Camellia x williamsii 'Donation' 24 March 2022

My grandmother often quoted St. Luke’s 4-24 in Spanish, “Nadie es profeta en su tierra.” The lovely version in the King James Bible is:

And he said, Verily I say unto you, No prophet is accepted in his own country.

This has been my fate in achieving any kind of artistic success since I can remember having an inkling that I might just be some sort of artist.

Because I am approaching my soon to come (statistically speaking) eventual oblivion, I am putting my house in order.

Almost every day I sort through hundreds of negatives, slides etc. I try to throw away what I deem not important like my many lawyer headshots.

But the conundrum that haunts me are my around 1500 very large file plant scans which I began in 2001. These scans are accurate records (size, colour and date) of the plants that have graced our Kerrisdale garden and now my Kitsilano garden.

I am placing them in two exterior hard drives. Pending are the first three years of the scans which I put into CDs. I have to store the images in those.

On March 24 I finally noticed that my Camellia x wiliamsii ‘Donation’ was finally in bloom. In other years it has bloomed on the 20th and even before (I have those scans in other years with the recorded date).

Donation was Rosemary’s favourite camellia and one of her favourite plants. I smiled when I saw it today and I was quick to scan an open flower and two buds. I also felt the melancholy knowing that my pleasure could not be shared except in those lovely words also recorded by St.Luke, “Do this in remembrance of me.”

As for my plant scans they will be saved and archived as part of my legacy even though I take note of St. Luke’s warning that it might be for naught.