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.” 

Alex, Niño & Niña

 

The only way I can cope with living alone is to have the stability of cats that accompany me in the routines of the day. I was deeply affected when my male cat Niño died on May 12. Luckily his twin sister Niña is inseparable from her so-called master and gives me some of the warmth that I had in spades when Rosemary was alive.

Now I am beginning to understand to have a few planned activities that will bring friends or family to my house or an activity that has me going somewhere. In short a steady routine keeps me sane in my never-going-away melancholy for the loss of Rosemary aftera 52 years of being together.

Getting the garden ready for my opening to the Vancouver Rose Society for today and tomorrow has been an excellent distraction.

Best of all is to retire to my bed, now only with Niña who at 8pm stares at me as she has her routine of being fed her treats. By 11:30 when I turn off the light she gets on top of me and we sleep most of the night except to my almost pleasant 3 trips to sit on my heated toilet seat. 

My Kitsilano Garden 29 May 2026

 

Today 29 May 2026, by this eveningm I can say that my garden (formerly our) is as good as it can be for tomorrow and Sundays opening to the Vancouver Rose Society. I have been working at it for weeks and today I believe I put the finishing touches. At all moments and when I was a tad lazy, my Rosemary was there in my head telling me to keep at it. In fact I prepared my garden as if I would only have one visitor, my Rosemary, tomorrow. She would be the judge. I believe I might just get a “Well done.” in my head from her.

In evening light I find that my Galaxy 5 phone renders my garden with a tad less contrast than with my Fuji X-E3.