Photograph and scan 28 December 2024

 

Living alone with two cats now since my Rosemary died on December 9 2024 is a constant trip through pleasant memory and an unpleasant grief that does not diminish with time.

Advice of creating projects of distractions from friends and family who have not been married to a partner for 52 years, does not help. They will never understand.

I don’t drink and I don’t do drugs of any kind (except very large mugs of very strong black tea). I have come to understand that I cannot escape but I can channel my grief by writing these blogs and finding ways of associating my plant scans and photographs with the Rosemary of my memory.

In the last few months I have put emphasis on using my scanner as a tabletop camera. Today I photographed the Camellia sasanqua ‘Yuletide’ with a Poinsettia (Euphorbia pulcherrima, is the botanical name) and added the last photograph of Rosemary and me taken in August 2020. I could have placed the photograph as is right here.

It simply was more fun to incorporate that picture of Rosemary with braids that I took so many years ago and I had forgotten. I simply do not remember her ever having braids.

My Rosemary surprised me at all times when alive, and now dead, she keeps on giving me.