Salvatore was an inveterate note taker – was this one written in the dispensary as he listened to a program on ABC 774 do you reckon? Though “front fence” (Teucrium fruiticans) implies maybe that he was here in the garden, listening to someone tell him what the plants are?
Anyway on this day 21 months after he died, the pinky flowered camphor laurel (“30”? What does that 30 mean, Salv? Or maybe it’s a face (no mouth) with a black eye?) outside his and MaryAnne’s room is putting out its last clumps of flowers for the season. It’s been a pretty big summer for camphor laurels here in Melbourne, did anyone else observe that?
(by the by, camphor laurels and camellias get shout-outs in the animated film Miss Hokusai (Keiichi Hara, 2015), about the daughter of the great Japanese printmaker Hokusai. Recommended.)
I also like that dad has noted that Eucalyptus maculata has “nice broad leaves”.
(if he had been a woman, that’s one way we’d be able to refer to his death)
Remembering Salv Caleo 