Quite a few years ago I was driving my car to a magazine assignment when I heard on CBC Radio a Beethoven bagatelle. It was so wonderful that I had to stop and listen to it. As soon as I knew which bagatelle it was I called (an early cell phone) a musical director to tell him. His answer was, “Ah, to listen to something for the first time!” I have never forgotten the sense of longing and loss he inflected on that statement.

Of late I am enthused on what I call my scanner-negative-sandwiches without mayonnaise. I have written about it in these links.

My Excitement at the smell of metal 

Bedazzled 

Perfection is a polished collection of errors 

Uelsmann Inspired

What particularly affects me now is that I am looking at negatives I took years ago and scanning them not knowing exactly what that scan sandwich will look like. Will it work? Or will it not?

It is the unpredictability of the result living in a digital 21^st century where everything is expected to “automatically” be perfect or as a friend of mine likes to say, “It should work.” For me it usually does not.

I will be 80 this year but this new photographic method of mine reminds me of picking up that lovely box in 1958 at my boarding school PX in Austin that had my new Pentacon-F  single lens reflex I had ordered for $100 from Olden Cameras in New York. This was my first really good camera. I kept picking it up and clicking the shutter.

Now I sit in my comfortable oficina with these old negatives and I seem to be seeing them for the first time.

What you see here are two photographs of my Argentine subject Linda Lorenzo posing with a fan and an Argentine mate on the sofa of my Argentine artist friend Nora Patrich.

They dazzle me.

Phlox subulata 'Candy Stripe' & Hosta 'Autumn Frost' - 7 May 2022

In Vancouver I am a member of the Vancouver Rose Society. When Rosemary was alive we were both also members of the Alpine Garden Society.

I am particularly proud of having returned to the fold of the American Hosta Society. I will be presenting a talk on the beauty of the often overlooked hosta flowers at the National Convention in Minneapolis that begins June 8^th. My daughter Hilary, who is not a gardener, but like Rosemary enjoys breakfasts in American hotels, is tagging along. She will find the folks of the society very warm and they will be interested in her expertise on wellness and diet.

What I particularly like about the American Hosta Society is that many of its members are not only interested in the beauty of hostas but they are also interested on the scientific side of botany. One of my special friends is C.H. (Clarence) Falstad. Below you will see the email I sent him today. I wonder what he will reply?

Dear CH,

I remember discussing at length the topic of ultra violet light with Wolfram George Schmid. As a photographer I can tell you that film, video, tv cameras and digital cameras are overly sensitive to the ultra violet spectrum. This is on the opposite end of what we see as humans, those reds, oranges and yellows. We get into differences of opinion when we get into the blue/green side of things. We cannot agree when something is more green than blue. Turquoise is a problem.

As you know Kennedy won the presidency because Nixon did not use makeup. I watched the debate while in my Texas boarding school pool room for juniors and seniors. Kennedy wore pancake makeup invented by Max Factor. He mixed sunblock (blocks UV) with lanolin, perfume and a pink colour.

When I started buying hostas I remember seeing  images of Hosta 'Blue Moon'. It was intensely blue. By then I sort of suspected why.

1. In the shade there is more UV.

2. Photographs were taken with film and perhaps purposely left to look as blue as they were not.

Schmid and  could not decide if blue hostas had that colour in order to repel  what could be damaging sunlight UV. What do you know about this?

When I was about to get my right eye cataract removed a Portland friend told me that cataracts affected how we perceive colour. One sunny day as I was driving I looked at some clouds. When I closed my right eye the cloud was whiter. It was then that I noticed that our bedroom doors were not light ivory but white!

A few days later, while in my garden I noticed how suddenly Hosta 'Autumn First Frost' was an unearthly blue. Because of my previous cataract the yellow made that hosta look less blue.

I am enclosing a scan of Hosta 'Autumn Frost' I did today. I purposely added blue to the scan and modified by doing so the pinkness of the phlox. And yet that hosta does not look as blue as it does to my eye on my deck. Any theories?

What do you think?

Alex

Taraxicum officianalis 6 May 2022

My grandmother used to repeat to me often about her plan to live long by telling me, “Mala yerba no muere.”  This translates to, “Bad weeds don’t die.”

