"We'll order a big wooden box to make a nest, with some gaps at the bottom to let the poop and pee out, so it'll be easy to clean. We can clean up the leaked filth every day so it doesn't stink up to us." Old Zhou was exhausted after a long day of work, and he fell fast asleep as he spoke, snoring away.
The next morning, Zhao Guihua turned over the soil in the vegetable garden in the backyard and planted the melon vines. It happened to be drizzling today, so she didn't have to water them anymore.
After Xingxing woke up, she went to knock on the door of Zhao Guihua and her husband's room. Zhou Laoda poked his head out of the kitchen and told her, "Your mother went to the vegetable garden to help you plant melon seedlings. You have to plant them quickly, otherwise they might not survive."
So Xingxing ran to the backyard, and Zhou Laoda caught up with her and put a straw hat on her, saying, "Daughter, it's raining outside. You'll get wet if you run out like this."
He looked at the muddy path leading to the vegetable garden and thought to himself that Xingxing should not go, because what if she got her shoes dirty?
But before he could even speak, Xingxing had already run off with tiny, quick steps.
Just as Zhao Guihua finished planting the last melon vine and covering it with soil, Xingxing came running over. "Daughter, it's muddy and slippery outside, let's go back inside."
"Mom, wait a minute, I'll tell you something." Xingxing twisted her body to stop her from hugging her, walked to the newly planted melon vines, frowned and sighed.
"Mom, let me tell you, these are planted too close together. They can't be planted this close together. They need to be spaced out, about a distance from here to here. Otherwise, the vines will get tangled together. That's not how you plant them."
Xingxing was a little anxious. She had a mental image of how to grow vines that would flower and bear fruit. She tried hard to organize her thoughts, gesturing as she spoke, and even running from one side to the other to show that there should be a wide space between the two vines.
Zhao Guihua suddenly realized, "So it's better to plant them this far apart? I thought you could just plant them in rows like sweet potato vines."
The sweet potato seedlings are a new variety that we only got two years ago. There aren't many seedlings yet, and we only have enough for a few acres of land to plant now after we cultivated the vines ourselves.
Seeing that Xingxing mentioned a big melon vine, she assumed it was similar to a sweet potato. Luckily, she hadn't broken the vine into several pieces, or it might have killed the seedling.
If you mess things up, won't Xingxing cry in front of her?
Fortunately, she didn't do anything stupid.
Since it couldn't be planted that way, at Xingxing's insistence, Zhao Guihua resigned herself to digging up the melon vines again and planting one far away.
"When the weather clears up, Mom will go up the mountain to cut tree branches to support them, or we'll build a trellis so the vines can climb up. They can't grow on the ground, otherwise the big melon will rot when it rains." Xingxing kept looking at her mother as she spoke, worried that her mother wasn't listening carefully and would forget later.
Zhao Guihua sighed and quickly replied, "Yes, yes, Mother remembers, I won't forget, so don't worry."
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