Essays on small courtyard prose

In fact, I didn't want to write about the yard at first, but the paulownia tree in my hometown yard, specifically the purple paulownia tree. As for the reason for thinking of this tree, it comes from the article Wu Tongshu, a collection of Feng Zikai's essays recently seen. This is a tree planted by his neighbor in his apartment. Because of the tall trunk, the four seasons change of his upstairs window.

His four seasons remind me of my hometown, the yard when I was a child, and the paulownia tree full of purple bells in spring.

The yard is almost rectangular, which seemed to have four floors when I was a child. First, the tall main house, then the platform in front of the house, is a flat cement floor. On the east side, Dad built a low flower wall by himself, with three or five steps in the middle facing the main entrance to the small yard below, and then a row of paddocks facing the main room, including the door, small kitchen, storage room and bathroom.

I don't know what year the tree was planted, but I remember that it was always there, just under the high platform in front of the house, facing the door, facing the window of the East House, adjacent to the low flower wall. It has always been so high, but the difference is that it gets thicker with age.

Every April or so, I look up and see a string of purple tung flowers blooming in the light blue sky. At that time, there didn't seem to be so much smog in the sky, so light blue and light purple became the most beautiful pictures in my memory, and those two colors unconsciously became my favorite colors.

On windy days, flowers will be blown down, like bells and small speakers. When you smell them carefully, there will be a faint fragrance around your nose, which is different from the fragrance of any other flower, so unique and quiet, and it is a low-key luxury. Even the floating posture is so casual, I don't miss it, I don't feel uneasy, it seems that everything is taken for granted. At this time, I always carefully pick up those flowers and put them under the roots. I didn't deliberately bury them, but I thought it would be closer to my mother. Maybe only children think so.

When the tung flowers are almost finished, the tung leaves will sprout a little, perhaps because they don't want to cover up the charm of purple. When the leaves of paulownia trees grow long enough to cover half the yard, summer comes. At that time, the yard is more noisy. The windowsill and flower wall are filled with all kinds of flowerpots, large and small, and the flowers and plants that mom can't name are all open for the second time. This is a gesture in which you sing me on stage. Up to now, all I can remember is geranium, carnation, immortal and other rare varieties. Perhaps, there were no rare flowers and plants at that time. However, in the eyes of children, all flowers are beautiful, but they are still not as beautiful as tung flowers blooming in mid-air.

Besides tung flowers, the day lily is the most impressive one. When I was a child, I didn't know it had such a beautiful name, except that it was called yellow flower, which was both ornamental and edible. But my family has never eaten it and kept watching it. When the flowers bloom, long flower arrows are drawn from the leaves, and there are several tight flower buds at the top. Then, those buds open day by day, forming a patchwork picture, with slender flowers in the middle, with a little orange, which is really pleasing.

Plants planted side by side with day lilies were called "cordate telosma" when they were young. I didn't know that many plants are called cordate telosma until I grew up, but I saw a very nice name called "cordate telosma", probably because we can only meet under the moon. Summer night is the best time to enjoy evening primrose. When the sky is getting dark and dusk is closing, if you are willing to stare at the bud intently, you can see that its four pale yellow petals are gradually opening, but the petals that look slightly thin can release attractive sweetness in an instant, and people can't help but gather together and sniff hard. Often at this time, it is easy to touch the delicate stamens, so the tip of the nose will naturally be stained with yellow pollen, and the fragrance will last for a long time at the nose. Sometimes, even if I know this, I can't bear to erase the refreshing fragrance, so I will always carry it until I fall asleep.

In addition to these, there are rising mirabilis jalapa in the small yard ... sowing seeds every spring and collecting seeds in autumn. Although the place is not big, it is also a small pastoral area. That was my initial understanding of the land-sowing hope and harvesting dreams.

These plants are planted on the east side of the yard, and there is a chicken house on the west side of the yard. Mom will keep a few chickens in it, sometimes black-bone chickens and sometimes Luhua chickens, not many, but they often lay eggs. The henhouse is a small two-story building, which was also built by my father. The first floor is very spacious, and there is only one row of bars at the bottom, on which chickens stand to sleep at night. It was strange at that time, why didn't they lie in bed and cover themselves with quilts like me? Actually, I haven't figured it out yet, but I won't be so entangled as I was a child. Everything has its own laws. Or chicken coop, the second floor is smaller than the first floor, divided into small units, each unit can only lay a chicken, covered with soft grass, specially used for laying eggs. There is a secret door on the back of each small unit, which is enough to put a hand in. Standing on the spacious platform in front of the Westinghouse window, even children like my sister and I can take out hot fresh eggs at will. At that time, I liked to squat near the henhouse to see which chicken went to the special unit on the second floor, and then wait there to steal other people's achievements at any time. It seems to be my own achievement, show it to my mother, yeah! I found another egg! After being affirmed by the adults, they carefully took it to the small multilateral wastepaper basket made of cardboard by grandma in the house and kept it. There are often the freshest eggs to eat in a year.

