Purple heart

Whether growing in the corner of the garden or on the banks of the ditch, riverbank... whether it is eggplant, eggplant, goat eggplant or wild eggplant, eggplant flowers are still faithfully purple. The purple color of eggplant flowers is lighter than Hue purple, and not as deep purple as the color of morning glory flowers climbing on fences and hedges around the garden. Therefore, people often call it purple-heart eggplant. It is a gentle purple, fragile purple but haunts people's hearts...

The lilac flower is not splendid and elegant, not fragrant and beautiful, so few people pick it to enjoy. The flower just blooms calmly, simply beautiful in the March sun, swaying gently every time the river winds play over the fields and beaches. And as if to cherish and protect those small, pretty purple flowers, the tree spreads out its large, green, sturdy leaves to protect them day by day. Therefore, to admire the lilac flower, we have to step closer, bend down very close as if whispering, as if confiding in a gentle heart...

Illustration photo. Source Internet

And perhaps, eggplant flowers are born to produce fruit, for the meals of the countryside people during the "eighth day of the third lunar month" harvest season. Other flowers, when blooming, all point upwards to show off to the earth and sky. The gentle eggplant flower bends down, sometimes as if hiding itself shyly behind the leaves, only showing its yellow pistil to welcome the warm sunshine and butterflies and bees as friends. Therefore, all the preservation, thrift and tolerance of the flower is to look forward to the fruit picking. There are many types of eggplant, but the most familiar is still the white eggplant. The clusters of fruit are heavy, round, smooth and white, gradually growing, from the size of marbles, then the size of small bowls, hanging from the branches towards the ground, evoking the fullness, warmth and simplicity of country meals...

The eggplants were planted with seeds that had been saved from the previous year. Mom usually picked the roundest and largest eggplants, marking them for use as seeds. She waited until the end of the season, when the eggplants were old and ripe, the skins were thick and hard, and they turned a fragrant yellow color, then picked them, tied them into bunches, and hung them in the kitchen. Day after day, month after month, the smoke from the straw helped the eggplant seeds dry up, but inside were many plump seeds, waiting anxiously for the day to germinate.

In December, when spring crept back, my mother took down the fruit clusters, split them open, and sowed the seeds in the small garden, covering them with a thin layer of straw. A few days later, the sprouts cracked open and confidently rose above the moist soil. When the plants had three leaves, my mother thinned them out and planted them in rows about a meter apart. Fertilized with compost and watered daily, the eggplants grew quickly, sprouting branches and spreading their green canopy to cover the long bed of soil. Then from the leaf tips, the flower stalks stretched out, sprouting clusters of buds, and then into clusters of tiny purple flowers, shy in the early morning sun...

The purple lilac flower has entered proverbs, folk songs, and the hearts of people for generations. Therefore, the color purple has become the name for a particular color. It is the purple round-neck shirt hugging the round shoulders, it is the purple hat strap fluttering in the dreams of many young men of that time... gently stirring our souls...

Tran Van Loi

Source: https://baoquangbinh.vn/van-hoa/202504/tim-tim-hoa-ca-2225402/