14. Mrs. Shimmer's Garden

When we were in the desert garden section of the Tucson Botanical garden I remembered another desert garden I visited a long time ago.


My mother was a very sociable woman--when she was young she had several older women as close friends and when she herself was an old woman she had several young women as close friends.


One of her oldest friends when I was a boy in Albuquerque was Mrs. Shimmer. Mom had made friends with Mrs. Shimmer when she (Mom that is) was a girl so Mrs. Shimmer was quite elderly.


At the time of my memory, I was about eight years old and Mrs. Shimmer must have been about 90 years old--quite the oldest person I had ever met.


Of course Mrs. Shimmer was a native of Germany and spoke with a heavy accent which made her even more exotic to me--though I was too young to recognize a German accent--to me she just sounded strange and very old.


"Shimmer" in German means the same thing as it does in English--a sort of sparkle--and Mrs. Shimmer was a sort of a tiny ancient sparkling person.


When we visited Mrs  Shimmer, I would play outside in the front "garden" of her very little old house in a run-down old neighborhood of Albuquerque, while she and mother visited.


Now THIS garden was a REAL desert garden and that is probably why walking through the Tucson Botanical Garden triggered the memory. There was NO grass or plants of ANY kind except for some  large bushes and a skinny tree or two growing from circular earthen depressions which could hold some irrigation water. I seem to remember lilacs since this is one of the memorable scented plants I recall from childhood and we didn't have any at our house. There were several kinds of cactus too and I remember checking out their different kinds of needles very thoroughly.


Best of all and beside the garden adventure--whenever we visited Mrs. Shimmer, she would always hand me a huge, thick home-baked sugar cookie from her big cookie jar. And I wish I had one now!

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