Chapter 6 flowers and birds

Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows of the living room, there is a balcony that cannot be considered small. Between the black-painted railings, a small village at the bottom of the valley can be seen faintly, full of people.The person who invented the balcony must have been an optimistic and extroverted genius to break through the limitations of the home and push a fantasy peninsula to the outdoors, to the mountains and the sea, to the sunset glow in the sky and the night of stars. A balcony without flowers is like a wall without paintings, how empty it is.So pots of flowers were brought up from the world below.I don’t know when, the three sides of the railing have been filled with flower pots, but this beautiful immigrant has no plan at all. Ouyang Xiu’s so-called "light, dark red and white should be alternated, and they must be planted in sequence" is completely out of the question. of.Among the dozen or so potted plants, some were brought back by the third-class train without fear of hard work when they first came here, some were leftovers of colleagues who left CUHK, and some were brought back in the back seat after buying a car.No matter what the origin, we treat it generally.The children of Flower God have different names and looks, but they all look charming when they are fluttering in the wind.

In the west-facing corner, there are bougainvilleas whose stems and vines have been stretched around and the railings have been inextricably prepared, and there are clusters of pink, white and light purple flowers.On the right is a pot of osmanthus seedlings, which are only nearly a foot high. When they bloom, they also have a noble and elegant fragrance, which rippling with the wind.The neighbors are two pots of jasmine and one pot of magnolia.Although these two kinds of vanilla are not listed in the fragrance spectrum of "Li Sao", their delicate and deep fragrance is something I can't resist.On the summer night when the window was open, their body fragrance lingered in the air and floated all the way to the study room. The smell made people shaken and dazed. They couldn't sit still for a long time. .In comparison, the slender white petals of magnolia have a milder fragrance, and the pistils of jasmine seem to be more intoxicating, and they are all too charming.

Beyond that are two pots of crabapple.The light red flowers and the oil-green leaves, matched together, have a folk painting tone, which is the most Chinese charm, and the symbol of begonia leaves has been imprinted in my heart since I was a child.Next to it is a pot of iron crabapple, with small four-petal symmetrical crimson flowers blooming on its thorny stems.This flower has the strongest vitality. After the storm, only she stands firm and does not change its color.Then to the right are hydrangea, crab claw orchid, epiphyllum, and rhododendron.The crab claw orchid is magenta in color and has a fierce expression, with the intention of grabbing people with its teeth and claws. It is simply a flower nightmare, and I dare not get close to it.The epiphyllum has bloomed three times, and once it is a pair of flowers, it is really Jixi Suxian.Between summer and autumn, it blooms overnight, and the white thousand-layered long petals are unfolding unrestrainedly and swiftly, faintly exhaling pink and yellow delicate cluster stamens, but like all miracles, in the dazzling light , It is closed as soon as it is opened.A year of reserve, only for one night's profligacy, is probably the most shy, self-effacing and least expressive girl in the Fang family.

On these peninsulas in the sky, ah no, above the sky gardens, I am one of the two gardeners, who specialize in watering. Every day when the sun sets, in the floating light of the sunset, I carry a watering can with a white handle and a blue body to the garden. All Fang gave water.The other gardener is of course the hostess of the balcony, who specializes in killing insects and fertilizing, pruning branches and leaves, and digging pot soil.Sometimes when the buds are newly sprouted, wild sparrows often come to steal food, so I rush out with all my arms and drive them away loudly.But the high platform is full of sad winds, and the valley at the foot is only open to the bay. When the sea breeze comes together, it becomes a bellows that Lao Tzu calls "empty and unyielding, moving and getting better".So it was my turn to move the pots into the house.The same is true when the cold snap hits.The female gardener laughed at me as Tao Kanyun.Beauty also has a price.

On a sunny day with no wind, a white-painted birdcage is often nestled among the potted flowers.The guest inside is a small parrot with gray wings and blue body. I named it Sapphire.When I got closer, I found that the wings were not all gray, but gray in the middle, with a little bit of blue; on the nape of the neck, there were circles of gray stripes, and the gray stripes on both wings were covered by arcs, decorated with white edges, Shaped like fish scales.Below the overlapping wingtips, a slender tail stretching out, almost half its length, with a dark peacock blue coat color, often flicks around the cage.The fine hair on the body is very light blue and flowing.There is a white feather on the chest, covered with small round blue dots, the number of dots is constantly changing, ranging from two dots to as many as six dots all the time, arranged in an arc, like a necklace.

