In September this year, a friend who returned from Europe was quarantined in a hotel. His activities were mainly eating and sleeping, and he would do some exercise occasionally. He prepared books for isolation, and reading books can also pass the time. This friend is also a florist, he ordered a lot of flowers, and luckily the flowers were delivered to his room. Flowers became his biggest companion during the quarantine.
During the lockdown days, there were not many places I could go, but when I went to the vegetable market and saw fresh vegetables, red and green fruits, fish and shrimps that could swim, and busy shopkeepers, I suddenly became depressed. The status has recovered a lot. As a plant lover, I am glad that I was able to get along with plants during the epidemic, and my body and mind will not suffer a major blow.
Plants: Soul Healers
The history of human flower arrangement can be traced back to ancient Egypt. In ancient Egyptian tombs around 2500 BC, there are murals of water lilies in vases. The water lilies all over the banks of the Nile River were revered by the ancient Egyptians as a sacred flower for offering sacrifices to the goddess of fertility, symbolizing happiness, holiness and reincarnation. In Egyptian mythology, the sun is a golden child who rises from the water lilies every day and returns to the water lilies at night. Because the water lily has so many symbolic meanings, it was the flower of choice for royal flower arrangements, and its image was carved on numerous buildings in ancient Egypt.
In the East, flower arrangement originated from Buddhist flower offerings, so there was a prototype of flower arrangement 2,000 years ago. During the Tang Dynasty in China, the culture of flower arranging and viewing entered its heyday and became popular among dignitaries. The Japanese have learned various cultural techniques from China since ancient times, and they brought the way of flower arrangement to Japan during the Tang Dynasty. After hundreds of years of research and development by the Japanese, the flower art of the Tang Dynasty has become a world-famous Japanese ikebana.
Not only flowers, green plants can also bring spiritual comfort to people. Tao Yuanming said, “Picking chrysanthemums under the eastern fence, and seeing Nanshan leisurely”, Liu Yuxi said, “The moss marks are green on the steps, and the grass is green in the curtain”, Cui Hu said, “The human face does not know where to go, and the peach blossoms are still smiling in the spring breeze”, and Cao Xueqin The chapter “Daiyu Burying Flowers” in “A Dream of Red Mansions”, a poignant and sad story, was changed into various repertoire dramas by later generations. The emotional projection of the ancients to plants and flowers is something that our modern people cannot surpass.
In Egyptian mythology, the sun is a golden child who rises from the water lilies every day and returns to the water lilies at night.
“Léon” stills
Figures of water lilies were carved on ancient Egyptian buildings
Once when I was a guest at a friend’s house, I saw a small tree with a height of half a person on the balcony of his house, which was beautiful in shape, and I admired it for a long time. My friend asked me if I was talking to the tree and I thought he was joking. A is from Mexico. He told me that people in his hometown really know how to chat with plants. When they are in a bad mood, they talk to trees, and after chatting, people feel better. I haven’t tried chatting with plants. When I’m in a bad mood, go to the balcony to water the flowers and cut the grass, or go to the flower market to buy flowers and put them in a bottle. tough question.
The hero of the French movie “Léon” wanders around the world with a pot of plants in his arms. After the hero dies, the heroine replaces him with the same pot of plants. I would rather walk with plants than be friends with humans. Does it prove that plants are simpler and more reliable than humans? My friend B is a serious gardening enthusiast and grows various flowers and plants in his own garden. She told me that she used to suffer from depression and was not good at dealing with people, so she loved to communicate silently with plants. She watered and weeded the grass every day before breakfast, and had to water it again in the hot summer evening.
When it comes time to fertilize, she will buy fertilizers from the Internet. She is self-taught about what fertilizers different plants need at different times. The joy comes from the fact that the plants I planted by myself are from sowing to rooting and sprouting to thriving and blooming. The feeling is completely different from buying a plant directly from the market. It’s her way of finding contentment and starting each day with hope.