There is also a small tree in the corner of the henhouse, which is black dates. I don't know when it was planted. I have an instinctive ability to filter time automatically. All I remember so far is that the leaves are similar to persimmon trees. It is said that it is also a persimmon with oily leaves and dark green. I don't remember what flowers look like. It seems to be a yellow and white flower in a trance, and the taste is even more unclear, but I remember the result. Turquoise oval fruit never seems to mature, and it is not until autumn that it gradually reveals a yellowish color similar to persimmon. At that time, it was picked and dried on the windowsill until the color turned black and the skin wrinkled, but it was still different from the bought black dates, as if it were too full and round. Don't pinch it when eating. The stones inside are also very big, as if there were only huge seeds except the epidermis. You can only pick small ones, and it is best to wrinkle them badly. Ugly ones taste sweetest and have absolutely no seeds. But don't eat more black dates. Eating too much will dry the intestines. Therefore, generally no more than ten capsules at a time. The more so, the more rare, the more unattainable.

There is a Hosta under the black jujube tree with big green leaves. In late summer and early autumn, there will be clusters of white flowers, especially at night, and the rich fragrance of flowers will dilute the smell of chicken coops, so I especially like to eat them. Now that I think about it, the long and narrow white flowers have a sense of pride, as if the women in the ancient court had a sense of superiority, but at the same time they also had a faint melancholy, but this melancholy was deeply hidden by that sense of superiority, which could not be seen without careful listening and pondering. I think the Hosta under the black date tree is actually very depressed. Its detached posture is placed next to the henhouse, which is different from the empty valley orchid. The latter is indisputable, and the former is helpless.

It turns out that there is a peach tree in the east of the henhouse. Spring came, and the trees were red. Later, they seemed to be replaced by pear trees, because they only bloomed but did not bear fruit. According to the old people, it is not suitable to grow pear trees in our yard, but my family seems to have never been so particular about it. Not only pear trees were planted, but also two trees were planted. That pear is not an ordinary variety either. It is said to be grafted. I have always suspected that the grafting of pear trees and apple trees was successful. You can't buy that kind of pear in the market anyway. It looks more like an apple, round, but when it is ripe, its color is yellowish, its skin is thin and watery, and its taste is sweet and refreshing. I have always called it "apple pear", but the actual variety has never been known. It's just that I haven't eaten pears like that since I left that yard.

I remember planting several paulownia trees from east to west outside the gate, as if the seeds of the trees in the yard had fallen out and sprouted by themselves. From then on, the flowers in Na Tong became more and more dense, echoing each other from a distance outside the hospital. Purple stayed with me until I left home at the age of seventeen, and I rarely met again.

A few years later, my parents moved to the city, and the yard of my hometown finally changed hands. As a result, the swaying tung flowers have also become the epitome of my dream hometown.

Second, the former residence

Or it is precisely because of the attachment to my hometown yard that the first consideration when buying a house when I get married is the bungalow.

So, I had my own yard.

The house is a little old, so I am older than when I got married. Far less spacious and comfortable than the bright three main rooms in my hometown. The only thing that makes me happy is the courtyard, which is much more spacious than my hometown and allows me to do whatever I want.

At first, you can see Ma Pingchuan in the east of the yard from the house to the gate. It turned out that the old master planted a yard full of "immortals", which were extremely tenacious and did not need to be taken care of. Spring came, and flowers were everywhere, colorful and beautiful, so I let them go. There is a Toona sinensis tree near the east gate. The house has been bought for several years, and it is flourishing, so let it grow freely there. So every spring, there will be green and pollution-free fresh Toona sinensis buds to cook, which can be cold, scrambled eggs, and more can be sent to friends and relatives for tasting.

The old master once planted leeks under the tree. It is said that leeks are perennial plants, so I plan to keep them growing. Who knows that this plant is not the same as the flowers and plants when I was a child, nor is it the same as the "immortal". Finally, I took care of it and turned it into fluffy weeds. Nevertheless, due to the lack of closeness to the land since childhood, I still feel that I should be a landlord with such a large area of land, so I took out the pioneering spirit and turned the east side of the yard into a vegetable field. Lettuce, fennel, radish, eggplant, tomato ... all kinds of seeds have been sown, and people who water and fertilize every day are looking forward to a bumper harvest. However, after all, without experience, the result backfired. Except lettuce, all crops have been eliminated, and lettuce is unusually watery and lush. Fennel only grows a few sparse seedlings, and it is said that nothing can grow in the big garden anymore. The leaves of radish are long and watery, and I planted them carefully. But as a result, the leaves of the radish didn't grow, the eggplant went on strike after flowering, and the tomatoes didn't even bloom well, so they were surrounded by insects ... So, during that time, I broke off a lot of lettuce leaves every day to dip myself in sauce, and the rest were packed in a small basket. At least, that's my effort! However, this landlord is really tough!

Later, my husband saw that I wasted a lot of land and couldn't grow food, so he built a greenhouse on the east side of the yard, not a vegetable greenhouse, but a breeding greenhouse. There are many rabbits with red eyes and three mouths in it. It was also that year that I realized that there are many kinds of rabbits. I know a kind of rex rabbit called eight o'clock black. I know how to feed it, how to add water and how to feed it. Even when he is not at home, I will summon up courage and learn to take the newborn naked rabbits out of their nests one by one. I am too scared to shout for fear of scaring those timid guys.

