Sweet Osmanthus Flowers Falling Like Rain Drops
The days just before and just after the Mid-autumn Festival marked the ason of the Sweet Osmanthus Flowers back in my hometown. Sweet Osmanthus…the very name brings the fragrance back to me. There are two kinds of Sweet Osmanthus. One comes from the family of plants known as cassia, and it blooms anew every month of the year. Its flowers are a trifle smaller, a delicate yellow in hue. Taiwan ought to have it too. I’ve picked up the aroma while strolling by peoples’ courtyard walls, and the scent alone is enough to give me a pinge of nostalgic sadness. Another variety is called Golden Osmanthus. It only blooms during the autumn of the year, and the flowers are golden in color, and larger. In the middle of our old mansion there was a courtyard with a yard in both front and back, and a great wall that wound around the outside borders. Golden Osmanthus was planted all along the inside rim. Right there in the courtyard directly in front of the main residence there were a couple of cassia bushes and a pair of what we called hydrangea plants. And in the area beneath the portico of Father’s study there were pots of camellia and sweet-scented osmanthus bushes.
Now when I was small, I don’t know why, but I never had mu ch appreciation for flowers, and it didn’t matter a whit what kind they were. Father would have his fingers in the air and point—this is a Chine
Trumpet Creeper, and this one is a Ring-a-Ding-ding-bell Flower, this is a wood-of-Turquoi…Besides remember ing tho names, what I recall is that the flower I liked the very most was the Sweet Osmanthus. The Sweet Osmanthus bush isn’t nearly as impressive in appearance as the plum tree. When it’s not in bloom it just stands there like a dullard, quite clumsy an d stupid looking really, just a bush thickt with leaves is all it is. But then when its time to blossom arrives, you arch for the tiny delicate little buds that sprout amidst the leaves of green, and there’s nothing in the whole wide world that can match it in beauty. But the aroma of Sweet Osmanthus can really put a spell on you. The reason it can put a spell on you is that you can only just smell it, you can eat it too. Eating a flower. For a writer of poetry, isn’t it stooping a bit low to put it t hat way? How utterly vulgar? But I would rather be vulgar, for that’s what it means to me to be a Sweet Osmanthus lover.
Sweet Osmanthus has really thrown a rope around my soul and dreams.
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My hometown was in a county that was very clo to the a. The month of August was typhoon ason, what Mother ud to call the time of “the omen of wind and water.” The Sweet Osmanthus would start to blossom, and right away Mother would start into her worrying about the working of wind and water. (That meant a typhoon would soon arrive.) The first thing she fretted over was getting the harvest in from the rice paddies, and the cond was harvesting the Sweet Osmanthus.
Sweet
Osmanthus was like peaches and plums and pears; it had a harvest too. Mother would pace back and forth every day from one courtyard to the other, her lips mouthing and murmuring the words, “If only a typhoon wouldn’t come, then I could bring in such a harvest, oh, so many baskets, and I could nd over a basket for Good Old Gramps at the Hu houhold, and a basket too for Second Auntie over at the Maos. Tho two families turn out so many cakes.” You could actually u Sweet Osmanthus as a fragrance in cake recipes. When Sweet Osmanthus flowers hit their peak, maybe you couldn’t claim to smell them fro m ten lis1 away, but the aroma wafted all through the neighborhood air for a string of ten or so houholds. There wasn’t a corner any place nearby where the fragrance didn’t permeate. Now when the Sweet Osmanthus flowers burst into their fullest glory, th ere occurred what we called “the great shaking”. What was shaken down were the Sweet Osmanthus flowers, whole and complete and do I mean fresh, and the fragrance all round you would not be quite the same if they withered after their bloom and fluttered to the ground, which happened especially when the rain and wind would roar, and they’d be all they’d all sopping wet with the water. “The great shaking of the Sweet Osmanthus” was a magnificent phenomenon as far as I was concerned. And so I’d always be fixing my eyes on Mother and asking her, “Ma, how come we haven
’t had the great shaking yet?” Mother would answer, “It’s still too early, they haven’t blossomed yet. There’s nothing to shake爱因斯坦发明了哪些东西
loo.” But as soon as Mother caught sight of great bunches of dark clo uds in the sky above, when the clouds formed “sky toes and tail feathers,” then she knew “the wind and water are working,” and quickly she would nd the order out for the hou workers to get ready for “the great shaking of the Sweet Osmanthus.” When that happened, was I ever happy! I helped with the spreading out of the thick mats beneath the Sweet Osmanthus branches, and then I grabbed at the Osmanthus branches and gave them a gentle tug, and the Osmanthus flowers would shower down upon me, and cover me from the tip of my ears to the end of my toe nails, and I would shout, “Wow! It’s just rain like rain drops, sweet smelling rain drops! Wow!” Mother would wash her hands and then gather up some of the Osmanthus flowers onto a platter of sparkling crystal glass, and then it was off to pay our respects to the Buddha at the family shrine. Father would light the incen at the altar. Slender strands of smoke would ri and vanish into the air above, the two fragrances mixed together, the Buddhist Temple emed just like the Land of the Immortals. Then Father’s poetic chant would happen. He would just break out into a four line poem he improvid right there on the spot.
Slender streams of fragrance and hallowed scent
With holy fumes
Hands so swift for harvest of Osmanthus
Foretell a prosperous year
橘子果冻怎么做Children all know
桂枝
The joy and mirth of爱主题
The wondrous shaking
Blossoms like drops of gentle rain infu a child’s dream
Tender beyond all measure
二手房买卖合同最新版The poetic vers…well, perhaps they not em all that spectacular. But in the eyes of my heart, I saw a Father who stood tall with mighty genius, that he could create ver like that!属兔女和什么属相最配
After we were done with the shaking and the gathering of the Osmanthus flowers, everyone in the family would lend a hand to tear off the tiny little twiglets and leaves, and spread them out on the mat
s, and we’d let the sun nd down its rays to dry them out for a few days. Then we gathered them all together into steel vats, so they could be mixed with tea leaves for drinks, or be ud to make Osmanthus concentrate, or to sweeten cakes at the time of the Chine New Year. The whole year long, all through our village, we were steeped in the scent of Sweet Osmanthus.
I went to Hangchou for middle school. Hangchow had a resort called Man Chueh Lung, a tiny little niche in the mountains. It was covered with Sweet Osmanthus, and when tho flowers hit their peak, you could smell them from here to forever. In the autumn we would go hiking, and of
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