There is a conflict between languages here. A yuyo in Argentina is a noxious weed. A yerba is not quite a weed as that is what Argentines call Ilex paraguariensis or yerba mate.

My gente fina  Rosemary(a lesser way of saying she was a a snob) did not accept weeds in our garden. Especially verboten was Taraxicum officianalis (the common dandelion). I had to remove it from our lawn. In the late 80s and early 90s we discriminately used weed killers that are now not available. Roundup is a known carcinogen. We simply did now how toxic they were.

 

April 12 2018

I bought a safe weed killer tool that Rosemary would ask me to take to our Alexandra’s garden in Lillooet. I found pleasure in using it. There are two scans at the bottom.

Now, I kind of wonder about them (weeds and "evil" plant insects). I don’t kill slugs (they eat my hostas). When I see them I pick them up and move them away from my hostas.

Sinapsis arvensis - 6 May 2022

And today I looked at the many dandelions on our lane. Rosemary disliked our Kits home because she said that the lane was not neat, tidy and free of weeds like our former lane in Kerrisdale.

I wrote about dandelions before here.

I discovered (using Rosemary’s penchant for looking at small flowers) how lovely they are and I decided to scan them.

People define weeds in many ways. Prolific plants that take over for me are weeds and Rosemary planted fennel everywhere. She did the same with a purple Anthriscus.

 

Anthriscus sylvestris 'Raven's Wing'

One weed she readily accepted was Nepeta faassenaii or catmint. She planted it in our lane garden. When she did her reduced weeding in the lane, she was always accompanied by Niño and Niña. They liked their catnip.

Rosa 'Gertrude Jekyll' & Niño and Niña's Nepeta faassenii 23 May 2021

Today as I was scanning the dandelions I noticed a tall plant growing with one of my potted roses. I took a picture and sent it to my daughter Alexandra who told me that it came from seeds in the horse manure she brought for me in early spring. It is common mustard or Sinapsis arvensis. While synapse and sinapsis both come from Greek they are not related. It would seem that the Greeks knew all about Colman’s Mustard before the Brits.

Santiago Ramón y Cajal proposed that neurons are not continuous throughout the body, yet still communicate with each other, an idea known as the neuron doctrine. The word "synapse" was introduced in 1897 by the English neurophysiologist Charles Sherrington in Michael Foster's Textbook of Physiology. Sherrington struggled to find a good term that emphasized a union between two separate elements, and the actual term "synapse" was suggested by the English classical scholar Arthur Woollgar Verrall, a friend of Foster. The word was derived from the Greek synapsis (συνάψις), meaning "conjunction", which in turn derives from συνάπτεὶν (συν ("together") and ἅπτειν ("to fasten"))

Wikipedia

 

Rosemary at the Hotel Claridge - Buenos Aires - 23 March 2017

Bougainvillea glabra 5 May 2022

On 23 March 2017 Rosemary and I were in Buenos Aires. We stayed in our usual downtown hotel, the Claridge. But his time we were accompanied by our youngest granddaughter Lauren.

Lauren at the Hotel Claridge with Sergio Margherich - 23 May 2017

We especially liked the Claridge because we had made friends in previous trips with the friendly staff. It was still hot in March so we made good use of the pool. It was there that Rosemary admired the Bougainvillea. 

Rosemary was not the kind of gardener that wanted a garden that was all stops for a summer. She liked to have plants that bloomed in other times of the year. 

Bougainvillea glabra 12 November 2021

When Alexandra visited us for Easter I noted to her that Rosemary’s Bouganvillea glabra was in bloom in the guest room. I told her I had to scan it and write a blog. I forgot and today when Hilary came for a visit I showed her the plant that had two remaining blooms. I cut the branch and that is one of the scans you see here. Note that the dried flowers that fell off look awfully nice. And yet when I checked my past scans I found out that it had been in bloom on 12 November.

Bougainvillea glabra 5 May 2022

Rosemary’s ever blooming bougainvillea makes me smile but I feel sad that she is not around to see it.

After our dinner today I took Hilary home, and when I returned, I decided to give the bougainvillea another go. By the time I had it ready one of the two blooms fell off.

Somehow that single flower is a testament that Rosemary was always into the details and that one single flower would have been enough for her. It was and is for me.

Bougainvillea glabra and Hosta 'Hirao Majesty' 12 November 2021