that I have done well with the scans here. But I cannot escape that feeling when I look at the scans on my monitor that I am back to Mexico City 1969 in our little apartment on Calle Herodoto. This is when Rosemary would serve me fine meals and she had nothing on her plate. I was too stupid to realize that we had little money so she was only splurging on me. And how would I have known that 57 years later I would be writing this blog and using those negatives. They are in perfect condition since I always overwashed my negatives for archival permanence.

 

Sunday, February 01, 2026

I February 2026

Linear Time

 

Reloj according to the RAE (Real Academia Española : Del cat. ant. relotge, este del lat. horologĭum 'reloj de arena’, ‘reloj de sol’, ‘clepsidra', y este del gr. ὡρολόγιον hōrológion.

I have written many times about my relationship with time. Here (above) is one of the blogs. And I have also written in repeated time how Jorge Luís Borges wrote that all first times are infinitely repeated as first times.

Today I thought I might add a bit about time and me as I was looking at my watch. In Spanish there are no two individual words watch and clock. Both are reloj (plural relojes) and my wrist watch is a reloj de pulsera. My watch is a Timex (made in the Philippines that I purchased for $50.00 at the Bay in 1986. Since then all I have done to keep it going is to change the battery every two years. I never take it off either when I swim or when I am in my hot tub bath.

The watch today made me remember Brother Cyriac Haden, C.S.C. who taught me algebra and chemistry in the late 50 at St. Edward’s High School in Austin. He had discipline problems so we made his classes probably unhappy for him. In one of his classes it was the one before lunch. I would stare at the large clock behind him and it seemed that time stood still. Such was our treatment of him that when I returned years later to a class reunion I went to the campus Assumption Cemetery and apologized at his grave.

  

Brother Cyriac Haden, C.S.C.

Now in this century I wake up early to fed my two cats and to make my breakfast-in-bed on a tray. I do stuff during the day (nothing important) and before I know it I am turning off the light to sleep. I am wondering if I can change this or if I want to change this speeding of time.

Brother Cyriac might have some ideas.

 

Saturday, January 31, 2026

Rosemary and Niña after she died  December 2020

 

When my Rosemary died on 9 December 2020 we were waiting for the funeral people to turn up. It was then when I decided that I was compelled to take the most difficult photograph of my life because I was a photographer. I went upstairs. Rosemary was dead on our bed with our female cat Niña on her chest. I told myself that nobody was ever going to see that photograph.

Today 31 January, 2026 I thought that perhaps I should look at the photograph. I went to my Family files and I did not find it. Perhaps it is in our Cats - All our Cats file. It was not there. There were many photographs of Rosemary’s hands once she had died but not the one I was looking for.

When I place my Fuji X-E3 photographs into my files they have a Fuji number. Once I open the photograph, size it and then name it then I can use my search tool to find it. That was the case. I looked for the unnamed files and found that I had taken two photographs. I size and fixed one of them which then matched the image I had seen before I pressed my camera’s shutter.

I have found the photograph and the extra one. Will anybody ever see it besides me?

Friday, January 30, 2026

Rosemary Elizabeth Healey Waterhouse-Hayward - 1969

 

Thursday, January 29, 2026

29 January 2026

 Pleasure in Failure

Today 29 January 2026 I managed to inform the Telus people by talking to a pleasant man from Guatemala that I had a new credit card to replace the one that is inspiring February 1st. I managed to pay (in person) my house insurance. After that I came home and settled on the bed with my two cats. I stared at the ceiling and did some thinking.

That thinking involves my inability to accept after Rosemary’s death on 9 December 2020 that she is not with me occupying her side of the bed. Everything in the house, the dishware, the pictures on the wall, what we bought when we were in Mexico all associate my thoughts with her. When Niña and Niña stare at me I immediately remember how she cuddled them. They connect me to her.

It would seem that my association and grief is not going to fade. This is why I decided to scan these hosta leaves on which I had placed a b+w transparency of Rosemary with Alexandra between glass and exposed it all to summer sun for 4 hours. I learned this from my friend Ralph Rinke. He did warn me that the result of UV light reacting with chlorophyll was not a permanent. I immediately scanned the results, printed them and then framed them with UV protection glass.

I saw these faded hosta leaves. The action of scanning them and seeing them as they are I believe prepares me for my eventual (soon perhaps) fading from this world where I will then join Rosemary in oblivion. Both she and I knew we would never see each other again.