Angel's Trumpet

"Hey," said [The Man I Love] this weekend from the windows at the back of the house. "Have you seen your garden outside? Something out there is going crazy!"

Truth be told, it's been a busy week, what with work and dog-walking and veterinary visits. I haven't been in my garden all week, nor have I even looked outside. I went to the bedroom window.

Wow. Look at that!

Years ago, I transplanted a small plant of Brugmansia suaveolens, the Angel's Trumpet, from a clay pot on my deck directly into my garden. There are large, magnificent specimens all over Los Angeles, with their huge bright green leaves and cascades of drooping trumpet-shaped flowers.

The flowers are huge, some six to eight inches long and maybe four inches across at the open throat. They are usually cream-colored, pale banana-yellow, creamsicle-orange, or warm pink. They are related to the Datura family, and like them, can be poisonous if ingested. They are wonderfully scented, and the scent is stronger in the evening.

My plant was small, but when we transplanted it directly into the garden, it began to grow and burgeon, and after two years it was approaching the size of some of those I'd seen.

And then we had a bad winter. It was rainy, and then in January it actually froze - a rare thing in Los Angeles. To make things worse, [The Man I Love] and I were traveling during the Great Freeze. If I'd been here, I might have thought to throw an overnight cover on my tenderest plants. But no. We returned to L.A. to find a devastated garden. The brugmansia, for one, was blackened and limp, even its stem was pulpy and soft and dead.

I think it was sloth more than anything that prevented me from digging up the roots and replacing them with another plant. But in this case, it paid off. Last summer, suddenly green shoots and leaves appeared from the base. It was back.


And this October morning, there it was - tall but spindly, branching out nicely from its crown. Five dangling blooms, in the first vigorous flush of bloom before fading. My brugmansia's flowers are the delicate color of peach ice cream.

These flowers are short-lived. That evening, we sat on the deck and breathed the heady, almost narcotic scent. It was like a last breath of summer.

They won't last long. The cold autumn wind is blowing up later this week.

I would have missed them if [The Man I Love] hadn't brought them to my attention. And he hardly ever thinks about flowers - he just knew I liked them. Isn't he great?