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Among the four seasons of a year, summer is best known for its abundance of fragrant flowers and sweet fruits. Whenever the summer comes, many memories about flamboyants, fragrant lotus flowers, etc. vividly live up in our mind. But rarely do we recall of simple beauty of verdant waving lotus leaves on peaceful ponds at Vietnamese countrysides when the early summer rains pour down.
No sooner the summer put its very first steps on the seasonal threshold than lotus leaves emerge and float on the water, stretching to catch night dewdrops and sunlight. The sparkling dewdrops on lotus leaves under the dawn light look like of bright twinkling greenish open eyes a young girl. Such images arouse pure and noble emotion in our soul. Sunbeams soon are brilliantly everywhere. The lotus leaves gently embrace the sunlight, causing the shaking dewdrops on them like drops of yellow honey.
Two sides of the lotus leaves have two different colours. If we look the lotus ponds from above, we will see clusters of dark green leaves. The backside of the lotus leaves are covered with a silvery whitish layer of powder. The leaves are shyly greeting the sunlight illuminating the water.
Appearance of the lotus leaves bring more lively vigour of the ponds’ frolic orchestra by insects, small frog lads and green frog lasses. The lotus leaves stretch wide on surface of the ponds like swaying cradles in gusts of wind, lulling the small frog lads to a deep sleep. They are also becoming gentle hammocks for the artistic insects to leisurely enjoy melodies of evening winds. Sometimes, the lotus leaves are playgrounds for active insects to play tig. It turns out to be eaves for these insects to shelter from the sudden summer rains when they cannot return home in time.
The lotus leaves are green in a short period of time and soon leave their stage for pink and white flowers which often bloom at the transitional time of April and May. The green leaves then become humble background for prominent beauty of the coloured flowers. That’s the reason why many people unconsciously don’t take notice of the existence of the lotus leaves but the striking lotus flowers.
In spite of that neglectance, the lotus leaves keep on green until the end of the summer. In the early autumn, they fade and silently sink to bottom of the ponds, transforming into nutritionous mud for growth of lotus rootstocks.
Every early morning, when fog is still thick, many industrious Vietnamese brides usually row their boats on the ponds to collect the night dewdrops on the lotus leaves.They then use the dewdrops to make tea for their parents-in-law, their husbands and distinguished guests. Drinking the tea, we can realize beautiful characteristics of oriental women.
Whenever a member of a family go far from home, their mother gets up early to cook steamed glutinous rice and then wrap it in a lotus leaf. Unwraping the lotus leaf fragrant rice when being hungry, that person will deeply feel homesick and secretly tell himself to fulfil his parents’ expectation better.
Moreover, the lotus leaves are often used as umbrellas by rustic pupils including me in both rainy and sunny weather. It suddenly rains, two pupils of us share the lotus leaf umbrella, exchanging each other shy glances of liking on the way to school. And we then wish for sudden rains when school finishes.
Next summer, if you have chance to go to the countryside, don’t forget to stop for a while to look at the lotus ponds, enjoying the simple beauty of the lotus leaves for a peaceful moment our mind. Wallowing in that feeling of peace, you may wish to walk with an old pal under a lotus leaf umbrella in summer shower.
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