Every year, about this time, the forget-me-nots start blooming in my garden. They provide a beautiful blanket of color until I get things cleaned up and the later plants start blooming.My mother, Dorothy Decima Barclay Zimmerman, (better known by her family as Baba) passed away on March 14. She died peacefully in her sleep. She was 89 years old, and she lived a long and happy life. She got to live long enough to get to know 4 great grandchildren.
My mother had lots of hobbies and interests. She loved collecting stuff, and her house was full of interesting things that she collected from all over the world, as traveling was another love. I think the fun for her was as much in the adventure of hunting for bargains as it was in having the stuff. Everything she had held some sort of fun memory for her - either a trip to some place at the far ends of the earth, such as Antarctica or Mongolia, or just a fun afternoon "junquing" with her friends. (She liked to call her stuff "junque" instead of "junk".)
She also loved decorative painting, and has left behind many beautiful pieces of painted furniture and smaller items. I think she started paint class when I was in high school 40 years ago, and she has been doing it ever since. She was an incredibly talented woman.
And finally, she loved gardening, and she was very very good at it. Many of the plants my siblings and I have growing in our yards came from Baba, as she always had plenty of things to share from cuttings and dividing. But almost everything that came from Baba came with some forget-me-nots, hidden away in the soil, waiting for the middle of March to appear again.
Every year I love seeing them come up and start blooming. Even though they are profuse, they are not invasive, and after they are done blooming they are easy to pull out. And even though I pull most of them out, they always come back the next year.
What a gift! So now, truly, they have meaning. They will always say to me, from Baba, "forget me not!" How could I?
