My fond memory of the peony/Carlos Pueblo

 My fond memory of the peony/Carlos Pueblo

Several days ago, a college class mate sent two photos of the peony on a garden in Lao-Yang, Henan, China, an ancient capital of several dynasties in Chinese history. I have been touched with a fond memory of the flower and a girl whom I met on a train from Oxford to Birmingham, UK in 2018 when I was on one of my trips in England. The flower itself is very famous in Chinese literature means rich, noble, and elegant. There are also names after a city and a river in the certain part of Manchuria which we must recite in the Chinese geography class at my elementary school. I have seen the flower in both Frankfurt and Berlin, Germany after an impression of the flower on a favorite Japanese movie, Miamoto Musashi. His court lady host comforts a girl of what a blood stain as the peony petals.

There are a flood control zone with about 30 home gardens along the River Main in Frankfurt, Germany. The River Main merges into the west to the River Rhine. Those garden lots are leased to the local residents interested. I saw the peony blossom one spring. A garden owner had a good chat with me about the flower in Europe. He tells me that there is a peony show every year in the city with a contest of the flower. At the same trip, I wandered around some German cities and stopped at a Berlin Wall memorial on the old border of the French control line with the east Berlin. There is a nice subdivision with beautiful home gardens at the front yard on the old east Berlin side. I saw the charming peony again with a great surprise. I still have a fond memory that I introduce both gardens at both cities to my newly acquaintance fellow travelers, three ladies from Asia. One of them is Eugenia of Hong Kong. I met her again on my southeast Asia trip in HK last year.

I go to visit Christine in Washington, D.C. for the cherry blossom and miss her peony on the backyard due to the wrong time. The cherry blossom is in late March while the peony is until May or June.

I adopted a pretty girl from Henan, China as my daughter. Her name is Yang-Ming. She was on her way to attend her graduation commencement in Birmingham, UK. We had had a good chat on a train from Oxford to Birmingham while she ws with her two cousins. She left me a post card of an old street of the ancient city of Lao-Yang. It was the capital of the Later Han Dynasty, 25-220 A.D. I have had a feeling that all my adopted daughters are as pretty as the peony.