Tempus fugit

Sandy Snyder has been scanning old transparencies and recently sent me this one, threatening to post it on my Facebook page. I know my tennis shoes are pretty shabby, and my beard is shabbier, but having one's image posted when one is half the age, and a good deal slimmer than I am now... NOT a problem!

I am much more interested in what is around me. First off, not one in many billion people would probably notice that the picture is flipped horizontally. I notice that sort of thing (of course the Rock Alpine Garden was my virtual Universe for several decades...I ought to know it (although I worry about it almost not at all with Mike Kintgen at the helm nowadays).

I am mostly amazed that there is a flourishing colony of what must be Primula reidii at my feet. I could never dream of growing that hardly anywhere I garden nowadays: it needs super fluffy soil and a cool root run, of course. Now the competition from other plants, not to mention tree roots, shrub roots and compacted soils would make this plant almost impossible.

[Insert a mental image of Primula reidii closeup here]
{Maybe someday I will scan a closeup I think I took in this spot if I ever get around to it!}

This garden nowadays is chockablock full of all manner of other treasures that had not been planted 30 years ago when the picture was taken. And what was growing there is as mysterious to me now as though i had never worked there. My memory of the garden then back then is based on the pictures I took. If I did not take a picture (and file it and revisit that picture over the years) the plant has ceased to exist for me. My memory is my photo library to a great extent.

Oh well...come to think of it I don't recall the last time I wore jeans or tennis shoes either!