Rosa 'Charles de Mills' 7 Hosta ' Snake Eyes' - 24 May 2024

The dates for these scans do not match the blog date. I am filling holes I left from a few days back.
 

It is increasingly becoming more difficult for me to talk to people as few are interested in my constant thoughts on philosophy, my melancholy over the death of my Rosemary or in any of my photographic experiments including my plant scans.

It is obvious to me that I am in a situation of waiting. The phone will not call for an offer of a magazine assignment. I am not waiting for that. I wait every day for a reason to keep existing. My younger daughter advises me to keep quiet about all the above as she says nobody will want to hear from me.

I remember that day in 1966 in Buenos Aires when at the Buenos Aires Zoo in my navy uniform I was sitting in front of the tiger cage (my fave) reading a Time Magazine that had on its cover, “Is God Dead?” I believe that they should have followed it with, “Is Philosophy Dead?”

My younger daughter further advises me to keep busy and find distractions. She is partially right as particularly now my garden is a riot of blooming roses and I want to scan them. With those scans saved in two separate exterior hard drives I wonder what will become of them? There may be over 3000. Many are roses that died and others of roses that I keep scanning every year throughout the season.

It was in 2001 when I began this process. At first I thought of the botanical value of accurate scans, 100% size, the date and colour.

I have large inkjet prints in my living room and bedroom. When people see them they tell me, “Nice photograph”. I correct them with, “It’s not a photograph. It is a scan. I call them scanographs and that makes me a scanographer.” At that point they turn around a lose interest.

I take comfort in American photographer Garry Winogrand who famously said:

 "I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed," he said. "In the end, maybe the correct language would be how the fact of putting four edges around a collection of information or facts transforms it."

I have fun doing my scans as while after all these years I know what each scan is going to look like I am often surprised.

In the last few years my obsession with scanning accuracy has been transformed by my doing scans not of an individual rose or other plant but combining them as companions. The results are accurate in execution but they have an added quality of artistic.

In this blog I found that one scan was not suffice. The rose in question, Rosa ‘Charles de Mills’ is a very old rose:

Charles de Mills Gallica Rose

Gallicas are probably the earliest roses in cultivation. We know the Greeks and the Romans both cultivated them. Much later, in the 1600's, the Dutch started breeding them, followed by the French.  'Charles de Mills' was introduced 1786. Like so many Gallicas, the blooms are often a mixture of colors from lilac to wine purple, but with magenta predominating. The flowers are large (4 inches across) and very double. In other words, this rose is a show stopper in bloom. There's no need to deadhead, it doesn't repeat, so you and the birds can enjoy the colorful hips come fall and winter.  'Charles de Mills' is large for a Gallica, up to 5 feet, and it suckers, so left unchecked it can easily get 5 feet wide. Give it room in the back of the border or as a specimen. Chicago Botanic Garden

Who was Charles de Mills?

Charles Mills (13 July 1755 – 29 January 1826) was a British Member of Parliament and a Director of the East India Company. He was the second son of the Revd. John Mills, rector of Barford and Oxhill, Warwickshire and educated at Rugby. He was a partner in the private bank Glyn's and from 1785 to 1815 was also a director of the East India Company, before becoming deputy chairman. In 1858, he was one of the EIC directors appointed to the Council of India. Wikipedia

For me what is extra special about this rose is that it is very thin in profile. It resembles a rose that may have had its top shaved!