[Hana Kotoba] Jasmine and Freesia : 3

Childhood friends may lifetime friends become
and such friends are better to have than some

Up until that first Monday, the flower shop had just been a side-attraction for me. I only went in to smell the flowers or to fetch mama for something else. But from that Monday onwards, it became a priority. I spent all my spare time reviewing the flower names I knew and going over their traits. I even made a mnemonic to help me remember the information. A mnemonic which I chanted everyday on the way to school.

The Tenjikubotan are big and red.
Renge are small instead.
Jasmine are small and white,
Magunoria make for quite a sight.
...

During school, I found other ways to keep up my flower power. For example, I decided that I would spend my playtime identifying the flowers in the schoolyard. So every break, I would go around trying to name the flowers. There weren't that many different flowers, but it still took a while to get them all right since I couldn't check myself until I got home to the stickies.

At first I had to walk around the yard to find each flower but soon I knew where all the flowers were; even before I had learnt all their names. As you can imagine, my fellow classmates found my yard wanderings a bit curious. Eventually one of them just had to find out what I was doing. He was a boy, about the same age as I and looking very untidy after a game of Kagome, Kagome or tag as it is called in English.

Boy: What are you doing?
Hana: Naming flowers.
Boy: But they already have names. See? That's jasmine, and those are freesia, and...
Hana: No, no, stop! I have to get it right myself. I must know them off-head.

And that was how I met Ko. Koshien, Toba; like the baseball park. We became fast friends and Ko began to help me practice my flower knowledge. This was especially useful once I started memorising the flowers by scent because I had to keep my eyes closed. We later discovered that we lived pretty close to each other and began to go to and from school together.

Intro |
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To be continued...