Right before the peach blossoms had fading during the Lunar New Year and the full moon of January, the white clouds and light blue patches giving off the fragrant aroma of blooming have flew from the villages in Phu Dien to all the streets of Hanoi on the rafts carrying the back of bicycles.
It is also strange, even though I have met hundreds of people transporting grapefruit flowers from the suburban villages to the city to sell, they are all transported by bicycle, not by motorbike or small truck like other agricultural products. After thinking carefully, choosing to transport grapefruit flowers by bicycle also has many subtle implied intentions, not accidental.
Because there is nothing as gentle as cycling a mountain of incense from your home garden to travel through Hanoi to find customers to listen to the music. Every wheel rolls, every meter of road passes with a slow enough rhythm to let the scent of grapefruit flowers fly out of the flower tray, spreading throughout the space.
Then, the scent of grapefruit flowers flew into the nose of passersby, forcing them to look around, causing the doors of houses on both sides of the road to open and making the call "G Grapefruit flowers - " come out". The speed of movement and the speed of the incense are just enough for sellers not to miss the buyer, the incense of flowers not to miss the person who loves the incense.
Therefore, you have to use a bicycle, whether it is a walk or a bicycle, just because you can't use a motorbike to get lost. The quick things are not suitable for grapefruit flowers and the scent of the countryside because strong winds will not only take away the scent very quickly but also make the flowers bloom, drizzle, and fly away. Thus, both the flowers and the incense are damaged.
Therefore, on the streets of Hanoi during the days of moisture and sadness, a turbid white color suddenly has a very unique flavor thanks to the scent of grapefruit flowers transported by bicycle. And so it turns out to be fair, because bicycles can squeeze through the narrow streets, giving off the aroma of grapefruit flowers everywhere, regardless of who buys them or not?
So Hanoians love grapefruit with all their subtle souls. Wasn't the female writer Phan Thi Thanh Nhan very delicate when "packing the grapefruit incense into a handkerchief to go to the neighbor's house, where someone is going to join the army tomorrow, to ask for incense to whisper to tell the family about love"?
So, when the scent of grapefruit flowers blooming with the aroma of January and Hanoi's aroma was also the time when the new recruits enthusiastically set out to join the army, leaving behind their longing and affection for those who stayed. And seeing the grapefruit blooming is knowing that "there will be people going far tomorrow".
Our love for grapefruit comes from its rustic, honest name, and cannot be more "native". Rarely, any flower is cherished by buyers, but the seller is very gentle and caring like grapefruit. Because people appreciate this flower for bringing this emotional and precious fragrance.
This season, when we set foot in the grapefruit growing area in Phu Dien, we will feel as lost as if lost in the primeval land, because the fragrant clouds gather in the garden, both floating and within reach. And grapefruit farmers break up clumps of scented clouds to bring to the street.
To choose the most beautiful flower branches, they have to wake up to cut the branches from 4 - 5 am. The most beautiful grapefruit flowers are when they are young, not yet blown, the scent is still hidden inside, so they have to be cut early to get the scent. Then, in the early morning, the grapefruit flower cars were leisurely walking around the streets.
Grapefruit flowers are beautiful in a simple way, when they are still young, they have a light blue color, when blooming, they have five plump, white leaves, surrounded by yellow flower buds. If the grapefruit blooms in the garden like clouds, the scent of the grapefruit flowers also changes like clouds, sometimes it brightens strongly, encroaching on the entire space, but sometimes it is secret and gentle, just waiting for the wind to fly.
Now, grapefruit flowers are contained in trays, the branches are caught into small clusters, sold in bunches, for about 25,000 - 30,000 VND each bunch has enough fresh flowers and beautiful buds. In the past, grapefruit flowers were sold in baskets, for street vendors to store perfume and get grapefruit essential oil as a product.
The grapefruit crop in January and February brings the flowers with the best scent to distil grapefruit essential oil. In the past, these days, Hang Duong street was bustling with grapefruit flower baskets brought to sell to candy makers who made grapefruit flower filling to get grapefruit spirit, an important addition to making banh chung and sticky rice cakes.
Now, Hang Duong street has not many candy makers left, so the scene of people hastily lighting up the northern firewood to store large-scale grapefruit essential oil has also disappeared. There are professional boilers with modern machinery to replace manual boilers made of hot sand or steam from the past.
But regardless of what is going on, Hanoians still love grapefruit enthusiastically. They put the fresh grapefruit flowers in the bowl, then poured them back onto the field tray, dried them in the night mist, causing the grapefruit flowers that were "closed" in the bowl to release all the fragrance.
That scent when exposed to cold air then stuck firmly to the bowl. Then scoop the sweet soup into that bowl, eat a piece and find the occasional fragrant aroma of flowers. Or they could drop each blooming grapefruit flower pet into a peeled sugarcane bag and marinate overnight. Tomorrow morning, if you eat each serving of sugarcane, you will find the sweet taste of the sugarcane filled with the aroma of grapefruit flowers.
However, Hanoians still like to put incense in jars and place grapefruit in plates to enjoy a fragrant space. No matter how expensive the grapefruit flower is, how short the life cycle of the grapefruit flower is, and no matter how the flower buds refuse to bloom once they have branches, Hanoians still love the grapefruit flower.
They are happy when grapefruit flowers bloom in January, which is a month with many important holidays at the beginning of the year. In the thinking of Hanoians, nothing is more sincere than offering fragrant, pure plates of grapefruit flowers to the sacred altar. Or place it on the tea table as a way to entertain yourself.
The earth is inherently fair, so in the humid January weather that makes people feel busy, there is a pure, wonderful aroma of grapefruit flowers to compensate. Then, regardless of Hang Duong's desire to bloom with grapefruit, regardless of the foggy land, in this land, there is a grapefruit scent that makes friends with humanity.
