The flower hills

I grew up in a small corner of Pleiku (Gia Lai) since my childhood, where the house was about a dozen steps away from the house, the low corrugated iron roofs had an antenna hanging to catch the signal for the old TV. The red dirt road was curved, winding, running into the forests, with rubber trees, coffee trees, and flower hills.

We, the children, used to stand on the tall grassy hills near our house, looking into the distance at the brilliant colors that changed with the seasons. Sometimes the leaves were green, sometimes the flowers were white, and there were patches of brilliant yellow like the autumn sun. We could only stand at a distance and look and guess what that place was. It was a rubber forest that produced white latex, a coffee flower hill with a strong fragrance, or a patch of yellow wild sunflowers swaying in the autumn sky.

Wild sunflowers are most beautiful in early autumn, with green leaves and budding buds shyly opening their petals. After the summer months, the falling rains wash away all the dust, making Pleiku seem to be wearing a fresh coat of color along every tree-lined street, but you have to go far away from the center to find the yellow color of wild sunflowers in full bloom.

When I was a child, I hated the bitter and pungent taste of that wild flower, but when I grew up, I saw how beautiful and proud it was. This flower is typical of the windy Central Highlands, nourished by the rich red basalt soil. Adults often use flowers to teach their children that when they grow up, they must be as resilient as flowers, even though they have gone through storms and rains, withered many times, they still continue to sprout and grow, season after season, never once have they stopped blooming soft petals, with splendid fresh colors.

And since when, I no longer hate the wild sunflowers growing right next to my house. I don’t know since when, I like to take pictures of the blooming flowers when the sky turns to autumn. I don’t know which is more brilliant, the sun or the flowers. I don’t know if as the years go by, the flowers will stay fresh and bloom every time autumn comes.

Tourists flock here now when the rain has just stopped in the mountain town, to admire the gentle autumn colors of Pleiku, to see the clumsy drops of sunlight falling on the windy porch. Or they leave the center, wander somewhere just to admire the yellow flowers, pose with the flowers, to see if they are bright enough to overshadow the color like the color of the sun. The flowers proudly hold their heads high in the sunlight, the green leaves swaying in the gentle afternoon breeze.

I grew up with the flower season, the more I understood about the wild flower called wild sunflower, the more I loved it, the more I wanted to record images of each flower season. The flowers are still blooming forever, only I had to grow up, leave the low, uneven corrugated iron roofs to find myself amidst the endless years. To occasionally look back at the photos I took of a flower season, wishing I could be like the flowers, forever blooming in the autumn sun, still fresh despite the Central Highlands changing every day.

LI PHAN

Source: https://www.sggp.org.vn/nhung-vat-doi-hoa-post816396.html