My Suspect Absolutism
Saturday, May 31, 2025
 | | Hosta 'Neptune' 31 May 2025 photograph Fuji X-E3 |
 | | Rosa 'Sombreul' & Hosta 'Netptune' 31 May 2025 - scan |
It was about 11 years ago the my Rosemary told me, “Alex
you cannot keep going to Argentina and bribing officials at the airport not to X-ray
your film. You must get a digital camera.” This I did and Jeff Gin at Leo’s
Camera sold me a Fuji X-E1. Since then I purchased an X-E3 and now I shoot both
film and digital.
It may have been sometime in 1991 when Rosmary told me we
were going to a meeting of the Vancouver Rose Society at VanDusen’s Floral Hall. I told her, “Why have you
brought me here to sit on an uncomfortable chair and look at 100 bad rose
projected slides?"
It was then when I decided I would never actually photograph
individual plants but only their overall presence in the garden.
By 2001 I had, on a fluke of inspiration inspired by summer
boredom, that I scanned my first rose.
Now in 2025 I have come to understand that my absolutism is
suspect. Part of this has been the inspiration of using my Jeff Gin gift, a
Lensbaby for my digital camera that produces startling and lovely results.
Today it rained most of the day so few from the Vancouver
Rose Society came to my open garden. Waiting for people that never came I got a
tad sad and decided to putter with my Fuji X-E3 in the garden. I saw a lovely
composition of the striking Hosta ‘Neptune’. It would have been impossible for
me to remove the hosta from the ground and put it on the scanner. I like the
photograph.
Letting go of my absolutism not to photograph individual
plants of my garden further led me to obsessively also scan the hosta.
It was fun and it was a lesson learned. As always somehow close my blogs – Rosemary would
have smiled.  | | scan |
 | | Photograph |
 | | Photograph |
 | | scanned as slides with scanner lid down |
 | | Hosta 'Halcyon' - photograph - 31 May 2025 |
The Garden Is As Perfect As It Will Ever Be
Friday, May 30, 2025
 | | 30 May 2025 |
My grandmother, María de los Dolores Reyes de Iruteta Goyena
often told me that my grandfather, Don Tirso de Irureta Goyena had a
cleanliness obsession. She explained, but I never quite understood, that he
would polish the bamboo floors with a coconut husk. She said that I had inherited from my grandfather as I have always been keen on household cleanliness.
My mother inherited that little obsession but she did not
quite have to exercise it as in Buenos Aires we had a live-in housekeeper
called Mercedes Basaldúa.
When Rosemary and I
were married in Mexico City, we were both teachers and we did have a live-in
housekeeper who spent most of her time taking care of our first daughter
Alexandra. I did the cleaning.
It was Hilary, our youngest daughter, who pointed out today
that while Rosemary never did like to clean the exception was always when we
were going to have visitors. Because tomorrow and Sunday I am opening the
garden to the Vancouver Rose Society, Rosemary’s spirit commanded me to clean
the whole house after spending many hours making the garden as perfect as
possible.
The garden visit protocol is the attendees do not use the
facilities unless it is an emergency and do not enter the house. But it might
be raining tomorrow so my cucumber sandwiches, special iced, and Hilary’s
sweets might have to put in our dining room table.
The house is clean so I am not worried.
Niña is shy but Niño will be my company during the day.
Rosemary’s presence will be strong.
A Lovely Accident
Thursday, May 29, 2025
 | | Rosa 'Westerland' 29 May 2025 |
Since my Rosemary and I started opening our garden in the
beginning of the 90s we were both obsessed on making the garden as perfect as
we could. I would be instructed to mow the lawn a few days before the opening
as she thought it displayed no class to make the lawn look like it was just
mowed. Then she would cut the edge of the lawn at the flower beds with scissors.
We would make the round of nurseries to buy plants
(many were annuals) to fill in the holes. She never skimped on spending.
Now alone, without her to guide me, I have been filling
those holes and spending money, knowing that she would approve.
Because the members of the Vancouver Rose Society are coming
this weekend to see the garden I have been at it all day removing yellow or
black spot leaves from my roses and cutting off hosta leaves that have been
consumed by hungry slugs.
But I must point out that roses have a self-defence
mechanism in which when I am doing my preening the thorns get caught to my
shirt, pants, hands and sometimes my face. I am unable to use gloves as I want
to feel what I am doing.
There is something that happens, not too often, which is as
I move into my roses some of the stalks get caught and when I move they bend. I
can hear that awful snap.
Today I was using string and nails on the fence to bring in
the rose shrubs that stick out and might prevent my garden visitors from moving
around.
While stringing Rosa ‘Westerland’ I heard that snap. What
bent ws a bloom not quite open with two buds.
What could I do?
I decided to write about it.
Pink - Small & Punctual - Emily Dickinson
 | | Rosa 'Scepter'd Isle' & small rose Rosa 'Queen of Sweden' 29 May 2025 |
Pink—small—and punctual— Emily Dickinson
1332
Pink—small—and punctual— Aromatic—low—
Covert—in April—
Candid—in May—
Dear to the Moss—
Known to the Knoll—
Next to the Robin
In every human Soul—
Bold little Beauty
Bedecked with thee
Nature forswears
Antiquity—
My Rosemary often told me that I bought too many pink
roses. But I mostly ignored her and kept at it. The roses in this scan have an
interesting history particularly the myrr scented Rosa ‘Scepter'd Isle’ It is contained
in John of Gaunt’s speech in Shakespeare’s Richard II.
“This royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Fear’d by their breed and famous by their birth,
Renowned for their deeds as far from home,
For Christian service and true chivalry,
As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry
Of the world’s ransom, blessed Mary’s Son,
This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it,
Like to a tenement or pelting farm:
England, bound in with the triumphant sea,
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds:
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life,
How happy then were my ensuing death!”
―
William Shakespeare, Richard II
The other rose, Rosa ‘Queen of Sweden’ I paid $125 at a
Vancouver Rose Society auction. I really wanted it. When I brought it home I
found out I already had one. I have two of them.
Rosemary would forgive me and smile. More Emily Dickinson When everything that ticked has stopped More Emily Dickinson blogs Doubly Grateful A Slash of Blue
For I - inhabit Her In Ceaseless Rosemary The Morns are meeker A Favourite Just Noticed All the Witchcraft that we need It only gives our wish for blue My heart is laden Of bronze and blaze The red and the white A Lady Red Hands I took my power in my hands That clarifies the sight Nature rarer uses yellow
Rosemary white and a bit of yellow Nature rarer uses yellow Luck is not chance T is iris sir The white heat
I tried to be a rose nature rarer uses yellow The Tulip Nor would I be a poet November left then clambered up
You cannot make remembrance grow
November
the maple wears a gayer scarf
A melancholy of a waning summer
Just as green and as white
It's full as opera
I cannot dance upon my Toes
a door just opened on the street
Amber slips away
Sleep
When August burning low
Pink Small and punctual
A slash of blue
I cannot dance upon my toes
Ah little rose
For hold them, blue to blue
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