It was getting hot, and I didn't know it was just spring. Soon after the sting, the temperature rose to a feeling that only summer has.
Back at home, he took off his coat and walked out the door, only to see several people hiding in the shade of the osmanthus tree in front of the neighbor's house chatting. Where there is no shade, the arm where the short sleeves can't cover it, it's very hot. Like people who had just returned from the field, I sat down on a cement barrier in the shade, and the coolness penetrated the thick pants, and the electricity spread throughout my body, and the heat left by the sun quietly disappeared.
Looking up at the tree, the old leaves of gui looked like a layer of pale green mold, unevenly sprinkled on the almost dark green old leaves. Between the leaves and the branches, it was as if they had been awakened by the heat of this spring overnight, and the young leaves of dark purple and light red had grown, like a finch's tongue, sharp and thin. Maybe tomorrow, they will grow long, and they will grow much longer and wider.
This is spring, and although it is as hot as summer, its season is still called spring, because in addition to the crazy growth of young leaves, flowers of various colors also bloom.
When I was in elementary school and junior high school, I felt a lot about spring. The weather warmed up, and I read in the book about melting snow and snow and willow budding. Sure enough, on the way to school or after school, I saw the bare branches, quietly covered with young leaves, becoming a green umbrella that stretched out.
Tired of walking, hiding from the sun, he turned his back to this new shade and let the cool wind blow away the beads of sweat in front of his forehead. The mulberry leaves on the side of the road were green, and the clusters of green made the children's dark eyes suddenly light up.
Looking at the boundless fields, there is a faint fragrance of rape flowers in the wind, and the large golden yellow makes us shudder. In the spring, no matter which kind of flower, whether it is a radish flower or a swallow flower, there is no rape flower that blooms endlessly and is particularly eye-catching.
Peach blossoms are full of buds. Photo/Nine white
However, the canola flowers also brought me sorrow. Many things in elementary school have been forgotten, but one thing is very impressive.
I remember that in such a spring, when I was in Chinese class, the teacher taught an ancient poem about cauliflower - "The fence is sparse and deep, and the new green of the tree head has not yet become yin." Children rush to chase yellow butterflies, flying into cauliflower nowhere to be found. ”
In order to make us learn better, he deliberately bought a wall chart from the market town. The picture is very light and light, there are no leaves on the branches nearby, the cauliflower is also vaguely yellowish, and even the butterflies flying around in the poem only have faint shadows, looking scattered and lonely.
I was dissatisfied, where is this spring scene that I see every day? The cauliflower in the spring sun field is simply a boundless and lively ocean, with various colorful butterflies flying and small bees buzzing among the flowers. Maybe I was distracted, but the teacher found out and told me to get up and go to the blackboard to silently write this poem.
Oh my God, I was still complaining about it, and the catastrophe came so soon. I couldn't write several new words, and I kept reading yellow butterflies in my mouth, but my mind was full of white, yellow, and pink butterflies. They flew so freely, but I stayed in the classroom after school, copying them over and over again, and the white paper was full of the words "yellow butterfly."
Later, I was studying in Changsha, and one spring after another passed unconsciously under the Yuelu Mountains. I only remember that when there was sunshine, there were a few purple-leaf plums on the side in front of the Martyrs' Shrine, which bloomed more and more vigorously year after year, and when I had to look closely, it quickly withered away in the wind and rain again and again.
There are also times, I heard people say that there is a road called Magnolia Road in front of the canteen of Shida University, and when it blooms every year, the leaves have not yet grown, and all kinds of magnolia flowers bloom all over the road. I also wanted to see, in the pouring rain, when I ran to see, the flowers had fallen, but the branches grew leaves. The fine leaves that shone in the rain told me that the spring of the year had passed again.
In the years of studying in the north, the impression of spring was even weaker, back and forth, day and night, in the running of the train many times, in addition to the cold of winter, it was the heat of summer.
