Saturday, November 01, 2025

 

Frequently here I harp how our ability to associate disparate things is what makes us human. Since my Rosemary died on December 9 2020, just about everything I look at, listen to, smell or remember, connects me immediately with her.

In the mailbox today was this unusually nice catalogue called Bits and Pieces. We have been getting it in the mail for many years. Rosemary and I would go over it and look for Christmas gifts for our daughters and granddaughters. I would particularly look for a Christmas-themed jigsaw puzzle as we all love to put them together during that season.

The Bits and Pieces immediately linkked to my past when my mother, father and I would put together our English castle “rompecabezas”.  

There is a deep melancholy in me today as I think that all those moments will never return.                                     

Thursday, October 30, 2025

 Pay-Wall Free Article on Halloween from the NY Times

Yarilo concert at Orpheum Annex 31 October 

 

This 83-year old has been learns stuff every day because of a long gone friend, Mark Budgen. Over 28 years ago I used to buy the NYTimes every once in a while at a store on Granville and Broadway. Budgen told me, “You know you can subscribe to it and that the Globe and Mail will deliver it to your door?”

That began and adventure into learning that I shared with my Rosemary with breakfast in bed until she died five years ago. Now I have an almost lonely breakfast in bed (not quite lonely as I have the company of my cats Niño and Niña).

While my yearly subscription is somewhere near $1700, there is one singular prize to being daily subscribed. Every month I am able to send up to 10 gift pay-wall free links. Unfortunately I cannot put these links into social media but I can email, WhatsApp and Messenger them. One link in one email I can send to as many people I want.

Today’s NYTimes had a lovely two-page on a Halloween themed show at the Metropolitan. As I looked at the illustrations, my idea of what Halloween means to me ran through my mind. Most involve noisy door knocks which always made me go crazy. Luckily my patient Rosemary was always the one who opened the door and handed out the candy.

Because Rosemary and I lived in Mexico City between 1967 to 1975, my memories of El Día de los Muertos are much more pleasant. I miss the pan de muertos that were sold in all bakeries. For years I tried (successfully) to take photographs of my two granddaughters in gruesome death situations with that Mexican theme.

This Halloween I have decided to not be home. I am attending a Yarilo concert at the Orpheum Annex.

 

 

 

 

Wednesday, October 29, 2025

Rosa 'A Shropshire Lad' 20 October 2025

 

Alex, I stumbled across this Williams Caarlos Williams quotation and thought of you, your garden and the role it played in your relationship with Rosemary:  "It's at the edge of a petal that love waits". I'm not at all convinced I know exactly what he was getting at, but I like it.

Yesterday I receive and email by my good friend Dominic Schaeffer. Today at the Sylvia Hotel we met with other 23 artists, writers, photographers, etc and I explained what the Williams quotation would mean to me.

Since the death of my Rosemary now, almost 5 years ago for a while the Kitsilano garden was our garden. Little by little I have slowly given that concept up and the garden is my garden.

There is a problem here which is melancholic and that it that my garden has many of her plants. Some I don’t know how to prune, etc.

Because she was Rosamaría/Rosemary and in 1991 she pressured me to go to a meeting of the Vancouver Rose Society I eventually became a rose enthusiast just like her. Her roses may be my roses now, but when I look at her roses her face is on them.

This morning wanted to show my Portland guest, Curtis Daily how my back lane garden English Rose, Rosa ‘A Shropshire Lad’ seems to be ignoring the coming winter and it has a few solitary blooms and buds that I know will never open. I showed Curtis the one that was open with a bud next to it. It was high on the bush so I used my secateurs and cut below on a branch. It fell to the ground and many of the petals fell out. I told Curtis that I was going to scan it as it was and there would be beauty in it.

A rose before it opens, that bud, that opening rose, that rose that begins to fade and lose it petals, they are all the essence that a rose is. I like to think that the edge, translated to borde (border in English) represents that transition from my very much alive Rosemary, which would be that open rose. As the rose deteriorates just like my Rosemary became very sick, that rose edge was that moment when it was on the rose. When it fell on the ground, the petals became my now gone Rosemary at the moment of her death.

The lovely rose scan now is that Rosemary before those 6 minutes before she died.

Lovely she was even then.

Tuesday, October 28, 2025

Hosta 'Forbidden Fruit' - 28 October 2025

Today I had to scan some more of the beautiful leaves of my Hosta ‘Forbidden Fruit’. I am aware that the bible is not precise on what fruit Adam and Eve was forbidden to eat. This year the best hosta in my garden is my newish Forbidden Fruit. I had to scan it. Emily Dickinson always saves me as she manages to write poems that I can connect to my plant scans or photographs

I looked to find out who had introduced this hosta. What I found is funny as it involves another hosta with a fruit name. 

Hosta 'Forbidden Fruit' was introduced by Marco and Joyce Fransen of Fransen Hostas in the Netherlands. The plant was discovered as an induced mutation of the Hosta 'Orange Marmalade

 

 Sic transit Gloria mundi – Emily Dickinson

Sic transit gloria mundi,

How doth the busy bee —

Dum vivimus vivamus,

I stay mine enemy.

 

Oh, veni, vidi, vici,

Oh, caput, cap-a-pie,

And oh, memento mori

When I am far from thee.

 

Hurrah for Peter Parley,

Hurrah for Daniel Boone,

Three cheers, sir, for the gentlemen

Who first observed the moon.

 

Peter put up the sunshine,

Patti arrange the stars,

Tell Luna tea is waiting,

And call your brother Mars.

 

Put down the apple, Adam,

And come away with me ;

So shall thou have a pippin

From off my father's tree.

 

I climb the hill of science

I 'view the landscape o'er,'

Such transcendental prospect

I ne'er beheld before.

 

Unto the Legislature

My country bids me go.

I 'll take my india-rubbers,

In case the wind should blow.

 

During my education,

It was announced to me

That gravitation, stumbling,

Fell from an apple-tree.

 

The earth upon its axis

Was once supposed to turn,

By way of a gymnastic

In honor to the sun.

 

It was the brave Columbus,

A-sailing on the tide,

Who notified the nations

Of where I would reside.

 

Mortality is fatal,

Gentility is fine,

Rascality heroic,

Insolvency sublime.

 

Our fathers being weary

Lay down on Bunker Hill,

And though full many a morning,

Yet they are sleeping still.

 

The trumpet, sir, shall wake them,

In dream I see them rise,

Each with a solemn musket

A-marching to the skies.

 

A coward will remain, sir,

Until the fight is done,

But an immortal hero

Will take his hat and run.

 

Good-by, sir, I am going —

My country calleth me.

Allow me, sir, at parting

To wipe my weeping e'e.

 

In token of our friendship

Accept this Bonnie Doon,

And when the hand that plucked it

Has passed beyond the moon,

 

The memory of my ashes

Will consolation be.

Then farewell, Tuscarora,

And farewell, sir, to thee.