Hoa Anh Đào - Cherry Blossom

I love plants and flowers. I could spend all day at a plant nursery. I should live in Florida or California, where the climates are milder for tropical flowers. Last year, I went to Callaway Garden in Georgia and I spent most of the day at their greenhouse. Some of my favorite flowers are Cherry Blossom (hoa anh dao), Peach Blossom (hoa mai), Plumeria (hoa su) and Bouganvilla (hoa giay).
One of my best childhood memory is visiting my grandmother - bà nội (that's your father's mother) at Tan Son Nhat. We only visited her once a year. My mother would make me dress up in some fancy clothes and we would take a bus out there. I call it a bus because I don't know what else to call it. It looks like an old truck with a covered roof over it. I don't know why we didn't take or moped or car. It seemed like a long trip at the time. Recently, I flew into HCMC and took a cab from the airport Tan Son Nhat to Saigon and it didn't seem that long of a drive - may be because the roads are now paved and it wasn't back then.
My grandmother had this swing out in the front. It was under this HUGE pink bouganville tree (hoa giấy) climbing over the house. She also had banana trees. I spent alot of my time there because my cousins thought I was some fancy city cousin that couldn't get dirty.
Today, I have an arbor in my yard. I planted 2 climbing roses on it. A yellow rose climber on one side and light pink "New Dawn" climber on the other side. It's still fairly young - under 2 years, so I don't get as much flowers yet. I can't wait for it to cover the whole arbor. The pink roses is a hybrid that is supposed to take over the arbor. Someday, I hope to give one of my daughters a dinner reception in the garden. May be nothing as big as the wedding in Steve Martin's "Father of the Bride" movie, but something along that line would be fine.