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| Top - Rosa 'Susan Williams-Ellis' and Rosa 'Darcey Bussell' 9 October 2026 |
This year I
will do little which is my usual case. Hostas in flower beds get mulched for
spring by the yellowing leaves of fall.
This year my
roses, especially Rosa ‘A Shropshire Lad” seem to be ignoring the season.
Yesterday I scanned these two roses with an acer (maple) leaf I found outside the
house of my Welsh neighbours the Galsworthys (I had to look the plural form).
It would
seem that fall is a time when many of us reflect. I reflect. I wonder if I will
live to see another fall.
In the many
years Rosemary and I lived in Mexico City (8) and 9 without her we never
experienced falling leaves as in Mexico the seasons are a dry one and a rainy
one. Falling leaves in Vancouver give me nostalgia for Buenos Aires falls.
Fall is when
I put all my long-sleeved flannel shirts in the wash. I often tell my friends
that Julio Cortázar’s protagonist (readers say he was that) in Hopscotch
(Rayuela) is having a cold winter in Paris so he buys a flannel lumberjack
shirt that Cortázar calls – una canadiense.
In Spanish nationalities are never capitalized.
Whenever I
see a red rose in my garden I think of a line from my favourite Jorge Luís
Borges poem La lluvia (in Spanish the first word in a title is capitalized then
no more.
La lluvia – 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.
The line - Le reveló una flor llamada rosas y el curioso
color del colorad – Translates to - A flower
was revealed named a rose and the curious color that red is – does not have the
lovely alliteration it has in Spanish.
The poem is an extremely sad one of going back to his
childhood home and somehow hearing the voice of his dead father.
These fall days fill my memory and I see the faces of all my
friends and family that are no longer with me. I grieve and only know that my oblivion
will take care of that.
I find myself saying out loud – rosa – Rosamaría – Rosemary. As in Borges’ patio I, too can hear the voice of my loved one.