Creeping myrtle is found in all corners of my yard. It forms a wide circle under an old cedar tree, borders my vegetable garden on its south side and thrives along the entire south side of the house. It's an ideal groundcover because, although it takes hold quickly and thrives almost anywhere, it's entirely controllable. This myrtle, like many plants in many gardens, didn't come from a seed or a store.

In 1988, at a neighborhood Halloween party, I met a woman named Hazel, who had lived in Exeter for most of her life. She was almost 90 at the time and was full of stories I now wish I could remember better in detail. She told me that when she was a young woman, she bought a farmhouse and a few hundred acres with money she made working in a potato field near Hope Valley and selling items she had canned herself. She later married and she and her husband began building a new farmhouse close to the original house. Before it was completed, her husband became ill and passed away, so she lived in a trailer next to the house, where she could watch the house decay and crumble, until a few months before she died in a nursing home.

She had lovely plantings around her trailer and during one of my last visits with her at the nursing home, while delivering a photo that I'd taken of her with her cat Goldie when she was well, she encouraged me to dig up a little of each variety for my garden. So, I stopped by the abandoned trailer one day and dug up some dusty purple and yellow iris, creeping myrtle and bloodroot (this is what Hazel called it). I wish I'd been more careful with the bloodroot as it turned out to be terribly invasive!

Hazel passed away in 1989 after I'd known her for not even one brief year. I wondered what happened to the cats she considered to be her children. One day as I drove by, I saw that her trailer had completely vanished. The plants remained and probably always will. I'm more aware now of places where there exist old plantings as proof that there was a building there -- most likely a home -- and I get a sense that people lived and played and gardened on that spot a long time ago.

I've shared Hazel's creeping myrtle, and my memories of her, with many family members and friends. It thrives across the street from my home in Exeter and in North Attleboro, Mansfield, Warwick, Coventry, Cumberland and who knows where else? And I thank her every spring when I walk outside and am pleasantly surprised by the beauty of its striking lavender flowers set against glossy rich deep green foliage. The sight of it never fails to bring to mind her unforgettably sweet smile.