Rosa 'Emily Carr' 9 June 2025

In that far gone 20th century when I was not only a photographer but also a writer, there were two trends in writing that competed with each other. One of them was to write as objectively as possible and the other with personal opinion.

For the previous method my writer friend Les Wiseman had a system for writing profiles. He would get quotes from family, friends and media. He would then place them on the floor and he would randomly pick them and insert them in his profile.

I was never able to write objectively as my opinions and my tendency to associate the one with the other prevented me from it.

When I was sent by a local travel magazine to Cancún (as a writer and photographer as they liked to save on that other air fare) it was impossible for me to write about the place without mentioning I had lived in Mexico for 25 years and that I spoke Spanish.

I have now written 6742 blogs (not including this one) and from the beginning in 2006 it was all about my personal experience.

Consider the rose scan for this blog. I could just place it and then underneath lift from a garden webpage who hybridized it, etc. I don’t think that would make my blog one of content.  Important is my association with having grown roses since 1986. Rosemary and I had many red roses. The naming of a rose and its association of the name with one’s experience in life is what makes cultivating that much more interesting than planting penstemons.

Recently a local plant organization asked me to write a monthly essay for their newsletter. I sent them a few of my blogs. I was immediately told that my blogs were much too personal.

I understand but do not accept that. We now live in a society run by emojis and we have hundreds of friends we will never meet. We are symbolically returning to the glory-hole era that began in San Francisco in the 80s.

It was Mexican/Spanish anthropologist Santiago Genvés who in a lecture that Rosemary and I attended in Mexico City  early 70s said, "We must not forget that objectivity is a subjective invention of man". 

When I look at my beautiful Canadian bred Emily Carr I can see in its bright red blooms and green leaves the many of the paintings  I have seen at the Vancouver Art Gallery. I found this rose (introduced in 2007) five years ago at the University of British Columbia's Shop in the Garden attached to its botanical garden. My Rosemary worked there for many years. She would frown if I told her that this lovely rose cannot be found in any local nurseries.