Blue baby's cuteness is not only beautiful in appearance.If you are patient and spend some time with it, you will discover its linguistic genius.It has only been half a year since it joined our life and became the most beloved "little family member". Han Weiquan visited Hong Kong from the United States and stayed at our house for a few days. He first discovered that he was babbling and learning our human language.At first we didn't believe it, thinking that its intermittent babbling was nothing more than a bird's self-talking, unconscious babbling.Jingwei Quanyi reminded that Lan Baobao's intermittent birdsong, after listening carefully, actually had a human meaning.It's just that sometimes he stammers, paradoxically, with human accents and ambiguous sentences. The artistic conception is between humans and birds. I'm afraid even Gongye, when he is alive, will find it difficult to understand, let alone St. Francis Xavier.

If you are lucky, Baby Sapphire will spit out three or two short sentences: "Little bird, come here", "What are you doing", "Got it", "The stinky bird is not good", and the rhythmic "Little bird, little bird, little bird" .After all, the pronunciation equipment of the small curved beak is not "speaking in the same breath" as the human mouth, so the labial and dental sounds of human language, etc., although Blue Baby has a smooth tongue, it is still difficult to imitate.It is said that if the parrot is to learn to speak seriously, it must be cut out first, so that it will not have such a "big tongue".I don't know whether this will work, but it's too boring and cruel to violate human nature in order to promote the human language, and I absolutely refuse.This all-encompassing and all-encompassing world belongs to humans, as well as flowers, birds, insects, and fish; among human beings, forbidding others to speak or forcing everyone to speak a thousand words is powerful enough, so why bother How about the beasts go to the human administration?Therefore, the female gardener and I let the iron crabapple in the pot be as it is without twisting it. As for the blue baby, who can speak a few words of human language, although it can please people and satisfy the vanity of the owner, we also let it be free. Development, never trying to teach it.As I wrote this, I heard Baby Blue calling again on the balcony.But this time it was echoing with the wild sparrows outside, it was chirping.

That kind of chirp should be the Esperanto of Feather.And no matter whether Baby Sapphire is on the balcony or in the house, as long as there are doves or sparrows nearby, it will respond crisply, teasing and answering, calling and harmonizing. It sounds very interesting, perhaps in the world of birds , just like the world, it has a variety of complex dialects, but unfortunately we can't tell them apart, so we have to call them Niaoyu. Usually speaking of birdsong, one can't help but think of such beautiful tones as "Swallow's language is as clear as a slash, and the voice of warbler is smooth and round".Later, I visited the Detroit Zoo and entered the bird garden with high cages and dense trees. In the shadow of greenery and greenery, I didn’t see the high-dwelling birds for a while. I don't know how many wizards are casting spells and chanting spells in hidden places. It is really the most horrifying experience in hearing.After watching Hitchcock's horror films, everyone was surprised and said that they really didn't expect birds to be so "evil".In fact, human beings dominate this world, taste the delicacies, eat all things, take everything for granted, but forget how cruel their crimes of often capturing and cooking birds are.Vultures eat people, after all, they wait for people to kill themselves first; people eat pigeons, but they deliberately murder cage by cage.

Thinking of this, a blue light flashed, and a blue cloud fell on my shoulders. It turned out that someone had released the blue baby.Every time it comes out of the cage, it must flap its wings and fly around the house, and then perch on my shoulder or wrist.Around my ears, the nape of my neck, and under my chin are the places where it loves to snuggle and discuss.When it is the most docile, it will rest on the back of people's hands, lower its head, and kiss people's fingers with its small beak, without moving, to please people.Sometimes it will spit out a "bird millet" from its mouth and invite you to share it. It is said that this is a kind gesture of friendship, but you can rest assured that it will not force others to do anything. After a while, it will peck again. gone back.Sometimes it will nibble your finger and show its ridiculous tongue.When excited, it will kowtow to you continuously, its neck hair will loosen, its pupils will shrink, and it will murmur even more incomprehensibly.However, the so-called "little bird depends on the person" is only one-sided. It is only allowed to come to relatives, and you are not allowed to caress it.As soon as you stretched out your hand, it immediately turned around and faced you, paying attention to your every move, otherwise it would be a blue feather, and it would have been flying away.

