Trumpet Vines

Today I shall shamelessly borrow from Cowgirl’s delightful blog about daylilies to praise the six-foot-high red, pink and gold trumpet vine on my brick wall. Eleven years ago it was just a sprout in a five gallon pot but now it reaches twenty-five feet from its stem on one side. Here we must admonish it not to grown right across the street.

It’s other arm has grown in the other direction at least fifty feet along the wall all the way to the end of the house. Not content with two dimensions, this lusty vine sends its joyful tendrils across the five-foot side setback to tap on the living room window panes.


At its furthest end it armwrestles a wall of white blossoming jasmine which itself is climbed every year by the nasturtium vines. Did I once plant those? Their smiling faces are a perfect, clear, almost translucent orange. At their feet volunteer pink and yellow columbines lift their elegant horns almost three feet high.

Trumpet vines grow wild and free along the highway walls out here. My own vine’s stem is as thick and hard as a gnarly tree trunk. Years ago, the same gorgeous trumpet vine grew around the screened porch of my old New Hampshire house. Forty years, I calculate! Gosh, I loved that place, the first I owned by myself. I paid sixteen thousand dollars for it, cheap even at the time. Two big old maple trees in front, a ratty one-car garage and a rickety little barn the previous owner had thrown up to keep the snow off his tools. My pregnant mare went in and out at will to roam the ten acres of pasture.

We swatted mosquitoes many a hot summer night on that porch, watching the mare and then her babies, and the quick gleam of humming birds in the gold and red trumpet blossoms. Their needle beaks sipped from those deep rosy throats long, long ago but not so far away.