Remember the squash trellis blooming with yellow flowers

Among the simple and familiar flowers in the countryside, perhaps squash blossoms are one of the most brilliant in color. It is a splendid, pure yellow, a charming yellow, especially when the flowers bloom on a trellis full of green leaves next to young shoots stretching out as if to caress the sun, wind, and sky.

My maternal grandparents' house was in a hilly area, and usually when it rained, my grandfather would take the dried squash hanging on the kitchen rack down, shake it to release the flat, black seeds, and prune them into a small hole next to the pond in front of the house. Not long after, the squash had grown, growing into vines, clinging to dry tree branches, and hanging straight up onto the bamboo rack my grandfather had made.

Luffa is easy to grow, people do not fertilize much, water moderately. My grandmother is very good at taking care of fruit and vegetable plants in the garden, she once told me so, then explained: "If you water too much and fertilize too carefully, the luffa will produce only leaves, very few fruits!". One season, I saw my grandmother use a small bamboo stick about the length of a finger, sharpen it and then stab it through the middle of the stem near the base of a luffa plant. When asked, I learned that because the luffa plant had been planted for a long time, it only produced leaves and refused to bear fruit, so she did that. Unexpectedly, after a while, the luffa plant that she treated with "tricks" bore fruit all over the trellis.

There is nothing more enjoyable than looking at the young squash hanging down from the trellis beside the pond. Every time my mother came to visit, she would pick a few for me to take home. A meal with shrimp and squash soup, with some jute or Malabar spinach, was both sweet and delicious. Sometimes when cutting open a ripe jackfruit, my mother would ask me to run to my grandparents’ house to ask for squash leaves to clean the sap, because no other leaves could clean the sap as quickly as this one.

But for me, it’s not just that, I love it when squash blossoms. The delicate but vibrant petals, with their brilliant yellow color, bloom early in the morning, when the sun has just risen, and last until the end of the day. Along with the purple color of the lavender flowers, the white color of the squash trellis, the yellow color of the squash trellis, have made my grandmother’s garden even more beautiful. Many evenings, together with the children in the neighborhood, under the shady squash trellis, we played all kinds of games, such as selling goods, cooking; playing catch, snapping rubber bands…, while above, a few bees circled around the flowers.

The yellow squash blossom, a simple flower with childhood memories of my hometown, has followed me for many years. This morning, while reading some poems online, my heart suddenly fluttered when I came across a few lines from the poem “Will You Come Back” by author Nguyen Cao Nguyen: “The water surface suddenly fell asleep/The fish jumped in surprise/The squash blossom just woke up/The first young fruit of the season/Sounds as sweet as raindrops/Sounds as strong as sunbeams/Sounds as sad as silence/The sound of the past calling back ...”.

KIM TUYET

Source: https://baokhanhhoa.vn/van-hoa/sang-tac/202408/nho-gian-muop-no-hoa-vang-1251efb/