Do you have a plant that brings a memory to mind just by hearing the name? In my family it is Plumbago. A few weeks ago, we posted a picture of Blue Plumbago on our social media feeds, and the first person to comment on it was my brother. He said, “By far, my favorite.” A sarcastic comment if you knew the backstory . . .

I grew up over in Town-n-Country, in a subdivision called Pat Acres, where, you guessed it, each lot was an acre. Nice and big to support all manner of gardening, sports, and fun. But you’ve got to have privacy, too, and with only a short chain link fence around the backyard, we needed a bush that could screen but that was also pretty and tough. Enter Blue Plumbago. It’s tough as nails, can take any soil condition, flowers a bunch, and when you need to trim it, you can just hack it to the ground and it will come back better than ever.

Sounds easy, right? But trimming 200+ feet of plumbago is no small feat. And that’s where my brother comes in. I’m not saying he got in trouble a lot, but, well, let’s just say he was often gifted the task of trimming the plumbago. I mean it’s so much fun trimming bushes, isn’t it? We had these old, red-handled, manual hedge trimmers that were a fixture on the carport, and on a pretty regular basis David had to get the trimmers and head out to the plumbago.

So if you are in the presence of my family and you mention plumbago in any way, all we think of is my brother, trimming away (probably with a little attitude). And I have to admit, he wasn’t the only one tasked with trimming the plumbago, it definitely went my way from time to time . . . but that’s another story.