Left - Rosa 'Darcey Bussell' - Right - Rosa 'Benjamin Britten' and bottom - Rosa 'Dr. Huey' 7 May 2025

Rosa 'Benjamin Britten' 7 May 2026

La Luvia – Jorge Luís Borges

Bruscamente la tarde se ha aclarado

Porque ya cae la lluvia minuciosa.

Cae o cayó. La lluvia es una cosa

Que sin duda sucede en el pasado.

Quien la oye caer ha recobrado

El tiempo en que la suerte venturosa

Le reveló una flor llamada rosa

Y el curioso color del colorado.

Esta lluvia que ciega los cristales

Alegrará en perdidos arrabales

Las negras uvas de una parra en cierto

Patio que ya no existe. La mojada

Tarde me trae la voz, la voz deseada,

De mi padre que vuelve y que no ha muerto.

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet". Spoken by Juliet in Romeo and Juliet (Act 2, Scene 2)

My Rosemary introduced me (almost gently) to her interest in roses. Her favourites were the red roses. Before she made me become a member of the Vancouver Rose Society I was one of those stupid men who would buy long stem red roses (that never had any scent) for her birthday. I soon learned about the old roses of other centuries and the David Austin’s English roses that looked like old roses.

Today these three red roses were in bloom. One of them I call an interloper with a will to live. Rosemary after we moved to Kitsilano would often go to our old Kerrisdale garden ( I never had the heart to go with her). One day she brought a red rose from our lane. I told her that we never had a red rose there. I explained that some rose we had planted there died but the root stock persevered. For many years roses were sold that were grafted to a sturdy stock called Rosa ‘Doctor Huey’.

'Dr. Huey' is a highly vigorous, dark red, semi-double climbing rose (Hybrid Wichurana) introduced in 1920, widely known as the primary rootstock for grafted roses in North America. It is notoriously prone to black spot and powdery mildew, blooms once in early spring, and frequently overtakes the grafted rose, leading to its reputation as a common, unintended garden resident. Wikipedia

I now consider this rose very special for its connection with my Rosemary.

The Borges poem is called The Rain and it has an impossible to translate line that is almost an alliterarion. It works because in Spanish we have two words for red (besides carmín) and they are rojo and colorado. In my native Argentina those of high society never use rojo but colorado. They say that rojo is “low class”.