Sometime in 2002, during an idle weekend, I was admiring a recent addition to our Kerrisdale garden. It was the Bourbon rose Rosa ‘Reine Victoria’. On a lark I brought a bloom into the house and scanned it on my Epson flatbed. I might have simply had beginner’s luck (one that has persisted until now) because the resulting image was astounding to my eyes. I decided then that this method of scanning flowers from my garden doing them at 100%  size, writing the date of the scan and being careful to be as accurate as I could with the colour would be an asset if comparing notes with a gardener abroad.

Through the years many of beloved roses have come and gone. Three years ago when me moved to our present Kitsilano location we had 85 old and English Roses. But we had grown at least 125 during those years and those roses had given up the ghost. Rosa ‘Reine Victoria’ did just that.

Now as the scanning season is upon us (note the two rhododendron scan’s in today’s blog I have come to the realization that roses have something in common with cats.

Whenever one of our cats has died I have discovered that the quickest “relief/cure” is a brand new one. It seems that cats, perhaps more so than humans are closer to that Platonic world of Ideas where everything we see in our troubled and imperfect world reflects and absolute and perfect idea. A cat represents catness.  A new cat has something of the old dead cat that is carried over.

Many of my long gone roses can never be replaced. The garden industry has retracted and choices are fewer. But just like our new cats, Niño and Niña represent themselves and our cats that came before them, somehow, my scan of a rose, a rose I no longer have, gives me the comfort that I have some of it not only in my memory but the stored scan has something of the rose's soul.

Rhododendron augustinii 'Marion MacDonnell'