Many friends in my living room are often surprised by the sudden arrival of this flash of blue cloud.The female writer Xin Dai is one of them.It was too late to say it, and the blue baby's gorgeous wings were already perched on her wrist.Xin Dai was still in shock, so she had to force herself to be calm and listen to us boasting about the little bird to her.Later, when she returned to Taipei, she also published the article "Sapphire" in "United Supplement" to remember the incident. I found that many friends don't know how fun and easy it is to raise a small parrot.The price of a small parrot is very cheap in terms of the pleasure it brings to its owner.In Taiwan, they cost 60 to 70 yuan each, and in Hong Kong, they only cost 6 Hong Kong dollars. They are often sold in supermarkets in the United States, and they are only 5 or 6 dollars each.When I was in Denver, I raised four one after another. Among them, the one with yellow background and gray stripes was very delicate. It was considered a treasure, and it was bought for fifteen dollars.When buying a baby parrot, there are two things to look out for.The age depends on the forehead and the tip of the nose. The denser the black lines on the forehead and the purpler the nose, the younger it is. If you want to buy it, of course you need a newborn parrot to get close to you.As for health, you have to turn over to look at its anus. The fine white fluff around it needs to be dry to make it appear to be well digested.Small parrots are most afraid of diarrhea, and it will be bad once they have diarrhea.

The other investment is nothing more than a birdcage, two perches, a piece of fish bone and an extremely miniature water tank.The purpose of fish bones is for it to peck to absorb sufficient calcium.With such a small stomach, the amount of millet consumed is of course limited, and even the poorest master can afford it.Sometimes in order to adjust, you might as well feed a little green vegetables and fruit peels, and let it peck three or five mouthfuls, which is enough.After it is ripe, you can release it from the cage and let it fly freely, but the doors and windows must be closed carefully, otherwise it likes to fly to bright places, and it is easy to grab the door and go away.Among the nearly ten small parrots I have raised, two of them flew away for no reason.With this sad lesson, I only dared to let the bird out of the cage at night. Little Niao clings to people, but also clings to others, and after being too intimate, she also has troubles.When you eat an apple, it will fly to attack and compete with others for food.You cut a slice and feed it, but it only took a few bites, and it still slid back to your mouth, determined to share a big piece with you.When you read the newspaper, it will come to chew the edge of the paper, eating with relish.When you write, it stops on the paper, studies what you write, and even thinks that the pen tip is waving back and forth to amuse it, so it comes to chase and bite your pen tip.It is not easy to drive it back to the cage.If it hasn't had a good time, no matter how nice you are to persuade or threaten, you can't make it bow its head.In the end, there was only one way to turn off the lights. In the dark, it dared not fly.So you stretched out your hand to catch it, a fluffy, soft and warm ball, with a small heart beating violently against your palm, amidst the sound of creaking protests, you have put it back into the cage. Blue Baby was bought at the vegetable market in Tai Po for 6 yuan. Among all my "birds", it is the most well-behaved and cutest. Now, even if someone offers 6,000 yuan, I will not give it up. of.The summer before last, we went back to Taipei with our family, so we had to send the blue baby to Song Qi's mansion, and Mrs. Lao Song served as a "bird mother" for half a month.I remember that when I entrusted it, I also solemnly drew up a memorandum of "Instructions for Raising Birds" and hung it on the side of the cage. The text said: One millet, one bowl, half a tank of clean water, changing every day, not eating fireworks, just like a feather fairy. Where the second air outlet is exposed to the sun, it is not suitable to place birdcages. 3. There is no need to bathe the bird, nature has its own arrangement. Four IQ is like a two-year-old baby.Slightly fluent in human language, quite happy to spread rumors.In the privacy of the boudoir, it is not advisable to talk too much, be cautious.