This week my Rosemary has been in Lillooet with our daughter Ale, helping her in the garden. I am going to finally pick her up this Sunday 14^th of June. I spend the days not wanting to read the repetitive articles of my NY Times and Vancouver Sun and I have been shunning CNN and MSNBC for the same reason.

Our cats, Niño and Niña must know something is afoot as they cling to me, follow me everywhere and seem to want to eat all the time.

Our garden has been seen by members of the Vancouver Rose Society so the only work to be done now is clean-up and the deadheading of the roses. It is about now that I must look at my once blooming roses (which are much too tall) and consider how much I should prune them. Unlike remontant roses (those that bloom more than once) once-blooming roses must be pruned after they bloom.

And, because nobody will be coming to the garden in the next while, I feel tempted (and do succumb) to cutting a large display of a rose like the one here of Rosa ‘Westerland’. I have many scans of this lovely rose (with that synthetic apricot jam scent) throughout season’s past and this one. Did I need to cut this bouquet? 

My initial reason for scanning our roses and other plants was a form of accurately documenting the plants of the garden. Many of our roses have died so my scans are a comforting record of how they graced our garden en gave us pleasure.

But more worrying is this scan of a rose with a hosta leaf. Is this all about accuracy and record? Or is it a futile attempt at being artistic?