A few of my friends and members of my family know that I was born in Buenos Aires at the Sanatorio Anchorena on August 31, 1942 in spite that all my documents including my birth certificate state April 18, 1943. Legally I am almost a year younger. My mother told me my father forgot to register me. I don’t exactly buy that as the hospital would initiate that process.

But my legal birthday has made it impossible to forget my Rosemary’s real birthday which is tomorrow.

And because you can never deny a person’s request on their birthday (particularly when it is my wife) we went to Garden Works on Lougheed Highway (one of the best nurseries in the Lower Mainland) today. I took my umbrella. And of course, Rosemary bought plants that she says will go in a pot or pots. I purchased three miniature hostas (after all it is my legal birthday).

In the nursery I found this sensational (a word very much used, nicely, by my friend Sean Rossiter, now gone) Camellia japonica ‘MonBella’. To me it looks like a complex old rose. Like most camellias it has no scent.