A memorial in his backyard

The Economist: As the smiling customer brought the potted plant to the cash register at DeBaggio Herbs in Chantilly, Virginia, Tom DeBaggio began to panic. The plant was small, with spiny, silvery leaves, woody stems and blue flowers. When rubbed between the fingers it gave off a warm, strong, piney smell, a bit like floor polish. But he did not know what it was. He fumbled for the tag, and when he couldn’t find that, asked his wife Joyce what it could be. She told him, rosemary.

Yet he knew rosemary. He probably loved it more than any other plant in his nursery—though the basils and lavenders were right up there, too. He had once been called the best rosemaryologist in America for the work he had done, combing the world for new varieties or cultivating his own. “Gorizia”, found in Italy, with lobelia-blue flowers; “Madalene Hill”, which could take the worst soil and the coldest weather; “Lottie DeBaggio”, straight and pale-flowered, named after his grandmother; “Joyce DeBaggio”, with gold-edged leaves, named after his wife. The last was possibly his favourite, grown from one small, unusual, yellow branch. But now, in 1999, after 25 years in the nursery, he barely knew any of those familiar friends. Come to that, he was having trouble with the cash register, too.

On a beautiful spring day—weather that urged him into the garden, as if he wasn’t there already potting and watering, planting and selling, for 16 hours a day—the doctor told him he had early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease. He was 57. His first reaction was to rage and cry. His second was to go into his greenhouse, where the rosemary plants were in misty, lovely flower, and pull from somewhere the cruel adage that rosemary meant remembrance. But his third reaction was more positive, or desperate. He would try to chronicle for people what having Alzheimer’s was like.

-eddie