Trumpets in Purple

India · nature

Lavender trumpet flowers cluster against a chalky wall, their throats darker than their petals. A garden vine doing what it does best — arriving overnight.

Lavender Bell Vine, Garlic Vine, Cape Honeysuckle — there are half a dozen vines in Indian gardens that produce trumpet flowers in this exact shade of purple, and I never remember which is which. What I do remember is how they appear. You walk past the same compound wall every morning for weeks, and one day the whole thing is suddenly draped in flowers, as if a switch has been flipped overnight.

I shot this cluster against the chalky pink wall of an old house. The flowers were stacked three deep, the inner buds still folded, the outer petals already loosening. There's a darker purple at the throat of each trumpet — that's where the nectar lives, and where the bees know to head. Garden flowers don't usually get the same photographic respect as wild ones, but I've come to think they deserve more. Someone planted this. Someone watered it. Someone waited.

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