Chapter 80 me and roses

My contact with roses began in my youth. I remember that in my childhood, in my father’s garden in Yantai, I only saw wintersweet, begonias and chrysanthemums.In my grandfather's garden in Fuzhou, I saw lotuses and orchids.Orchids have a delicate fragrance, but they are very delicate. You should use bamboo scissors when cutting the flowers.I am also very afraid of ants, so I had to place four water cups on the four legs of the flower pot stand to prevent the ants from climbing up.The fertilizer used is the stinky water soaked in black beans. At about the same time, I started to read, and saw that young man Xing'er described Tanchun to Third Sister You very eloquently, and he said: "The third girl's mixed name is 'Rose Flower', and she is red. It is very fragrant, and everyone loves it, but it has thorns..." I was very yearning for this kind of flower that is both gorgeous and strong, but I hadn't fully appreciated her color, fragrance, and sharp thorns at that time.

Until the autumn of 1918, when I entered university, the campus of Xiehe Women's University was located in Tongfujiadao (later changed to Tongfujiadao), Dengshikou, Beijing.This was originally the residence of King Tong of the Qing Dynasty, and the auditorium of the Women's University was converted from the three halls of the palace.The steps in front of the hall are very high, and the corridor is also very long. A row of scarlet roses are planted on both sides of the steps in front of the hall.This rose is really "red and fragrant, everyone loves it", and the flower is as big as a saucer!Our classmates like to pick off a budding stamen and put it on the topknot.Of course, we are also very careful about the spikes on the flower branches when we climb and pick them.

I remember that I also wrote a poem called "Under the Shade of Roses".Because the row of roses is really tall and big, with dense branches and leaves, we always like to sit on the grass under the flowers and read books amidst the fragrance. After I went abroad, in the United States or Europe, you can see a wide variety of roses everywhere, and the price of roses can also be compared with our plum, orchid, bamboo, and chrysanthemum!There are so many rose gardens everywhere. In the Qin Ji Mausoleum in India, I was pleasantly surprised to visit the colorful and fragrant rose garden beside the mausoleum.

After 1929, when I had my own home, I planted two rows of German white roses in front of the porch of my house. The flowers bloomed very large and kept blooming, starting from March 3rd in the lunar calendar. By September 9th, the vases in my house were full of flowers.Not only do I enjoy it myself, but I also give it to friends or students who are recuperating in the school hospital. The anti-Japanese army flourished, and I left Beijing.Since then, I have moved from east to west, without a definite address, and I have no desire to grow flowers.Between 1941 and 1945, I bought an earthen house at the foot of Gele Mountain in Chongqing, with no walls and a little open space around it.But vegetables were scarce at that time, and I only grew some melons and vegetables on the hillside. I remember that one summer, we ate pumpkins for three months!

After returning to China after liberation, I have my own dormitory, but the unit we live in is upstairs and there is no land, and my luck comes from this!Downstairs from us, there are two young people who are amateur rose lovers, and the flower garden is full of roses of various colors.These young people, knowing that I also like it, sent me handfuls of bright roses with morning dew when they were arranging the flower garden in the morning-they almost took turns sending me flowers. The hospital was no exception, from the first flower in spring to the last flower in autumn—every morning, when I was still washing and washing, as long as I heard a light knock on the door, my joy was like spring water The ground overflowed... November 5, 1981 (This article was originally published in "Beyond Eight Hours" No. 1, 1982.)