Hosta 'Joseph' 19 July 2026

Hosta 'Joseph' was introduced by hybridizer Bob Kuk (Kuk's Forest Nursery) and registered in 1990.

With the popularity of variegated hostas, all green ones are not very popular. I actually met Bob Kuk in my first American Hosta Society Convention in Columbus, Ohio in 1991 which is why I bought it. In hosta speak, this hosta has leaves of heavy substance. This means that they are thick and slugs don’t like to chew on them.

Today I noticed that my Joseph, which is in a small pot, had a riot of lovely flowers. Since few I know will be coming to my garden these days I decided to cut them all. I did so and kept their long scapes (hosta stems) so that I could lean them over my scanner.

Members of the AHS eschew hosta flowers. Thanks to Rosemary teaching me to notice details I love hosta flowers. As for the shiny dark green leaves I believe Kermit would adore them.

Hostas -  18 July 2026

Crambe maritima & Rosa 'Oliver Roellinger' 18 July 2026

The powdery blue coating on hostas is naturally called leaf wax or leaf bloom. In botany, plants with this type of dusty, waxy coating are described as glaucous. Hostas don't actually have blue pigment. The leaves are naturally green, but this waxy layer reflects light in a way that gives the plant its distinct blueish-gray hue. Plant Delights Nursery

In 1966 while in the Argentine Navy I had a lovely girlfriend called Susana. One day I received a phone call from her. She said, “Don’t ever call me again. You have no culture and you will never amount to anything. I have a new boyfriend who plays the violin for the Teatro Colón Symphony.” For weeks on end I kept playing the Miles Davis record Kind of Blue and Ástor Piazzolla. I discovered so I thought that hitting my depression rock bottom was the way out.

In 1987 I returned to Buenos Aires and rang the bell at Susana’s apartment. She opened the door and said, “Aren’t you going to kiss me?’

In my now close to 7000 blogs I find that linking my past memories to my plant scans gives me the excuse to use those scans.

Blue was never my favourite colour. It was Rosemary’s. We had all kinds of blue plants. The one here, Crambe maritima was one of her favourites. When my Argentine artist friend Juan Manuel Sánchez handed me a Chilean translation of Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain I learned of that gentians grew in Switzerland. To surprise Rosemary I found Gentiana asclepiadea at a nursery. She was delighted.

It is blooming now. I will scan it soon. The flowers remind me of Sánchez and Rosemary.

The hostas in the scan all kind of look the same and  mixed them up. They are H. 'Neptune', H. 'Dancing with Dragons'', H. 'Wild Imagination', H. 'Halcyon' and H. 'Dorset Blue'

It is impossible for me to think of my native Argentina today when Argentina is playing Spain without considering those two colours, white and blue of our flag.

More that in the Mexico that I lived for so many years or in the US when I went to school in Austin, I never felt that obsession that we Argentines have for our flag. The flag was designed by Manuel Belgrano who was a patriot during the war of independence who was a dreamer and not a very good general. He picked the the blue so often seen in our open sky pampas.

In school it was hammered on us that the blue was celeste and not azul. Coloured pencil sets in Argentina always had the light blue.

While the concept is now fading, at one time the flag with that sun in the middle was the pabellón or battle flag. It was raised in military establishments and ships of the Argentine Navy. I have my father’s very large wool flag and it has not sun. He would unfurl it twice on our palm tree on  9 July and 25 May the two anniversaries of Argentine independence.

Because of my Argentine obsession for our flag I was always excited when I would see my friend Patrick Reid walking on 41^st in Kerrisdale. I would go up to talk to him knowing he was singly responsible for not only hiring George Stanley who designed the Maple Leaf but also on impulse Reid added an extra point to the leaf when the flag was on his kitchen floor.

My mother always refused to watch football games between Argentina and Mexico saying that if she did the Argentines would surely lose. I sort of think like that. Win or lose I will suffer. Argentines always say they suffer and that may be one of the reasons why Argentina had the highest per-capita psychologists and psychiatrists working there.

After all, tango lyrics almost always are about that woman who left the man.

The rumpled banner here was the banner of the Dirección General del Material Naval which were I was placed as a conscript in the Argentine Navy between 1965 and 1967.