Diary of My Country Life-August 16th, 2026

The original source of this blog: https://www.lotusandmichael.com/blogs/diary-of-my-country-life

08/16/2026 Sunday 65-77F Cloudy 

My “Rosy Charm” abelia is a very charming plant--it started to bloom in May, and till until now its arched branches are still heavily covered with flowers. It seems to never feel tired nor bored, every day it is just busy preparing its flowers and blooms in the morning, entertaining my eyes and nose whenever I pass by. Bees, butterflies and hamming birds love it. They keep visiting it, tossing around from one little trumpet flower to another. I don’t know whether they remember which flowers they have worked on; to me they just casually and leisurely flutter to one flower, get either their heads (like bees), or feet (like butterflies), or long beaks (like hamming birds) in, then flap to the next one. Bees seem to do a better collecting job than butterflies. I saw the latter touch this blossom for a second, then touch that blossom, violently shaking off some innocent flowers. 

One morning after a rainy night, I drank coffee on the porch, watching my abelia sparkling in the sun. Being profound like pink clouds and sweet scented, I came to fully understand the meaning of its name: Rosy charm- there’s no better name than this one. I turned to my husband: “How about letting me take a snapshot of you sitting by the abelia? It looks awesome in the morning light.” 

“Why not?” 

While he was waiting for me to take photos, a butterfly (or a moth) stopped on his shoulder, several inches away from the embroidered tea flower on his garment. Lucky that I captured this moment with my camera, though it would be really interesting had the butterfly landed on that tea flower. 

Somehow, I liked that photo a lot. Nature (plant and insect) and people, we encounter each other, we go in harmony. The pink, rain-washed pavers connected with abelia’s pink blossoms in the sun which formed a dreamy, dazzling sentiment. So I decided to use this photo for my website’s homepage, and paint it with a little twist. 

Now the butterfly in my painting has become a much bigger one, the actual visitor of my abelia which I saw on the day when I finished my painting, and it stops on my husband’s fingertip. Furthermore, when I looked at the painting, a Chinese story emerged in my mind: One morning Zhuangzi (a Chinese wise man) had a strange dream in which he transformed into a butterfly. Then he woke up; in a trance he couldn’t figure out whether he was still that butterfly in the dream, or that butterfly actually had become him.  

Butterfly, man, dream, and surreality.  Therefore, I wrote down some words from an ancient poem referring to that story. 

Sometimes I wrote words (mostly poems) on my paintings only because those words could either further explain my work or expand our imaginations. And sometimes the words might add a little more fun to my paintings because they could help reveal the painter’s thoughts. Many times, during the opening of a show where my paintings were exhibited, I saw quite a crowd in front of my work guessing or chitchatting about the meaning of the words on the painting; and once a young lady even photographed the words to let Google translate them (of course I helped her with the translation to save her trouble). 

To me, writing and painting, words and images definitely can be combined like many traditional Chinese water ink scrolls did, regardless of the mediums or the languages. It’s a form of art; it can happen naturally; and we shouldn’t take it too seriously.   

My loofah is another very charming plant in my own environment. This year since I top headed them regularly, they became much more disciplined—almost at every leaf axil, baby loofah gourd grows out. Of course, these babies aren’t secured until they bloom, are pollinated, and start to swell. But once they settle down, they line up along the branches, winking. Last year when I had a massive wall of loofah plants, it was difficult for me to hunt the gourds. They loved to play hide-and-seek; and their leaves were so big that they could screen the gourds easily. Often, I found overgrown, inedible gourds after turning the leaves. “Ok, again, you win!” I sighed. 

Now since they are lining on the trellis, I can easily see them and locate them; once the bigger gourds are harvested, most likely the next turn will be the ones near them. I count the gourds of my potential harvest, lead their shoots, and cut off new suckers. All the work has turned out to be a kind of learning experience and fun. 

The only regret is that four loofah plants seem to be too much for my vegetable bed. Though the two-tiered trellis I built for them is more than twenty feet long, the shoots of the plants have already met and tangled onto each other. Perhaps having two loofahs is more suitable for my situation: Planting each one at each end of the trellis, one tier one branch, so they can have an entire twenty feet to cross before they meet. But if I want to keep two branches for each loofah, then the distance will be reduced to half, far less than a loofah needs (I think a two branched loofah plant can run thirty to forty feet easily within one growing season). 

No doubt that I need more land 😂 !