The spring in the north seemed to be shorter and more urgent than in the south. The last time I went, it seemed to be particularly cold, the branches of the moon that had been buried in the gray sand in the old years still seemed to have disappeared, and the plane trees on the side of the road were still bare. But the next time I went, the branches of the moon had reached my window, and the broad leaves of the sycamore had been blown by the wind under the sun.
Therefore, only by returning to the southern countryside can we enjoy the colors of spring and breathe the breath of spring. But on the concrete floor, in the tall buildings everywhere, it seems that the four seasons are these familiar buildings, and the camphor trees, osmanthus trees, and green spaces, which seem to be very unresponsive to spring.
One spring, in the middle of the camphor and laurel trees, several peach trees with dark brown branches suddenly grew. Under the sun, the leaves have not yet grown, but the flowers have bloomed. Pink and pink, the flowers bloomed all over the branches, and when the wind passed, the branches moved, and the flowers trembled, as if they were dancing, as if they were shouting that spring was coming. The dancing flower branches and petals are more like the girls at that party, they have a delicate flower appearance, they have a soft dance posture, so that people's hearts are also like blooming flowers, full of joy.
The petals float to the ground. Photo/Nine white
So, after years of wandering in other places, I learned that there were several peach trees in a clearing behind the building. Whenever spring comes, the flowers are like cute little elves, waking me up in time, calling me, telling me that spring has arrived.
Peach trees are not planted by community managers, they will only plant camphor trees, laurel trees, and maybe a few purple leaf plum trees, but they will never spend money to plant peach trees.
More than ten years ago, when I first moved here, there were two old people living on the first floor opposite, who were very kind and hardworking. Maybe the green plants in front of the building were too monotonous, and when they saw that there was a large area of empty land, they planted three or four peach trees, as well as wood hibiscus and chestnut trees.
In the spring, under the misty drizzle, the old man will select the small saplings from the market town and plant them one by one in the open space. A few years passed, the peach trees grew taller, spring came, and it seemed that overnight, the spring wind blew the peach blossoms away. The old man moved to a chair, put on reading glasses, and comfortably drank tea and read the newspaper.
My children also like to run and jump under the peach blossom tree, and the hens also rush to the scene, and once they dig out the earthworms and other insects in the soil under the tree with their sharp beaks, they will cluck and fight. At this time, when the child took advantage of their inexplicable beating, he stretched out his small white hand and grabbed it forward quickly, catching the fluffy tail of the chicken. The chicken instantly became honest and squatted on the ground, its wings spreading to the sides, looking trembling. The other one, seeing that the situation was not good, sneaked away, and a chicken dispute was resolved.
The old man took off his reading glasses, smiled and squinted at everything in front of him, and happily praised the child's cleverness and bravery. The child was embarrassed, and with a loose hand, the chicken stood up, shook its feathers twice, and quickly ran away. The children cried out, and the adults laughed. On the peach tree, the flowers seemed to be infected by the laughter under the tree, one piece, two pieces, slowly and leisurely swirling down.
Cell phone records spring. Photo/Nine white
In this way, in the blossoming of peach blossoms, I felt the coming and going of spring. In that distant mountain village pastoral, there must also be golden rape flowers that are infested with yellow butterflies.
Later, many years passed, and the old people were gone. Last year, I saw the information of selling a house hanging on the protective window outside the balcony of the house opposite, and when I came back from the countryside today, I once again saw the peach red and willow green of the countryside, looked at the boundless rape flowers, and remembered that it was spring. But why hasn't the peach tree behind the building bloomed with the bright red flowers of previous years?
Coming downstairs, I looked at the red banner of the sale information, which was still hanging there, already white. Approaching the side of the road in the back flat, I saw only a few peach trees, the main trunk had been chewed by termites, the branches were old and black, I gently climbed one, folded it inside, and broke it. It turned out that these trees had dried up for a long time.
Without peach, where will I find my spring?
Text/Kuang Liehui