Rosa 'Doctor Huey' 22 May 2026

The Cycles of My Life
 

I recently wrote this blog (link above) about cycles and how we all humans go through them and that they rarely coincide with those of our family and friends.

Today I saw these three blooms of Rosa ‘Doctor Huey”. I have written before how this rose is disparaged by keen rosarians as the good doctor was used as sturdy root stock for grafting on them “better” roses. Rosemary, before she died, brought the rose from our Kerrisdale lane garden (before the house and garden were demolished. I told her that we had never planted a red rose on the lane and explained that a rose had died and Dr. Huey had then prospered.

In this scan you can see the rose just about to be past, the second one, really past and the third on its dying cycle with the petals falling off. If I were to print the scan the members of the Vancouver Rose Society would not quite understand my purpose nor would they see the beauty that I see here. It is as if seeing a compact view of a mature human on their journey to non-existence and oblivion.

Rosa 'Benjamin Britten' 21 May 2026

 Grace Kelly's Neck

Because my mother was a snob (good taste) she took me to see films that she liked. That is how I came to appreciate Joseph Cotten, Lesley Howard, Gregory Peck, Elsa Lanchester, Audrey Hepburn and (AND) Grace Kelly. By the time I saw her last film (The Swan in 1956) I had a complete dislike for that man she married in Monaco.

A couple of months ago I read Susan Sontag’s posthumously published On Women. In it she comes to the conclusion that by 1975 (when she wrote the book) women had not advance much in the world. In a nutshell she wrote that “old men have character and old women are ugly”. I came to the conclusion that not much has changed now in 2026.

Social media is full of photographs that say, “Who is this lovely young girl who became a famous actress? Now that she is 82 you will gag as to how she looks.”

Because Grace Kelly was dear to my heart, I am almost glad that she died before she might have been photographed and be gagging material.

I was much in love with my Rosemary all of the 52 years that we lived together. I found her attractive and we indulged I stuff up until a few months before she died.

I would also assert that my old wife had lots of character.

In a way this scan of the lovely Rosa ‘Benjamin Britten’, one that Rosemary loved reminds me that here is a rose with lots of character.

Rosa 'Reine Victoria' Summer of 2001

 

In 1991 my Rosemary told me, “Alex, tonight we are going to the Vancouver Rose Society meeting at the Floral Hall at the VanDusen Botanical Garde". A few minutes into the meeting I told Rosemary, “I am seeing 100 terrible and boring slides of roses and I am sitting on an uncomfortable chair. Why have you brought me here?” Rosemary persisted and soon I was a happy rose fan and particularly keen on the interesting story of where roses came from and the names they were given.

But I vowed that I would never photograph individual roses and would only photograph the very nice rose beds of our Kerrisdale garden. Then one hot summer day of 2001 I found myself bored and I came up with the idea of placing a rose (Rosa ‘Reine Victoria) on my Epson scanner. Now in 2026 I may have at least 4000 scans of roses and other plants from my garden.

I firmly believe that I must show respect to what a rose is. I like to show it with it leaves. I abhor those macro photographs that isolate roses to the point that even their leaves are not shown. Rugosa roses have interesting leaves and many roses have early new shoots and leaves that are brilliantly red. I think that my scans of roses show that respect I have for their beauty. Rosemary did and would understand to this day. She would smile of this my first plant scan.

And now I must admit that I have photographed roses recently using a device called a LensBaby on my digital camera. The device was given to me by my genius photography friend Jeff Gin who is currently the manager of the Kerrisdale Cameras branch in North Vancouver. I first used the Lensbaby when I went to Venice and Florence with Rosemary. Here is the link below.

Venice and the Lensbaby 

I found a few days ago that by using the Lensbaby and purposely overexposing on a sun drenched roses I achieved something that I really like. 

When I see a pretty, young (about 23) blonde girl with beautiful legs, at my advanced age of 83, there is no lust in my heart. I see her as I first saw Rosemary in December of 1967. I smile but think of my loss and that the moment will never return. Rosemary is gone.

In the last few days I have been reflecting on the idea that we all go through cycles not quite coinciding with that of our friends and family. A young man with a baby in device hanging in front of him reminds me that I did that but in the 70s our daughters where in pack on our backs.

In what may have been my first awareness of death, it happened when I was five, and taking a tub bath in Buenos Aires around 1948. I was playing with a little toy and when my mother drained the tub I forgot about the toy and saw it (too late to retrieve it) go down the drain. I cried and my mother told me she would get another one. I shouted back, “I want that one!”

Returning from my daily (weather permitting) bike ride when I was almost home I spotted these three dolls which had a sign that said “free”. I immediately thought of my daughters (now 55 and 58) as little girls and what may have happened to the toy dolls we bought for them. Would they remember what they were like?

I was saddened by this cycle and wondered almost as if the dolls were people, if they know not what their fate might be. If someone takes them home will the little girl, or girls who get them, think of where they may have come from?

I was raised as a little boy in Buenos Aires, very much a macho culture, so I was given toy soldiers and cap pistols to play with. It was when our granddaughters Rebecca and Lauren were born that I first had the chance to be a man and yet play with toy dolls. I bought them many of them. Finding little dresses for Rebecca and Lauren to wear was much like dressing up dolls.

It is amazing how those three dolls – free - brought me this shower of autobiographical memories. Sad but happy, too.

16 May 2026

When possible even when I feel lazy I go out in my bike (it has only 3 speeds) and go to Jericho Beach. There is a park on Point Grey Road where I stop to take a photograph with my Fuji X-E3. When I did so this day I had two thoughts. The first one is that somehow by underexposing my shot one stop the sky looks like it has been polarized by having a polarizing filter. I used to use these filters a lot with film but never with a digital camera.

That other thought is, of course, of my Rosemary who brought us from Mexico City in 1975. In a few years, thanks to her forward vision I became an established photographer and by the 90s I was emulating my journalist father.

The view of our skyline is far enough that one could almost (not quite) believe it was that friendly 1975 Vancouver. 

 

Easter - Burnaby 1977

 Julian Barnes - Death & the Lemon Table

I have something of those Canadian Monarch Butterflies and birds that fly south. They guide themselves by locations on the way in their memory. Like those butterflies and birds wherever I drive in Vancouver I remember, “I went with Rosemary here.” It is an inescapable thought somehow connected to the Julian Barnes concept of IAM which stands for Involuntary Autobiographical Memory. These memories will not stop.

What that means is that I am constantly thanking Rosemary for her vision and I do not take for granted that I live in a pretty stable part of the world.

I look at the photograph I took of my family in our home in Burnaby at Easter 1977 and I almost smile. It is a moment that will never come back although Jorge Luís Borges had something to say about first times. He said that those exact first times are repeated in our memory ad infinitum. I can only add that few of us (or at least this guy) never did think when I was taking such photographs that I would be looking back at that moment. We anticipate a future of activities but never the future of looking back at a past.