Jardín Antigüeño: Camarón Amarillo

Jardín Antigüeño: Camarón Amarillo

Oh life, you blink and it’s gone.

A while back I read in the New York Times Sunday edition of the Prensa Libre about the passing away of a man 87 years old that for 55 years had no short-term memory. It turns out that he underwent brain surgery when he was 27 and even though the doctors had healed his ailments, they also damaged the area of the brain responsible for memories. Interesting enough, the article was not about memory loss, rather about Identity loss. If you have no memories, you have no identity the article argued.

The first time I was exposed to the concept of short-term memory loss was in the film Wintersleepers by director Tom Tykwer and later in the American film Memento by director Christopher Nolan. In both films we follow the main characters who have lost their short-term memory through a period of their lives and experience all the complications that having no short-term memory can cause. In both films, the characters with memory loss use photographs as memory, short and long term.

So, what’s memory anyway? Nothing but a series of photographs or static images we keep dearly to know who we are now who we were then and what we have experienced. Thus, coming to this realization, wouldn’t you think it makes sense that we pause every once in a while our hurried lifestyles to take note of the flowers, the aroma of coffee, to pet your cats, to say ‘I love you or I care for you’ to your family and friends and take mental snapshots for our memory bank.

There are only two instances where everybody in the entire world has an equal opportunity: Time and Memories. No one can live more than 24-hour days and all of us have the same chance to keep a large bank of memories. What are you waiting for? Times does not stop for anybody. 😉

Okay today flowers go by the Guatemalan name of camarones (shrimps in plural). The golden camarón is actually a combination of yellow and white flowers. The scientific name for the Guatemalan golden shrimp flower is Pachystachys lutea. The red Guatemalan shrimp flower’s scientific name is Beloperone guttata or Justicia brandegeana. Both camarones belong to the Acanthaceae family. Camarones can grow under direct sun light or part sun/shade (help here for the proper term) and they blossom all year long requiring moderate watering.

Source: Guate Flora: Plantas ornamentales más utilizadas en jardínes guatemaltecos (Guate Flora: Ornamental Plants Most Often Used in Guatemalan Gardens).

Jardín Antigüeño: Camarón Rojo

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