Friday, May 07, 2021

 

Pamela Frost with Arisaema candidissimum - Rosemary - Photograph Ale Waterhouse-Hayward

Paris quadrifolia, the herb-paris or true lover's knot, is a species of flowering plant in the family Melanthiaceae. It occurs in temperate and cool areas throughout Eurasia, from Spain to Yakutia, and from Iceland to Mongolia. It prefers calcareous soils and lives in damp and shady places, especially old established woods and stream banks. P. quadrifolia is in decline in Europe due to loss of habitat. In Iceland, for example, it is on the red list. 

Wikipedia

Paris quadrifolia May 7 2021

 

If you tried to find this plant in any Vancouver Lower Mainland nursery your chances would be worse than slim. That interest in gardening of the 90s has been severely diminished as people gravitate to small gardens and condominiums.

When Rosemary started gardening in earnest, when we moved from Burnaby to our large corner house in Kerrisdale in 1986, she dragged me (I did not protest much) along. I am glad she did. Gardening became a joint passion for both of us.

My mother and my Rosemary got along famously until my mother’s death in 1972. One of their bonds is that both had an exceptional good taste for everything, from music, to clothing, manners and just about everything else.

I would assert that both women were snobs. My mother used to say in Spanish to me quite often, “Hay poca gente fina como nosotros.” This translates to something like, “There are few people as well-mannered and with good taste as we.”

With that idea that my Rosemary was a garden snob I would like to bring in to this another woman, Pamela Frost who has perhaps the loveliest garden in Vancouver. Her garden, on Elm Street is understated as snobbish gardens are never over-colourful. Many of the plants in Frost’s garden she planted from seed many years ago. On of my faves is her species rhododendron Rhododendron decorum whose flowers smell of ripe watermelon. Below Frost's Rhododendron decorum.

 

A week ago I saw Paris quadrifolia flowering in my garden. But I did not remember its name. Then Id did with the help of Graeme who works at Southland’s Nursery. Is this the kind of plant that would be noticed by anybody except by a snob? It is not an easy plant to grow. As I looked at it I thought what makes a garden snob a snob? I believe it has to do with an inherent good taste for visual beauty that is not overly showy. If the plant is rare, difficult to find and grow, that makes it all the better.

But there is another quality that I think garden snobs have. Everybody else (me as an example) will spot a beautiful tree, a large old rose specimen, a big hosta but how many will note the little plants in a garden perhaps hidden by other plants or in deep shade?

It is that attention to the little detail in a garden that made my Rosemary the snob that she was.  She died December 9, 2020.

I will do my best to continue this family trait and I hope that some day soon someone might say to me, “You are a snob.”

Tuesday, May 04, 2021

 

Rosa 'Leander' May 4 2021

 

Looking at my potted roses on the deck I noticed that the English Rose Rosa ‘Leander’ had an open bloom that was hidden by leaves. It probably opened on May 2. It caught me by surprise. Of this rose I have written here. 

Leander was one of our first English Roses in our old garden in Kerrisdale. We probably got it in the late 1990s. We moved it to Kits but it died on that first spring. It made Rosemary very sad because English Roses that were introduced years ago are rarely available. Her friend Mary last year brought a rose that she thought was Leander. It was and it made Rosemary supremely happy. 

There is a belief among Aboriginal Canadians that if one survives a winter one can hope for another year of existence come spring. I wrote about that here. I smile as I look at my Leander but I am also instantly sad that Rosemary did not survive the winter of 2020 to see one of her fave roses in bloom. 

There is a thought that does make me smile. I believe I may have been Leander to Rosemary's Hero.

Monday, May 03, 2021

 

 It is not becoming any easier these days to sit at my computer to write a blog. The pandemic isolation and living without my Rosemary follows me with melancholy from day to day. Days pass by quickly and the only routines are the daily menialities and the cats staring at me at all times.  They make me feel guilty that I have to give them even more attention to them.

But my eldest daughter Ale in Lillooet calls me every day and Hilary not only calls, but because she lives in Burnaby, she manages to visit me twice a week. It is a pleasure to cook for her and sit down for a meal with her company.

But I have found another activity that has prevented me from feeling what the woman may have been feeling when I photographed her years ago in front of the Vancouver General Hospital for a story on the lack of beds. It is one of the saddest photographs I have ever taken.

 

 

But then I look at this 2020 photograph of Rosemary in our Kitsilano garden and I can almost smile. She does represent a sort of small future for me to continue without having to hold my hands up to my face.

I will be opening the little garden at the end of May or early June for the Vancouver Rose Society. I am making the garden, Rosemary’s garden as spiffy as I can. As I work in it every day there are the little details of some of her little plants in little corners and sometimes in little pots. 

 

 

This Narcissus bulbocodium (sometimes called the petticoat daffodil) caught my eye today. While I have some tiny hostas I tend to like big hostas and big rose shrubs. Somehow Rosemary had an eye for  little and elegant plants.

I can almost smile at the thought.