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It’s old home week here at the “virus test garden.”

Those friends I said goodbye to last fall are showing up again. And it’s so much fun to see who made it back.

There’s Cecile (Mme. Cecile Brunner, a climbing rose, often mistakenly called Cecil Brunner). She’s putting on a spectacular show this year, I must say. Really outdoing herself, the dear, eating up one side of my house with a profusion of tiny pink roses with a peppery scent.

But Cecile won’t make you sneeze. Instead, people ooh and aah when they see her perform. I feed her exactly what she likes to entice her back every year — two cups of alfalfa pellets ladled down her gullet (what an unladylike word), instead of expensive rose food, once a year.

Then I have plants that became dear friends because they were gifts from gardeners I admire. Some people exchange recipes and name them after the giver; I do the same with the plants that gardeners exchange. This can be quite confusing to visitors trying to learn plant names in my garden.

“What’s that?” they’ll ask.

“Oh, that’s Margaret; I visited her garden in Southeast Portland for a story a couple of years ago, and she’s been quite happy here ever since.”

At this point most people knit their brows, and their eyes start following you like one of those paintings on display at the Pittock Mansion.

When prodded, I fess up and tell the truth about Margaret. Anyone can call the plant she gave me Linaria vulgaris, whose common name is toadflax. See why I call her Margaret?

Behind Margaret is Lucy, transplanted from Lucy Hardiman’s garden in Northeast Portland. Hardiman was president of the Hardy Plant Society that year ... and a zillion other plant societies. Hardiman’s impatiens, which I call Lucy, come back every year from seed. Mind you, they grow 5 feet tall. Yes, cute little impatiens. Children in my neighborhood have become lost in the thicket and need to retrace their tracks with pebbles.

Plants do take on special meaning when they’re gifts from friends, named after a friend or in memory of a friend. When Clancy Livingstone died in March, I planted Nepeta cataria with him. Clancy Livingstone was our sweet cat (he had a different last name because we adopted him), with ears like wing nuts. I named him after a cameraman I worked with while filming the movie “Small Sacrifices” about Diane Downs.

That was more than 10 years ago, and our poor Clancy finally moved on just before spring. He loved playing in our garden. And he loved Nepeta — catnip — that’s now growing above him. In my mind’s eye, I see him frolicking with drunken catnip abandon in the big guy’s garden now.

I will think of you when the catnip blooms, buddy.

So, as you can surmise, old home week is bittersweet here at the virus test garden. It may seem wacky to you, but it’s very comforting to me to be surrounded by all my old friends. They’re a wild group that will really grow on you.