In my hometown, the neem tree is called neem tree, and the fruit is called neem jujube, because it is green, round and hard when it is immature, much like a small jujube. The green neem jujube is our childhood toy, which can be used as a bullet. What impressed us deeply was that we used it as a "chess piece" to play a game of "losing our nest". This game is played by two people. Dig two rows of small pits in the ground, about five in each row, and put the same amount of neem jujube in each pit. The first person who started the game grabbed the neem jujube in the first pit and threw it into the pit below in sequence, one in each pit. When all the neem dates in his hand were lost, he grabbed the neem dates from the last pit where they were thrown, and threw them out one by one. Until this happens: when the last pit in front of the one thrown into the neem jujube is empty, the neem jujube in the next pit of that empty pit belongs to the loser. Then another person started again, grabbed the neem jujube in the first pit like the last one and began to throw it.
I was deeply impressed by this game and found it very interesting. The green azadirachta dates must be covered with dust when they are put in the pit and picked up by hand. But when we are young, we cannot do without dust. Dust is our indispensable "toy". Dust-stained hands grabbed the green neem jujube, feeling cold, throwing it down one by one and picking it up one by one. How boring it is to think about it now, but we had a good time then. This game, which costs nothing and is completely taken from nature, is now "lost". Nowadays, children have countless toys, and they can't imagine how we can get such great happiness from such a simple game.
Azadirachta dates turned yellow when they matured, and the surface was soft and fell all over the floor. We don't like the ripe Azadirachta jujube, because it is soft, sticky and liquid when pinched, and it tastes bitter. It is said that it can be used as Chinese medicine.
I'm not impressed by the flowers of the neem tree, but because there are many neem trees in the village, in late spring, when we are busy playing, the blue and white flowers can attract us to see them, but they pass quickly. After all, boys don't have much preference for flowers, not to mention this common small flower that can be seen everywhere.
However, as an adult, I live in a city, and neem trees are hard to find. One spring, I saw a stout neem tree full of flowers in the old city, which really surprised me. I have been away from my hometown for more than 20 years. Every time I go home, it is mostly winter vacation or summer vacation, and I have never seen the tree in my hometown again. The neem tree in front of me, full of flowers, suddenly brought my memory back to my childhood. I watched the pedestrians around me pass by this thick neem tree in a hurry, without even looking at the neem flowers of that tree. It is no wonder that neem flowers are not a landscape at all in a city where all kinds of beautiful flowers are competing to bloom. This is not a tree that needs careful care. I don't know when it began to grow here, and I don't know what kind of opportunity made it grow in the wind and rain of the years, and grew into such a thick tree, firmly occupying the land of this crowded city. Although lonely, but still flowers bloom and fall, live up to the years.
Melia azedarach is so ordinary and insignificant in my teenage memory, but the accidental meeting in another country a few years later brought me such a big surprise. It turns out that it has been in my memory for decades, quietly guarding that period of time. As soon as we met, it was an old friend of another country.
Actually, Melia azedarach is not as obscure as I remember when I was a teenager. I am also a frequent visitor in ancient poetry, but I was still ignorant at that time. According to records, from early spring to early summer in the south of the Yangtze River, there is a saying of "twenty-four times in Hua Xinfeng", in which the plum blossom style is the earliest and the neem style is the latest. You see, at this end, Melia azedarach is as famous as the famous plum blossom. When the neem tree blooms, spring goes and summer comes. There is a cloud in the ancient poem, "The scenery is good after the flowers of Melia azedarach bloom, and the plums are full of yellow rain." Neem tree and plum yellow rain are also called, which are very poetic.
Jujube, like many people and things in my youth, drifted away with the change of time. Now, when the hometown and village are rebuilt, there are no neem flowers that once bloomed, and there are no green neem dates. Perhaps it is because the jujube tree grows slowly and has a beautiful posture, so it is not suitable for the fast-paced society. But I believe that it will not disappear. Not only in my memory, somewhere in the world, there must be a neem jujube tree, which is quietly flowering and bearing fruit.
On a day in late spring, I will inadvertently walk through that corner and get full of surprises …