Rosa 'Souvenir du Docteur Jamain' - 1 June 2026

This past Saturday and Sunday I opened my garden to the Vancouver Rose Society. My Rosemary and I did this every year and we also began opening our garden in Kerrisdale from the early 90s. People from the US would come in buses to see it.

This time many of my invited friends came, but only 10 members of the Vancouver Rose Society showed up. What this means is that I will be eating my homemade cucumber sandwiches, my youngest daughter Hilary’s cookies for days. This morning I heated the Mexican hibiscus tea (agua de Jamaica) for breakfast instead of my normal black tea.

The Vancouver Rose Society has Victorian era standards of what makes an ideal rose for a rose show or to bring it to a meeting. It has to be pristine and perfect. I am slightly at odds as I also like a rose that is past its prime. An example of this is illustrating this blog.

I did remove as many yellow white spot leaves from my roses for days. I get little black spot as I spray my roses in early spring with copper sulphate. This is allowed as it does not affect insects or pollute the environment. As I did this I was pushed to do as perfect a job as possible by that Rosemary that is always there when I am in the garden that I used to call our garden.