Hello friends 😃. Sorry, for the long hiatus. Without further delay shall we deep dive into today's blog. 

I am here to share one of my childhood experiences with you.

Whenever I look a Gulmohar tree anywhere , my childhood memories flooded inside me. I have fond memories of gulmohar tree which was in my grandparent's house. 

Like everyone, it's flame like flowers caught my attention first. I pleaded my elder brother to pick the flowers but he ran away from there after knocking my head. On seeing my crying face, My dad took me on his shoulder and help me to pluck those orange red flowers.

I still remember how my cousin taught me to make fake monster nails using the fallen flower buds.  We tried to scare our younger ones with those long nails and earning an earful from our parents.

I  gathered  the fallen brownish pods of gulmohar tree  from the ground and extract the seeds from it. 

Our evenings mostly filled with playing “Thayam” and “Kattam” games. Elder ones of our family seated together in veranda and having their tea with spicy snacks. Meanwhile, the youngsters are sitting in a circular way, for playing the indoor games.

My younger sister drew a box for playing ‘thayam’ using the chalk piece  and placing the tamarind seeds as her coins. I used my gulmohar seeds  whereas my brother took small pebbles and my cousin used her red beeds  as her coins. My brother cheated  our younger sister by faking his moves and leaving her as a crying mess every time we played.

Did you know that Gulmohar flower comes under Fabaceae family ?

In my tenth, my science teacher gave us an assignment to dissect the parts of flowers from Malvaceae , Fabaceae and Solanaceae  families . Usually, I combined with my friend  for doing assignments. I plucked the Hibiscus  from my neighbour's house for Malvaceae family and my friend  collected Datura for Solanaceae family.  

Initially, We planned to use beans flower for Fabaceae family but unfortunately my dad plough our land for cultivating rice. So, we looked  another option for Fabaceae.

While browsing through google, we came to know that Gulmohar flower belongs to Fabaceae family. On the next day, I went to my grandparents home to pick the flowers to complete my assignment.

That's how I learnt the  Gulmohar flower belongs to Fabaceae family.

Thanks for reading!! It feels so good on sharing my childhood memories with you 😊. See you all on my next blog 👋.