Last night's read was John Steinback's "The Chrysanthemum". This short story was richly descriptive and will really stir you on imagining how the plot really looks like. Characters are a farmer, his wife, and a tinker who repairs pots and sharpens knives. I can easily recollect the passion that the wife exerts on growing her 10 inch chrysanthemums, tenderly planting new shoots with strong hands. Chrysanthemums are beautifully colored flowers with a bitter scent. The Asian varieties sold in floral shops are most commonly the Malaysian mums. They come in yellow, brown, orange, white and maroon shades.

Wikipedia summarizes:

"Elisa Allen and her husband Henry live peacefully on their farm in the Salinas Valley; he is busy with his orchard and steers and she with her housekeeping and flower garden. While tending to her garden, Elisa encounters a tinker who passes by their farm, first asking for work fixing cutlery and pans, and then inquiring about chrysanthemums in her garden. He asks for some shoots to take to another lady who asked him for some once. Elisa is happy to give young shoots to the tinker, and in fact goes to the extent of taking some of her new shoots and planting them with great care and skill in a nice large pot for him to give to the woman. Elisa goes into great detail when she explains how to care for them. She goes inside and gets dressed up to go out with Henry later on. However, in the car on the way to town, she sees the chrysanthemum shoots she'd given the tinker thrown carelessly on the road. She realizes that the tinker had lied to her just to flatter her into giving him some business (before the tinker left, Elisa let him fix a few old, dented pans which Elisa was more than capable of repairing on her own), and also that he had kept the pot, throwing away only the plants. She is dismayed, cries, and is shaken and deeply disappointed, even wounded by the sight of her chrysanthemum shoots lying on the side of the road. When the car her husband is driving passes the tinker's wagon, Elisa turns away from the tinker, facing her husband, so her husband will not see the cast off shoots on the road or the tinker."

There are some opinions that the husband was gay, because there's something that keeps Elisa sexually unsatisfied. Having separate bedrooms on their house is another story.

"Earhtly possessions" (book by Anne Tyler), a movie starring Susan Sarandon, sharing a similar character with Elisa - as she grows tired of becoming the wife and mother of her family. But Susan did something to get out of her situation. She withdraws all her savings and plans on getting away to a far place and start a new life. But fate changes when a young bank robber holds her a a hostage, and the adventure of being a cougar continues.