Rosa 'Olivier Roellinger' 18 August 2021

I have written before about posthumous gifts. One blog was about a gift my mother received when she was a little girl.

The other blogs were about three roses that appeared on my front door in February. Rosemary in October of last year (she died December 9) ordered three roses from Palatine Roses back East. One was the iconic, for us, single yellow Tea Rose Rosa ‘Mrs. Oakley Fisher’. The other were two lookalikes to Mrs. Oakley Fisher but in different colours. You can see here Rosa ‘Olivier Roellinger and the other a pure white Rosa ‘Escimo’. All three were in terrible shape as they may have been left too long in a courier warehouse. The two lookalikes survived and are now nicely vigorous. Oakley Fisher did not. I was heartbroken thinking that here was a posthumous gift from Rosemary to me and that in some way I may have botched.

Rosa 'Escimo' 9 July 2021

Beyond the grave - a posthumous gift Rosemary

Beyond the grave - a posthumous gift my mother

But I found out during the Vancouver Rose Society open gardens in the beginning of June that a nursery in Oregon, Rogue Nursery, carried Mrs. Oakley Fisher and did all the necessary documents so that they would ship to Vancouver. Four very small almost sorry plants arrived a few years ago I will see if next year I might have at least one of them bloom. Should it I would smile.

Meanwhile I am being hit by a terrible fit of depression. I have a couple of high points during the day. One is two walk Niño, my orange and white male cat around the block. The other is my pleasant obsession to do scans of the plants of the garden like the one you see here.

When I saw this bloom today in the bright sunlight I was overcome with love for my wife and I felt her loss but at the same time I felt close to her. Without smelling the rose I could imagine the lovely scent my Rosemary always had. I smiled and I know that she was the first and best gift I ever had.

Now these two pleasant events of the day (there is another of settling down for the night with Niño and Niña on the bed when they compete for getting as close as they can to me) cannot wipe away a feeling so well described with three Spanish words. Two of them were words my grandmother taught me.

Enclenque:   my abuelita used to describe something like a table with one leg not the same length. It meant that one was weak and unbalanced.

Tembleque: Its root is temblor or earthquake so it means shaky.

Desganado:  Ganas is to want to do something. To be desganado is the opposite and it also applies to a lack of appetite and sometimes a wish to be left alone.

All those three feelings at the same time somehow take away any desire to watch a film either on my TV or at a theatre. It prevents me from wanting to ever go to a theater or dance production. I was always accompanied by Rosemary. And I feel the same about concerts. I do not listen to music at home except when I may have a visitor (seldom).

Rosemary and I used to watch Rachel Maddow and CNN because we wanted to know what “barrabasada” (another word my abuelita used which means a disastrous or awful action) Trump was up to.  The news now is not funny in any way so I rarely watch the news.

Sharing breakfast in bed with Rosemary with our New York Times and Vancouver Sun was a daily pleasure. It is not so much alone and I find that I now read the NY Times more quickly. There is little in it besides art news that interests me.

I don't understand why it is that Niño and Niño are so clingy and why Niña, especially, stares at me with sad eyes. Like Rosemary did, I talk a lot to them (in Spanish). I stare back, and wonder how much of a human-like spirit they may have. I know that when I turn off my night table and that I will instantly miss the presence of Rosemary that at the very least these two will be two entities that are alive and I can somehow share my grief with them. They are a comfort.

My pandemicats 

 And so scanning plants and walking Niño do distract me. My daughter Hilary says I must find new or other interests. Perhaps that will happen when I am able to travel again.

I do know that putting the garden to bed in the fall will be a sad situation and I have no idea if the hope of being alive to see it come back in the spring will give me the impetus to soldier on.

A funny P.S. Years ago my Rosemary and our two daughters Alexandra and Hilary and I went to Spain. We rented a car and drove to Málaga from Madrid. We passed by a little town called Tembleque. We all laughed because city hall was crumbling and leaning in one direction.

Rosa 'William Shakespeare 2000' & Helichrysum petiolare 'Lemon Licorice' 15 August 2021

There is a file in an external drive of my computer that is called Plant Scans Since 22 May 2021. Since then I may have amassed at least 150 scans of the plants of my garden. What is the reason for this obsession?

I have pointed out before that men of my preferred sex might want to play golf during the summer. I do not play golf nor do I think this would be a relaxing or soothing pastime in this terrible year.

Scanning my plants is a soothing procedure, as I see very well and I can remove dust spots, etc from my scan with my 17-year-old Photoshop with no trouble.

At first, in 2001 when I accidentally fell into this idea of scanning plants, my intention was one of botanical accuracy. I scanned single plants and flowers and never in conjunction with others. Because there are many plants that I scan, year after year, and I always identify the date, a sort of progress can be observed on how some plants mature. The scans of plants that have died, at least their records, do satisfy me a tad.

What has been different since 22 May, 2021 is that in my constant reminder of having lost my Rosemary on December 9 of last year I see her plants in a most different light.

Consider what happens when I may open our closet and spot one of her dresses. The dress will remind me of her and where we bought it or some special occasion when she wore it.

But a plant in the garden involves knowing that her hands placed that plant there. There is something more intimate (paradoxical as she wore that dress but not the plant) about Rosemary’s hands having been involved.

And looking at those plants and knowing (not always) why she picked them and chose to plant them where she did is a new memory for me. The plant in this blog today, Helichrysum petiolare ‘Lemon Licorice’ is usually called a “filler plant”.  Rosemary would have never used that botanical epithet. She called all these little (many are grey) plants, companions and she put them in pots with other plants like our roses.

So all those scans since May are now usually pairs or even more plants together and I have to admit that I play around more with the placing of the plants on my scanner. I am (!!) getting artsy far…

But I know that any of these images would have made my Rosemary smile with satisfaction knowing, that finally, this idiot had come around to giving her little plants more consideration.

That has been the case.

The story behind me choosing to scan this particular English Rose is that the original one back in our Kerrisdale home was Rosa 'William Shakespeare'. David Austin, the breeder and creator of English Roses since 1968 and now dead considered this plant to be a poor grower. He was right and a couple of ours just died. He re-introduced it as an improved William Shakespeare 2000. Rosemary love the colour and the scent of this rose as I do so we have always had at least one specimen.

And one more thing - hands. My mother had beautiful hands. Her only son inherited them and until I started gardening I had a gentleman's hands. My Rosemary had beautiful hands.When my youngest daughter was born the first statement my mother made of Hilary was, "She has beautiful hands."

When I would show a photograph (that I was very proud of) to Rosemary that I was about to take to Vancouver Magazine's art director Rick Staehling she said once, "Why is that little finger like that? It looks is tension." I ignored her.. Then when I proudly showed Staehling my 8x10 he said, "There is something funny about that finger." So from that point on I listened to Rosemary. 

And thanks to her I believe that my portraits are very good because I always show hands and I display them just the way Rosemary always told me I should.