Phlox

I love phlox...tall phlox, creeping phlox, phlox that climbs on rocks (even phlox with chicken pox...sorry, couldn't resist) you name it. The sight of creeping phlox elicits such an emotional response because as an excited child, it was the first thing I saw when I had arrived at my grandparent's house in Hendersonville.  There was (and I'm guessing still is) a very steep bank of phlox with a carpet of blooms covering the whole bank.  When I could get outside and close enough to the bank, I thought of it as if it were the edge of the Grand Canyon or a moat full of man eating sharks and crocodiles, because my grandmother warned me to never get close to the very steep bank and scared me so badly with the promise that if I got too close, I would surely roll down the hill and into oncoming traffic.  She called phlox "thrush," and it had very prickly foliage, almost like briars or a tough juniper. Like all living beings, both from human and the plant kingdom, everything was tougher grown in the early to mid 20th century.