Chapter 58 Mulberries and Cherries
Before long, the weather got hotter and hotter, and now the daily high temperature is 25 degrees Celsius.
Every day, I go out in the morning and evening to check on the vegetable garden and do some picking and weeding.
When it's hot, I just lie at home eating snacks or doing some crafts to pass the time.
Chives, garland chrysanthemum, and cilantro are harvested again and again, and there are always more green vegetables than we can eat every day.
Even for the leftovers, I would reheat them and freeze them.
We only take them out to eat when there are no fresh vegetables available.
I got so tired of eating green vegetables, and since I had stored enough, I stopped cutting them and let them flower.
Now, each of the small vegetable gardens is filled with white and yellow flowers.
I'll save the seeds from the flowers later and use them for sowing.
At this time, the cherries gradually turned red.
It tasted very sour and astringent at first, so I waited for it to turn a little redder and then a little redder.
Before you know it, the branches are laden with bright red cherries.
From a distance, the clusters of red dots against the dark green leaves are quite a sight.
I picked a few and popped them into my mouth. Although they were still a bit sour, they were sweet and sour with plenty of juice, making them very delicious.
Every morning when the sun isn't too strong, I go and pick a big bowlful.
When the sun is too strong to go out, I lie on the kang (a heated brick bed) playing on my phone and eating cherries.
I collect the cherry pits after eating them and scatter them casually next to the vegetable garden when I go out to check on it, hoping that more cherry trees will grow in a few years.
The two dogs are getting wilder and wilder, and they often go out to play with me, running all over the mountains and fields.
I don't really care; this beautiful nature is meant to be enjoyed.
After eating cherries for a few days, I suddenly remembered the mulberry trees on the mountain.
So I got up early again and climbed the mountain.
The mulberries were indeed ripe.
Some of them had turned dark purple, indicating they were fully ripe.
There are also some small green and red fruits that are not yet fully ripe.
I came prepared, taking out a small basin and picking a full basin of dark purple mulberries.
Fully ripe mulberries are sweet and not sour at all; you can eat as many as you want without getting tired of them.
Because I wasn't wearing gloves, both my hands were stained with black juice.
But I don't care. No one will see the stains on my hands. They'll come off in a few days.
In this spring season filled with birdsong and fragrant flowers, I achieved the freedom to eat cherries and mulberries.
She could barely eat any rice, but she would eat mulberries and cherries until she was completely full every day.
When the mulberries and cherries ripen in large patches, the sight of red and black interspersed among the green leaves is absolutely beautiful.
I made several jars of mulberry wine and cherry wine following the recipe in the book, and stored them in the basement, to be taken out and tasted whenever I remember.
As the cucumber and bean vines grew larger, I found some dead branches on the mountain and used them to support their vines.
Once they bear fruit, they will hang directly under the vine trellis.
They are easy to pick and won't rot easily.
After I set up the bean and cucumber trellises, it started to drizzle again.
It's such a timely rain! I was planning to start watering the vegetable garden gradually starting tomorrow, but it rained today.
It saved me a lot of effort.
When it rained, something started to go wrong with Xiaodi.
He lay listlessly on the ground, panting heavily, looking like he was about to give birth.
The breeding room has been ventilated for a long time and is now very clean.
I put the new wooden doghouse I had made earlier into the dog kennel and then lined it with a soft cotton pad.
Call Xiaodi over.
Xiao Di seemed to understand what I meant and immediately lay down in the doghouse.
It spends most of its time sleeping in its kennel.
This light rain has been falling for three days and hasn't stopped yet.
I was afraid the rain would ruin my vegetables, so I put on a raincoat and dug a drainage ditch with a shovel.
The rainwater flows down slowly, which can moisten my vegetables without soaking them.
When I got home with my shovel and took off my raincoat, I heard a soft rustling sound coming from inside the house.
My first thought was that mice had gotten into the house.
I tiptoed over to the sound, and when I saw the doghouse, I suddenly remembered that Xiaodi might have given birth to puppies.
Sure enough, Xiao Di was gently licking the messy little fleshy mound beneath her with her tongue.
They were still wet and made faint cries.
I carefully walked to the doghouse, and Xiao Di looked up at it without showing any resistance.
So I moved closer and counted them carefully; there were four in total.
Goodness, those four dogs are going to eat up so much of my food.
Despite feeling heartbroken, I am still very happy that a new life has been born into my family.
Upon closer inspection, there were two black and white puppies and two yellow and white puppies.
The little potatoes and melons are all yellow and white, so how did a black and white puppy suddenly appear?
I was puzzled, but I respected the suggestion. Having studied some recessive genes in biology, I think that's roughly the idea.
It's time to make dinner. The weather is damp, so we need something hot to warm us up.
Use freshly picked bok choy and fresh meat to make minced meat.
Then I made some small wontons.
Add dried shrimp, seaweed, sesame oil, chopped green onions, and cilantro to a bowl, then pour a spoonful of hot soup over it.
I ate a whole bowl of wontons in one go.
I ate until I was sweating, and felt completely refreshed.
There were still some wontons left in the pot, so I just added more heat and cooked them for a while longer.
Boil the wontons until they break apart, then cook them into a soft, mushy porridge.
Then pour it into the dog bowl and let it cool.
Add a hard-boiled egg, then mash and stir together.
Then I took it to the doghouse for the little dog to eat.
Little Di didn't know how to judge the food; he just wolfed it down because it smelled so good.
It must have taken a lot of effort to produce the food, because it finished a whole bowl of the special postpartum meal in no time.
During this time, the little melon wiggled its butt over, wanting to get some food.
I slapped it away.
Its own sister and wife worked so hard to give birth to its babies, and it still steals its food. It's really inhuman.
After Xiaodi finished eating, I mixed the leftover noodles from breakfast with a handful of dog food and poured it to Xiaogua.
Little Melon didn't mind and ate it all without even realizing it.
The rain stopped early the next morning, and the air was filled with the fragrance of earth.
I took a deep breath and felt like my entire lungs were healed.
The rain these past few days has knocked off the petals of those flowers that bloomed later.
Only a few scattered leaves remained hanging on the branches.
I went to the breeding room to see the puppies; their fur was already dry.
I found the old waterproof pads I used for Xiaodi and Xiaogua and put them in the dog bed.
Hopefully this will make them more comfortable.
When I was little, after it rained, a layer of "sweet potato skin" would grow on the ground.
It seems the common name is ground fungus, but we locals call it ground radish peel.
After every rain, my grandmother would take me to the mountains to pick [something].
After picking them, we stir-fried them with eggs. They were soft, smooth, and incredibly fragrant.
As soon as I saw the rain stop and the sky clear outside, and the green, rolling mountains, I immediately thought of sweet potato peels.
I'm going to try to find it myself.
The rain had just stopped, and the grass was covered in dew.
I found my rubber boots, put them on, stuffed two plastic bags into my pocket, and went out.
I guess it might appear on a small hill.
Arriving near the small earthen slope I pass every day on my way to the vegetable garden, I found no trace of anything.
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