Which flower for Vinh city?

(Baonghean) - Every morning when I come to work these past few days, I see my female colleagues gathering around to share bunches of chestnut flowers. Oh yeah! It's summer, chestnut flower season! I also like the faded yellow petals with that pungent scent. But a man like me can't gather around to share a feminine scent. I'll just have to go out and look at the flowers!

In Vinh, it is a bit difficult to determine which flower species this city belongs to. Because people do not find any tree species that are commonly planted and prominent, creating the characteristics of the urban area located in the center of the North Central region - the place known as the "fire pan" of the whole country in the summer. Vinh is also not like Hai Phong, the urban area known as the city of red phoenix flowers or Hanoi, the land of milk flowers. So what color makes Vinh remembered? Perhaps it is the chestnut flower.

Phan Dang Luu Street (photo taken at Nguyen Tat Thanh Park). Photo: Nguyen Book

I remember, when I was in high school, my house was in Hung Dung ward, which at that time was still a suburban area of ​​Vinh. I studied at “Vinh Mot” school - another name for Huynh Thuc Khang High School.

Every morning on the way to school, we cycled through rows of green bamboo, interspersed in each bank and each row were small yellow buds of bamboo that children picked and attached to bamboo shoots to blow into pinwheels. What has always been special to me until now is that on the way to school, there was a small house located next to the road surrounded by chestnut trees. When summer had just begun to turn yellow on the rice fields, the chestnut flowers also changed from green to the color of ripe rice. Sometimes, after just one night, you could see clusters of chestnut flowers hanging overhead, spreading their fragrance as if urging the newly fledged turtledoves on the areca trees to quickly grow their feathers and take off to compete with the sky.

I still consider that house to be “the chestnut flower house”. In the morning, I often see a pretty and cute girl coming out of the bamboo gate. Sometimes, I still stop my car on this side of the road and wish to go into that garden to clearly see the flower that fills the whole road with its fragrance. And then, in the opposite direction, I also create a morning habit for that girl who is a few years younger than me. Since I have known her, I have had a bunch of chestnut flowers hidden in my shirt pocket to bring to class as gifts for my friends. It seems that the scent of chestnut flowers and the pure emotions of student life follow us throughout the school summers. Until now, after nearly 25 years, when I suddenly feel the sweet scent in the wind, my heart trembles, remembering the chestnut season of that time.

Flowers on Le Mao Street (Vinh City). Photo: Duc Anh

Lagerstroemia flowers. Photo: Duc Anh

Back to the street today, despite much love, chestnut flowers are not the flower that Vinh is remembered for. People still believe that Spring is the season of hundreds of flowers blooming and trees growing lush. This seems not quite right for Vinh.

I always notice that at the beginning of summer, when the southwest winds have not yet crossed the Truong Son range to reach the Central region, Vinh becomes more vibrant with the colors of flowers. The most prominent is probably the Lagerstroemia. If I had to choose, I think this purple flower is the color that makes Vinh stand out in the summer. However, many people born in Vinh or living long-term in this land may not realize this.

It was like that for me too. Until one morning, when I was awakened by the sunlight coming through the window, I suddenly realized that outside the cluster of Lagerstroemia flowers had turned purple all over the street. The first light of summer seemed to have managed to make the purple color smile.

I don’t know when the Lagerstroemia tree first appeared in Vinh, when I grew up a little and could recognize things around me, I saw Lagerstroemia trees spreading their branches on the street. Although it is a woody plant, Lagerstroemia is not a fast-growing, large-growing species like many other woody plants.

It feels like all the lifeblood gathered in its life has been poured into the flower clusters, the purple petals that bloom only once a year. In the past, inner-city streets such as Nguyen Thi Minh Khai, Phan Dinh Phung, Le Mao, Nguyen Van Cu... and especially Le Hong Phong had many Lagerstroemia flowers. In the summer, in the bicycle baskets of dreamy schoolgirls, there were always Lagerstroemia branches swaying in the wind. Perhaps the first pure love of schoolboys and girls also started from flower clusters like that. And these days, Lagerstroemia flowers are dyed purple on many streets.

Le Hong Phong Street is still called by many generations in Vinh as “the student street” which becomes more charming by the white shirt silhouettes appearing under the purple flowers in the early morning. That image easily makes people’s hearts flutter and vibrate.

Le Hong Phong Street (Vinh City). Photo: Nguyen Sach

But usually this season people pay attention to the red color of royal poinciana. Scattered in the school yard, small flames can be seen on the green domes. In Vinh, royal poinciana is not planted much on the roads but mainly in the school grounds. Everyone has gone through a childhood, gone through the burning summer days of school age, and often royal poinciana is a witness to the aspirations of many generations at the threshold of life.

In our time, in the last summer of our student life, every kid had a scrapbook with delicate red royal poinciana petals pressed in it. The scrapbook of our youth and the naive writings of our youth were like a farewell to the last summer, the joy was there, the tears were there and the sadness was also sent in there. How many sobs, nostalgia and first emotions were also sent into the pages that had nurtured the royal poinciana flowers.

Flowers for the streets, surely the designers of green carpets in Vinh, specifically Vinh City Park Greenery Joint Stock Company, have long focused on planting mainly shade trees and ornamental plants.

So, coming to Vinh in early summer, in addition to the purple of the Lagerstroemia and the red of the Royal Poinciana, people can also see the yellow of the butterfly flowers, the pure white of the Mulberry tree, and the dark red flower chains of many Barringtonia acutangula trees. In parks or the grounds of agencies, units, schools and even residential areas, people plant many new tree species, such as the red Ban tree that comes to the city from the distant mountains and forests.

Today I was walking on the street again, along Le Hong Phong street, standing hesitantly on the side of the road looking back at the old school. In the past, there was a purple-flowered Lagerstroemia tree here, and an old man chose to sit under its shade and repair bicycles. Now the old tree is no longer there, and the old man's soul must have drifted away with the wind.

Dao Tuan