Chapter 5 1936 Duck Collection - Rose and Nine Sisters

When the eldest brother came back from school, he took a large bunch of thorny green branches in his hand. "Mom, I begged for roses from the Xiao family." The eldest brother looked happy, as if he had picked up the "Eight Treasures". "I don't know where the elder brother found these thorns, but he still lies about that Mom is a rose," Jiumei said, "Mom, don't believe him!" "It doesn't matter if you don't believe it. I won't allow you to wear it when all kinds of flowers bloom in April next year. There are also delicious rose sugar." Seeing that Jiumei didn't believe it, the elder brother deliberately teased her like this.Speaking of roses, he held up the bunch of green thorns in his hand again, as if the big crimson roses were all covered on the branches, and they could be picked off immediately to make rose sugar!

"Who cares about yours? I wouldn't go to my third aunt's house to pick them up! Mom, right?" "Yes! My baby is not very old, will you miss him?" Although Mom said that she followed Jiumei's words, she originally asked elder brother to go to Xiao's house to ask for it, so she asked me to help elder brother: "Yun'er, go to help elder brother and take the blue flower hexagonal bowl. The cockscombs are no longer to be pulled out, so we will use the four pots to plant them separately. The rest will be placed next to the begonias in the flower bed."

The eldest brother gently scraped Jiumei's face, and then walked into the courtyard.The pampered little Jiumei was so angry that she jumped up and down, she insisted on going out to take revenge.But my mother stopped me. "Hey boy, just let him go once! We cook pigeon eggs to eat at night, don't let him go...then you can beat your mother." "Mom, I hate it! Brother Special Guard! He slapped someone for no reason, so it's okay?" Mom put Jiumei's little hand, which was dryly wiping the corners of her eyes, on her face a few times, and Jiumei laughed again.

The eldest brother's shaving was naturally to avenge Jiumei's talkative hatred. The whole courtyard dam is scattered with red ink-colored soil and sand, and some small red songworms are crawling around.A few chickens were scratching around with their feet, drove away and came back again.The eldest brother rolled up his sleeves, took the large square-head scissors that his grandmother used to cut the hemp rope, and cut the rose branches into lengths of more than one foot.And stick a piece of glutinous mud on each cut, saying that it will not let the air out. "Second brother, there are three kinds of these (big brother points with his fingers), this is red, this is water red, this is bright red, and that is white. Should we plant them in one pot, or mix them together? --you say?"

"It's more fun to plant together. It must be more lively and interesting when it blooms...Brother, why don't you get that yellow bordered one?" "That kind of hard work, Xiao Zijing said it's not easy to plant, and promised to give me two pots when it's time to divide the plants...Okay, it's up to you, it's more fun to plant with friends." We put a small tile on each side of the bowl before putting down the new mud.The elder brother supported the branches, and he dared not let go until I piled the soil up to the level of the mouth of the bowl. Then he built it with his hands, sprinkled some water, and put it on the flower stand.

There are about ten branches in each bowl, but only three are inserted in the flower bed. Among them, the one who cares most about flower development is naturally the eldest brother.He went to watch it from time to time, and from time to time his mother secretly pulled out the small branches from the bowl to see if there were roots. Mom can also remember taking that tin watering can to sprinkle water every morning.Everyone was delighted when little green leaves sprouted from the tender branches of the branches. "Mother, mother, the rose has a lot of buds! One big point is red on the tip. We never paid attention to it in the past, and thought it would not bloom this year."

The sixth brother was madly happy, and ran to his mother's bedside and said.Jiumei had just woken up, and she was hugging her mother's arm talking and laughing. When she heard it, she hurriedly struggled to get up and urged her to help her get dressed. She didn't even have time to wear socks, and with her yellow hair on, she stood beside the blue flower bowl with her sixth brother and counted the buds. "Mom, there are seven bowls in the first bowl, more than twenty bowls in the second bowl, seventeen bowls in the third bowl, and three bowls in the fourth bowl; Brother Liu said that the fourth bowl is not sunny, but it But the leaves are extraordinarily many and extraordinarily green. On the flower bed, Brother Liu didn’t allow me to climb up, he said there were more than a dozen of them.”

When Mom was combing the yellow hair on Jiumei's head under the window, Jiumei told Mom the number of flower buds she had counted with Sixth Brother just now. The mother who didn't make a sound probably thought of the big brother who planted flowers last autumn again. When the first water-red rose bloomed on the second bowl, Jiumei remembered her mother's lesson, and even Mrs. Zhang, who was doing laundry, saw that she was about to touch it with her hand when she came into the room, and said "Hi! Don't catch it! Mrs. Zhang hurriedly stopped it.From then on, more and more flowers bloomed. Every morning, the ninth sister and the sixth brother rushed to get up first and ran to the flowerpot to count the number of newly bloomed flowers that had bloomed overnight.Jiumei would often stand alone by the flower pot and smile at the crimson and light red flowers, and Xianghua was also looking at her smiling.

There is probably a little more soil on the flower beds.Although there are only three or four branches, the flowers blooming are not inferior to those in the bowl.And the flowers also seem to be a little bigger.Soon, the bowl near the eaves was also in full bloom.And new buds continue to grow from the buds on each branch. The house seems to be a little more lively than in previous years. People who come to my house to play say that the flowers are of various colors in a bowl, which is really beautiful.When some female students from my older sister’s classmate came to my house to see the flowers, they also praised the flowers as interesting.The third aunt also said that it was far more luxuriant than the ones in her garden.

Because my mother cherishes it, she never bears to pick a flower and give it to others. Therefore, the ones that fell off soon grew a small green fruit on each of its stalks.Mom asked me to write a letter to tell my elder brother who was studying in Changsha. In the envelope, Jiumei encloses more than ten rose petals that have fallen with thanks. The rose candy that year was made by Jiumei picking a large basket of single-petal roses at the third aunt's house. In November 1925, in the narrow and moldy small studio in Beijing