Rosa 'Bathsheba' & Hosta 'Forbidden Fruit' 19 July 2023

Joan Didion famously said, ““I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” She is my literary mentor so I have managed to write 5855 blogs since I began in January 2006. 

These days with the knowledge that my male cat Niño has terminal cancer and might survive, perhaps a couple of years, my thoughts are a tad dark while I reflect on the loss of my wife Rosemary. All that, develops in me a writer’s blog block.

Fuji X-E3

But I have been saved. This is not one of my regular blogs. Brenda Viney, an extremely active member of the Vancouver Rose Society, has been gently (very gently) nagging me to write something for the Vancouver Rose Society. This is it.

It was sometime in 1987 that my Rosemary persuaded me (not so gently) to accompany her to a meeting of the Vancouver Rose Society at the Floral Hall at VanDusen Botanical Garden. I sat on an uncomfortable chair and was forced to watch over 100 bad slides of roses. Since that day, while I eventually shared my Rosemary’s love of roses, I swore to avoid taking photographs of them. Beginning in the  the summer of 2001 I have been scanning them.

Today, 19 July, 2023 I could not resist grabbing my camera when I saw the English Rose, Rosa ‘Bathsheba’ flowering very close to Hosta ‘Forbidden Fruit’.

I don’t consider (thanks to Rosemary) the plants in my garden to be standout specimen plants. I see them as companions to other plants. Obviously these two go well together.

This last year I have been obsessively scanning my roses with hosta leaves. 

And so here you have one of my rare photographs of a rose and a scan of the same combination.

Brenda, please nag me (gently) soon to write another one of these.

Rosa 'Bathsheba' & Hosta 'Hirao Majesty' 4 July 2023

Rosa 'Bathsheba' & Hosta 'Halcyon'21 June 2022

 

Rosa 'Bathsheba' & Rosa 'Emily Louise' 23 September 2021