San Francisco, California

The Angel Trumpet (Brugmansia) has begun to bloom again and the results are as weird as ever. We first noticed the early pods only a few days ago, and now new flowers crawl out of their shells hourly, it seems, like ghouls looking for the light. I like the Brugmansia when it’s blooming. It holds the center of the yard, a Christmas tree decorated with its own exotic bells. Big as they are, the trumpets appear modest from afar, their eerie, internal folds only visible if you manage to get underneath and look up from below. In maybe a week or so, alas, these monsters will begin to wither up, drop, and lie soggy on the ground (see Day 20). The first ones in this current cycle are already looking a little sad. But not to worry, the days will pass, and we’ll have the trumpets back again in another forty days.

Right now we track the days of the week by when it’s time to put the trash out on the street. ‘Can it possibly be Sunday night already?’ we ask. Again? Personally, I have even more trouble tracking the weeks and months. I am eternally stuck, I think, in April for the duration of this pandemic. Suspended animation. Perhaps for those who are working from home, the days are more easily measured. And for those worrying about paying next month’s bills, June already looms too close. Perhaps, for those in climates more extreme than ours, there is no confusing spring with summer. But captive in our own small California space with little worldly rhythm and events to ground us, our measure of time is limited by the small changes we see as the garden cycles through its blooming and by the lengthening of the light - not enough, it seems, to help us grasp that time and life are moving forward. The return of the Angel Trumpets helps. So maybe that is how we’ll keep track of months in our house from here on out - if anybody ever asks, we’ll tell them we’re on Brugmansia Time.