Gul Mohurs

All month the gul mohur trees have been in brilliant bloom.

I've decided to make my new coptic-bound book into an alphabet book, centered around our house and garden, so yesterday I began the pages for G, Gul Mohur:


(There will be more things: a photograph of Mary holding a huge mass of the flowers, which I asked Chinnaraj to cut down from the tree for me; a photograph of the tree from which they were picked; some text...)

Anyway, the interesting thing for me was that before I drew it, I hadn't really known what it looked like. Usually I just see a fallen petal


or a bright orange tree, with mimosa-like delicate leaves. Yesterday I discovered that it has five large petals, of which four are solid colour and one speckled -- is that the landing platform for insects? Behind the large petals are five much smaller ones, folded back. And there's a cluster of - what? - stamens? - iin the middle.

In the evening I drew it again from memory, to make sure that I understood it:


And I felt that I had, and was amazed.

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