I totally understand her joy at being massaged by the botanical mind.
Bougainvillea on the street in Mexico City
In the face of male friends, plants are definitely an unpopular topic.
The flower-growing life of the people in Huacheng
Many people feel that being at home is boring. I personally think that some hobbies are easy to pass the time. The premise is that there must be a balcony, and flowers and plants are planted on the balcony.
Every morning, I go to the balcony to water the flowers and plants, and sometimes I trim them, and the new day’s life officially begins. My balcony is not big, about four or five square meters. I turned it into a mini hanging garden, and planted two Bougainvillea, which are now popularly called bougainvillea, on both sides of the balcony.
Bougainvilleas are common trees in the tropics and subtropics everywhere in Guangzhou. If they are well maintained, they will bloom all year round.
In addition to the bougainvillea, I will also plant some evergreen foliage plants beside the bougainvillea, such as peacock arrowroot, fern, etc., to keep the balcony alive all year round. Plants are like clothes, you can change and match them according to your favorite colors and seasons. For example, when summer comes, I will buy a few pots of orange roses and yellow daisies to complement the original green plants, and the whole residence will immediately be full of summer atmosphere. At the end of the year, I will buy some flowers and plants with Chinese New Year atmosphere, such as pink camellia and white daffodils.
When I was young, the market economy was underdeveloped, and we didn’t have much spare money to buy flowers and plants. We usually bought flowers to decorate our homes during the festivals, and usually we had to find ways to add plants to our homes. My mother’s work unit has a rooftop with many cacti and prickly pears planted on it. We would break off a small section of prickly pear or a small prickly prickly pear to go home and find a pot to plant them. These plants usually develop fine roots from the break within a few days and begin to take root in the new place.
We used to live in flats. The neighbors knew each other, and we talked about the plants on our balcony when we met. Sometimes I would ask for some from my neighbors. People who have planted spider plants know that spider plants will continuously grow long branches from the core, and small spider plants will grow at the top of the branches. The small spider plants hang in the air, and fibrous roots will grow slowly from the bottom. Everyone will cut these small spider plants and give them to neighbors to plant.
Besides planting flowers and grass on the balcony, I also like flower arrangement. Thanks to my work, I often use flowers and branches to make arrangements for other people’s activities. From openings, festivals, weddings, to birth, old age, sickness and death, plants are indispensable at every important moment. When I see other people’s homes only use the balcony as a laundry and drying room or a utility room, I feel sorry for him from the bottom of my heart. However, I occasionally want to tell my friends about the experience of raising plants, but most of the time it ends in embarrassment, especially when facing male friends, plants are definitely an unpopular topic.
When I meet foreign friends, I also talk about plants. No matter men or women, regardless of age, they are all plant lovers. They talk about their own garden, their parents’ garden, how they cut grass, and their own city. My plants, I can’t stop talking. Another Mexican friend of mine, C, used to live in Beijing, but later moved to Guangzhou due to work needs. When we met for the first time, we talked about the impression of the city. He said that the bougainvillea in the streets and alleys of Guangzhou made him feel very friendly. There are also many bougainvilleas in his hometown of Mexico City.
I was sometimes invited to be a guest at the home of foreign friends, and found that in addition to drinks being a necessity, plants and flowers were also a necessity for them. If you have the conditions, you can put the whole small garden on the balcony, if you don’t have the conditions, you should put a few pots of small plants in the corner of the room or even on the bay window. When it comes to important festivals, they will definitely decorate with flowers.
No matter how many times Sailor Moon is knocked to the ground, as long as she is illuminated by the moon, she can be full of power and transform into a monster. Plant lovers are the Sailor Moon in real life, they draw energy from plants; they know the truth of flowers blooming and falling, and understand life and death from a flower and a tree. No matter what unhappy things they encounter, they can go to the balcony to water the plants and trim the branches, or go to the park in the middle of the street to look at the flowers and trees in different poses, and they can be revived in place.