There is also a watchdog, a little Jingba Lele, a big German shepherd baby, a black dog Beibei, and curly peas in the yard ... Lele likes me to tie it up and take it out for a walk. I also tied a small bell around its neck, and the yard was filled with the sweet sound of its running ding; Although the baby is wolf green, he has a very good personality. I raised it bit by bit when I was a child, and it liked me to massage it best. As long as I go home and talk to him about massage, he will immediately show me his weakest belly and let my feet rub gently. Sometimes even if I don't say anything, he will take the initiative to hold my feet with his two front paws, then roll himself and ask for a massage. It is said that the weakest part of this animal's body is its stomach. If it is willing to expose its weakest point, it means that it trusts you 100%. Beibei was arranged at the gate, and was tied on weekdays for fear that it would run around. I remember when I took him for vaccination, many people were scared to see his size. I chained him, then stroked his head and told him to be good and obedient, and went home after the injection. He understood, and went home with me after the vaccination. Only once, when it chased it, it broke free from the chain and ran to the house. It was summer. When I came out in the back room wearing shorts to kick him out, he was scared. It turned around and bit my thigh. I shouted in fear, and it quickly loosened. It was only a little skin at that time. I don't think it really wants to bite me hard at all. Maybe it just wants to scare each other like me. When Doudou was a child, we all thought it was a minibus dog because its curly hair was cute. Who knows, it got bigger and bigger. Although it is curly and golden red, it is not a purebred dog, but Doudou is the happiest dog, because now, except it still lives in her mother-in-law's yard, the rest are either lost or dead.

Because the west half is a shed for storing things, there are only edges and corners in the yard except these animals. So I planted a pink rose and a bunch of honeysuckle under the east window. I didn't feel anything for the first two years. Later, it grew more and more lush. Roses even tend to enter through the window, and the honeysuckle tree can't wait to climb the wall next door. Every time a flower blooms, it smells even more fragrant except the jade everywhere. Sometimes it will bloom for two days, and suddenly it will bloom proudly the next day. Those pink, yellow and white flowers are mixed in the green leaves, which gives people a little surprise from time to time.

Once, a friend who likes meditation gave me a bamboo. It is said that this plant is a god and not everyone can feed it. So, with a try attitude, I planted it in the west window. It was four or five meters away from the window. Who knows that after a few years, half the yard was paved. When I open the west window, my eyes will be full of bamboo. In the days of late spring and early summer, I moved a cane chair and lay half-lying among the bamboos, holding a book, occasionally turning over two pages, and occasionally covering the book on my face to keep out the sun, which seems to be the pleasant and quiet interest of "leaning alone on dense bamboo" in my bedroom. Because I didn't care for it deliberately, I am still excited about the miracle created by this clump of bamboo and the fun it brings me.

Just when the bamboo forest was dense, my husband scoured a sprouted lotus root from the market. So, they spent more than an hour digging a deep pit on the north side of bamboo, burying two-thirds of an old useless water tank in the ground, digging black mud from a distant river ditch, adding more than half of water, and burying the lotus root at an angle of 45 degrees. That summer, a jar of lotus leaves was swaying in the yard with a small umbrella, and occasionally a small frog came to join in the fun at night, which reminded people of Zhu Ziqing's Moonlight on the Lotus Pond. However, although the lotus leaf in this jar is a field, it has not blossomed more than half. On the contrary, it is the water lily that grows in the soil, and it has a few white flowers. Small and exquisite ivory petals, seemingly exquisite, reveal the strength in the bones. They are so silent, quietly open and beautiful under the cover of large lotus leaves. Even if they are not valued, even if they miss people's appreciation, they don't seem to care. If I hadn't carefully observed the growth of that pot of lotus every day, I would have almost missed this silent beauty.

One year when I went to Dacheng Mountain, I suddenly saw a small shrub with lovely leaves. Although I can't name it, I feel very congenial, so I picked up a small one in a loose soil and pulled it out without much effort. I guess this wild plant must have a strong vitality. Sure enough, after a day of tossing, I went home and planted it next to the bamboo forest. After a night, I regained my vitality. Even in the second year, it not only grew taller, but also produced yellow flowers the size of a small grain of rice, clusters and strings, with a faint fragrance, which looked a bit like Milan, but the taste was quite different.

In this way, a little bit, all kinds of flowers and plants were planted in every corner of the yard. Pink Chinese rose flowers that never seem to bloom, wild lilies that always secretly grow tall but don't like to bloom, Yushu that grows in flowerpots, cactus that will bloom in time after a summer, wisteria transplanted from other places ... and white lilacs that bloom in spring outside the courtyard, purple and red chrysanthemums that don't fade in four seasons. ...

I thought that when I went to Qiu Lai in the spring of this yard, the flowers would bloom and fall with me until they all grew taller and stronger, and I was getting older. However, I still lost it. Urban planning and the transformation of the old city made me live in a castle in the air and enter the reinforced concrete jungle. From then on, I lost my former residence and yard forever.