Country garden

(Baonghean) - The home garden is rich in trees, flowers and grass. Each tree planted in the garden contains the boundless love that our parents have for us. Over the years, many types of flowers have disappeared, some delicious guava varieties have disappeared, the plum bushes that our father got seeds from Lao Cai were destroyed by pests and diseases. However, our parents have never personally cut down a tree, because each leaf and each branch contains dear memories. And in her stories, my mother often begins with the sentence: "That tree is probably as old as you are...".

The peach guava tree is the same age as the youngest son. Mom was sure of this because that August afternoon, she went to work in the field and saw a young guava tree growing on the roadside so she dug it up and planted it. Mom was digging a hole and whispering to each other: "I planted it so that you can climb the tree and pick the fruit later." That very night, Mom went into labor, Dad ran to call the village midwife, the youngest son was born and cried loudly throughout the poor neighborhood. The two star fruit trees were the same age as me, Dad planted them so that his future daughter could hang a hammock and comb her hair. The milk fruit tree was rougher than my brother by a year, the flowers were getting sparser, the fruit was getting rarer, the canopy covered Mom's rice drying yard but no one thought of cutting it down. The old jackfruit tree was filled with memories of the day Mom became a daughter-in-law, at night she missed home and hid under the tree sobbing from Dad. It was still that jackfruit tree that the day I got married, Mom also secretly ran out to wipe her tears...

Photo: Internet

Now, in my parents' garden, although it is already cramped, they still plant a few more trees for the grandchildren. Little Ti likes custard apple the most, so his grandmother went to the market to buy some custard apple trees. Little Bong likes sapodilla, so a few new trees appeared in the corner of the garden. That was where my grandfather used to plant chili peppers to pickle bamboo shoots, but now the chili peppers have withered, and he also said that he is old and can't eat spicy food anymore. I got married far away, but my mother still takes care of the basil bushes in the garden. Even though my hair is now curly and cut short, every soapberry season my mother picks and dries them in the sun to save. The youngest son just goes out, but when he comes home he runs out to the garden, sometimes he is busy in the jujube bushes, sometimes he is hanging on the guava tree, sometimes he is tired of holding a pole to poke grapefruit. My father still smiles and says: "This son is the one who loves snacks the most in the family". But thanks to the youngest who often comes back, the fruit trees have stopped falling and rotting in the garden. Mom never sold them like other families because she always thought that her children would come back, and if they sold them, they would have nothing to eat. In reality, we only had a few times a year to arrange time to visit. At that time, the fruit might still be green, but sometimes when we got home, the last fruit had fallen to the ground, the season had ended from the night dew, the morning sun…

The nostalgia for one’s homeland is different for each person. It could be the image of a banyan tree, a ferry, a communal house yard, or a poetic river, or it could be the train station where the train stops several times a day. But for me, all those memories are concentrated in my home garden. At every family reunion meal, my father tells me to go out and pick some lemon leaves to sprinkle on chicken meat for fragrance, or some perilla leaves to make a pot of frog stewed with banana for the right taste. Or when my grandchildren are in pain, my mother will always find some folk medicine in the home garden that is both healing and fast-healing. Both rows of fragrant daffodils have been waiting for us to return for so many years. That alone is enough to make my nostalgia sometimes burst into tears…

Vu Thi Huyen Trang