Friday, May 01, 2026

Camellia japonica 'Silver Wings' - 1 May 2026

 

One of the advantages of living in this century is our ability to instantly find the etymology of words. Some might say that knowing facts is not having knowledge. I would differ by saying that the association of a fact with personal experience becomes some sort of knowledge.

My mother and grandmother were born in the Philippines. Today I scanned this recently purchased Camellia japonica ‘Silver Wings’ for big coin. The flowers are 5 inches wide. I decided to look up the origin of the word camellia.

The word camellia originates from the Latinized surname of Georg Joseph Kamel (latinized as Camellus), a 17th-century Moravian Jesuit botanist and missionary. Botanist Carl Linnaeus named the genus in 1753 to honor Kamel’s work documenting plants in the Philippines, though the plant is native to East Asia. Wikipedia

So now I have this interesting association between the camellias that my Rosemary loved and my Filipino mother and grandmother whom Rosemary met in the late 60s and early 70s.

A fact that I happen to know about Linnaeus is that he named the sexual parts of clams for those of human women. I won’t explain further.

A further etymology of the Spanish word camellón  which is the centre part that divides a two-way highway is that it indeed comes from the camel. Since the highway ridge is higher it mimics the camel's hump. Spanish for camel is camello.

 

Tuesday, April 28, 2026

 Top: Mocambo Veracruz -20 December 1967 Bottom - Vancouver 31 July 2020

Monday, April 27, 2026

Echinacea purpurea 'Green Jewel' - 16 July 2021

 Green Echinaceas

Today I spent big coin buying plants at Phoenix Perennials in Richmond. This nursery had the biggest variety of unusual plants. I go once a year. What is my goal?

My Kitsilano garden is one that I shared with my Rosemary. Every year some of her favourite plants may disappear. Thus my objective is to find what I call her plants. I found most of them except Echinacea purpurea ‘Green Jewel’. Only a snob like my Rosemary would like a green flower.

26 April 2026

 

I was going to plant them on Monday but I put on my garden jeans and managed to put them all in the ground and then spread sea soil and steer manure. I then watered and placed all the plastic pots in the blue bins for tomorrow’s pick up. 

26 April 2026

 

A while ago I decided to test my Galaxy phone in low light and took some photographs of my effort. I am happy.

 

26 April 2026

 

Sunday, April 26, 2026

 

The word in Spanish to retire (jubilar) has its root from the Latin  jubilare which means to shout for joy in relation for the ceasing of work responsibilities.

I remember going to retirement ceremonies when I worked for Canadian Pacific Limited. Old men were given rocking chairs, watches and told to read their wives’ job jars in the kitchen. I told Rosemary that these assignments depressed me. She would say, “Alex, you have to go. We need the money.”

Since late in my life I now think I may be an artist I keep taking photographs, scanning my plants and try to find people who have yet to let go. My friend Ian McGuffie calls the Gulf Islands where many of my photography peers move, “God’s Waiting Room.”

I am happy to report that Canada’s first Poet Laureate George Bowering (90) published a book of poetry at the end of May and will publish a memoir in a month,

George Bowering 

And there is someone who lives in Salt Spring on the Gulf Islands who has not given up to rest on her bookish laurels. This is Celia Duthie who has had a show at 884 East Georgia since this last Thursday and will close today Sunday her exhibition of lovely wood blocks and linocuts.

I went twice and I particularly gorged on her son’s bread. He has a stupendous bakery in Salt Spring.

Duthie’s art is influenced by her mentor/teacher Richard Tetrault. Because the gallery is in Tetrault’s home you can also enjoy his art which is stellar and which he makes every day.

The show closes today at 5.

Saturday, April 25, 2026

Rosemary's side of the bed and her nightie - 4 December 2021

 

In the years since Rosemary died on December 9 2020 I have written many times about our bedtime intimacies and even listed all the beds we had from the time we were married on 8 February 1968.

I have also used the photograph here many times showing her nightie on her side of our last bed.

This time I want to add something my mother used to say when I was a little boy in Buenos Aires. At bedtime she would say, “Alex es hora del baile de las sábanas blancas,” or “Alex it’s time for the dance of the white sheets.” Of course in those days sheets were only white.

It was perhaps because of that memory that I photographed a lovely woman on my studio psychiatric couch. I cannot say it is erotic. I just think it is one of the loveliest photographs I have ever taken.

 

 

Every night when I get to bed Rosemary’s portrait on the wall stares at me. My two cats are beside me. When I turn of the light, Rosemary keeps staring at me.

Friday, April 24, 2026

Nick Bantock

 

 

For months I have had an Ektachrome 6x7 slide (below) in which I figured out I used my camera to copy a b+w print. I could not place the name of the man. Only yesterday I figured out he is a writer. I went to my writer files and found Nick Bantock. 

 

 

This photograph is important for me as a few years before I had run into photographer James La Bounty who told me he was doing something he called conceptual photography. He inspired me and my first conceptual photograph was of writer, anthropologist, etc Robert Bringhurst.

 

Robert Bringhurst

Robert Bringhurst on a Tree

When I went into Bantock’s files I found the tear sheet (that’s what we called them then) from the Globe and Mail and I noticed with some sort of delight that in not knowing how to deal with my photograph they called it Photo illustration by Alex Waterhouse-Hayward.

This kind of photography, which was called editorial photographer and which made me an editorial photographer is now a dying method in moribund newspapers and magazines in Vancouver.

It was a challenging pleasure to figure out a way of taking a portrait that was “different”.

Jim La Bounty