Grant Me a Year, Give Me a Yard Full of Purple Orchid Fragrance – My Promise to Her

I have an inexplicable connection with orchids and wisteria. As a rural child, I grew up running in the mountains, and every spring, the wildflowers on the mountains would bloom without fail. A whiff of orchid fragrance, a patch of purple haze – for a country child, it's hard to articulate that feeling with words, but that sense of comfort can be imprinted on a lifetime.

Childhood and youth memories are the deepest and most unforgettable. Years later, I met my wife, then I was just a young man who had just left the countryside. (In fact, I was almost middle-aged). To put it simply: I had nothing, just a fiery spirit and arrogance left from wandering the world. In the era when online forums were prevalent, my online name was: Three Points and a Master, which was interpreted as – one part aloof, one part dashing, one part melancholy, and half a portion of unyielding confidence. It was supposedly a very flirtatious name, but actually, I just thought it suited my personality.

I remember she asked me, 'What do you have? What can you give me? Haha, I really couldn't say. Fortunately, a farmer had a stroke of inspiration, and I said to her: 'I'll take you to the mountains to see wildflowers.' When the wildflowers bloom, I'll hold your hand, smell them with you, and even pick a few to clip into your hair.'

My wife is from Ningbo. She had never seen so many wildflowers blooming in the mountains. She said, 'Are there really so many places with mountains and wildflowers?'

Let me tell you, you haven't seen the world yet, haha. That's what I was thinking at the time.

I told her: 'There are, in my hometown, every spring there are mountains of wildflowers, and the most beautiful ones are orchids and wisteria. When that time comes, we'll walk under the wisteria pergola, smelling the intoxicating fragrance of orchids. It's even more beautiful than the cherry blossoms in Shulan Park. Mr. Lu Xun hasn't been to our hometown, so he wouldn't understand.

That year, she officially became my wife. To be honest, I didn't really have anything to give her. I remembered that the wedding ring was bought for 18 yuan on a website at the time. I said to her: 'Give me a year, and I'll promise you a courtyard filled with purple and orchids.' She thought I was just saying romantic words and didn't take it seriously. Actually, a farmer isn't a romantic person, and what I said is definitely achievable.

Having made a promise, the farmer started to pursue his childhood dream: to grow orchids. For someone who had never grown orchids, even cultivating wild orchids is not difficult, but I experienced many failures. I experienced dead seedlings, rotten roots, no flowering, no germination – a series of frustrations that orchid enthusiasts often experience. As the saying goes: failure is the mother of success. If I have to give the simplest conclusion, I think it's constantly failing, which will get you closer to success.

Of course, as the ancients said: learn from your mistakes and grow wiser. Raising orchids is the same. If you don't promptly and effectively summarize experience and lessons in the face of continuous failure, this failure will never have children, let alone success. The wisteria vine in the courtyard was very obedient; it sprouted and flourished in one year. Seeing my empty orchid pots, my wife said: 'When will they possibly smell of orchids?'

As our child started to walk, he would definitely stick his little nose up to the orchids to smell the fragrance. I would also make him a flower crown with wisteria flowers. I was quite confident and told her so.

She said, 'Okay, I believe you will definitely be able to do it, wait for the fragrance of orchids and wisteria.'

After many dates with Success and his mother, my orchids finally bloomed, and the fragrance permeated the courtyard and village. The wisteria flowers also lived up to expectations, blossoming after one year of planting. Seeing a courtyard filled with purple haze and the intoxicating fragrance of orchids, my wife held my child's hand and said: 'It's beautiful.'

Life is always continuing. The bright spots in life are often those you had previously ignored. As long as we have the spirit of yearning, even in days that are occasionally not happy, we can find experiences that can make a lifetime of happiness.