Monday, June 16, 2025

Rosa 'Bill's Rose' 16 June 2025

 

No matter what I am doing, having breakfast in bed, going out in my bike, feeding my cats, deadheading my roses, writing a blog, scanning a plant or just lying on my bed staring at the ceiling it all boils down to thinking about my loss of not having Rosemary with me. We were together for 52 years. 

 

Hydrangea macrophylla 'Eclipse' 16 June 2025

“Till death do us part,” for me now has a different meaning. We do in Canada sometimes humorously talk about “our better half”.  I have come to see in that expression and the word part (it can also mean to cut in half) the idea that I was whole only when Rosemary was with me. How can one survive with half a body? That is a conundrum to which I have found no solution.

I am constantly thinking about Rosemary’s qualities. When she was around being in the garden was a pleasant shared experience. Except for those two days a couple of weeks ago when some (not many) members of the Vancouver Rose Society came view my garden, I mostly spend time alone in the garden but at least in the company of Niño and Niña.

I want to use the word finesse to describe Rosemary’s views in garden plants and how she used them to make our garden what it became and somehow some of her remains in my lonely Kitsilano garden.

On a positive note I will place here some scans that represent Rosemary’s finesse.

 

Rosa 'Souvenir du Docteur Jamain' 12 June 2025

 A few months ago I found a Hydrangea macrophylla ‘Eclipse’ that Rosemary would have urged us to buy. Why? It is a plant that has lovely but slightly insignificant flowers. That quality that Rosemary would have loved, is the unusual dark purplish leaves.

Another plant that Rosemary adored was Rosa glauca. It has pretty but smallish flowers. Its claim to fame is that its leaves are bluish and the stems are magenta. The glauca in my garden is a hybrid done by my former friend Bill Fosyth. He combined a Rosa glauca with Rosa ‘Dainty Maid’. Not too many in Vancouver have this glauca that manages to have slightly larger blooms.

And lastly in the last few weeks I have been scanning my roses when they are past it. It is difficult as they lose their leaves when I place them in my scanner. Somehow, to me there is a beauty in these scans that surely Rosemary would love.