It was a pleasant way to wake up, the words rolling through my head like a song or a poem. Sunny-day flowers on a cloudy winter’s day.
Tagalog words, coming back to me even though I haven’t been in the Philippines for more than twenty years.
While I lived there, I saw many kalachuchi trees. But the one I remembered as I lay in bed that morning, reluctant to open my eyes, was growing behind the building where my daughters attended nursery school. The school was in a large city church with an even larger grassy yard. Mothers dropped their children off in the yard so the kids could swing and slide and run and shout before going inside.
The kalachuchi tree was unusually large, covered with countless fragrant white blossoms. You may know the kalachuchi as plumeria or frangipani (both musical words that could be added to my morning song/poem). If you’ve seen it, you know that the flowers don’t last long. They soon fall to the ground and wilt.
They don’t wilt immediately, though. so when I arrived each day with my girls, the grass under the tree would be covered with lovely, fragrant blossoms. Sadly, the gardener was always there, hard at work, raking them up. More than once, I grabbed a blossom for my hair before leaving.
This time of year in Washington State, the sun doesn’t rise until almost 8:00 am. So I stayed in bed a while longer, half-dreaming about sunny-day flowers.
Sampaguita, which you may know as Philippine jasmine, is a small white flower prized for its fragrance. They’re sold as garlands which can be used to welcome guests or to adorn saints’ statues. But what I saw most often were the vendors with their sampaguita leis along busy highways. They took advantage of slow, busy traffic and long traffic lights to sell sampaguita garlands which drivers hung on their rear-view mirrors to lend a sweet fragrance to the cars.
Glenn Martinez has a delightful article on his blog, Traveler on Foot, about San Pedro, Philippines where they grow and string sampaguitas. He also mentions in the article a legend that tells about the origin of the sampaguita bush. Like the legend of the love locks, it tells of a faithless man and a grieving, jilted woman.
Gumamela is the Tagalog word for hibiscus, a plant with large, trumpet-shaped flowers.
Sitting up in bed, I said the three words out loud: kalachuchi, sampaguita, gumamela. Then I left my warm bed and started my day.
We have the frangipani in common, Nicki 🙂 🙂
You have to love all those fragrant, constantly renewing blossoms.
Nicki, a beautiful post and a bright sparkling start to my day. The kalachuchi trees sound and looks amazing – what a magical start of the school day! 😀
We have some lovely flowers in temperate countries, too. The rhododendron is the state flower for my state, Washington, and the tulip and daffodil bulbs grown in the nearby Skagit Valley are shipped around the world. The English, too, are famous for your gardens. But this time of year, there are few flowers here to be seen. In the tropics, they’re lucky to have flowers all year long, and the kalachuchi was one of my favorites.
I love frangipani although I was not aware of their name, haha. I saw them when I visited the Philippines and the last time I saw one was in Hainan last August.
In Suzhou, elderly ladies also string small white flowers that smell very good and sell them as bracelets or thingies to hang in the car. I wonder if it’s the same variety. Next time I see someone selling them I’ll buy and take pictures.
Everyone loves wearing colorful and sweet-smelling flowers. In the South Pacific, even the men sometimes wear a flower in their hair.
Nicki, I love these flowers and reading about them brought the fragrance to my nose! Thanks for that memory! I wish we could grow them here.
I’ll be glad when it’s spring, and we can see some flowers of our own.
Nice waking up with the scent and image of flowers in mind.
What are you going to daydream about tomorrow morning? 😉
Birds would be nice–hummingbirds and chickadees, herons, sandpipers, and parrots.
Excellent idea!
Just what we need today.
Yesterday was quite a day! But the world is big, and hopefully things will be improving soon.
What a lovely way to start the day! Thank you for letting me join you, Nicki!
It’s better than waking up to the news.
Plumeria! We have so many plumeria trees here in Southern California. They’re so pretty they didn’t even look real when I first saw them.
It’s supposed to have originated in Central America and Venezuela, but now it seems to be all over the world in warm countries. My first acquaintance with plumeria was in college. The students from Hawaii were putting on a luau, and one of them knew someone who worked for the airlines. She talked him into sending a big box of plumeria blossoms, and then she and her friends hurried before the party to string them into leis.
This is a good day to think about lovely flowers with wonderful scents. Makes me long for spring, summer and some good sun!
I love the fragrance. Another favorite scent is from the Philippines, what they call damas de noche. It’s night-blooming jasmine, and it has a stronger scent that regular jasmine. You may not be able to see it, but the fragrance fills the night.
Beautiful post, Nicki. You certainly have a gift when it comes to the camera.
This time I didn’t want to hunt through my photo albums. I just got these elsewhere instead.
Yay! So nice to see this bouquet of flower photos on your blog, Nicki. More than ever we need beauty (as Marian Beaman’s blog post reminded me the other day).
Fortunately, we still haven’t had a frost here, so I still have a tiny bit of color in my patio. I have a handful of tiny, tiny flowers. And this time of year, I appreciate the fact that I have multicolored leaves–all shades of green, dark and light, even reddish.
A delightfully uplifting post, Nicki
I wrote this before the disgraceful, seditious actions of our president and his mob. Today a little uplift is needed here more than ever.