Chapter 5 Building a Small Vegetable Garden
'The new virus that broke out recently has confirmed that the initial symptoms of infection are fever, which is manifested as high fever accompanied by rapid breathing and flushed face. If someone around you has a fever, please isolate them immediately. The virus will make people crazy and unconscious in the later stages. If you are bitten, it will be contagious. Please close the doors and windows and isolate yourself at home. If your relatives are unfortunately infected, please do not contact the infected person and wait for official notification.'
Zhao Yeqing left the news, replied to Kong Sisi's message to report that he was safe, and then called Feng Chunyan. After confirming that they were also safe, he put down his phone.
The Feng family's house was self-built. Feng Chunyan's sawmill was very large and surrounded by iron sheets. The house was built inside. It happened to be the Qingming Festival holiday, so there were no workers in the factory, so they should be relatively safe.
Zhao Yeqing looked out the window and found nothing unusual, so she went downstairs to boil water, cooked some noodles, cracked an egg and added a few vegetable leaves. She ate the noodles carefully, trying to conserve her strength in case she needed to fight.
Sprinkle feed for the chickens and geese, and put the vegetables that I didn’t have time to pick up yesterday into the cellar. The seedlings I bought earlier have not been planted yet. If I don’t plant them now, there will be problems.
I used a hoe to turn over the soil and used the remaining bricks to surround the vegetable garden to make it look tidier. Before the sun was too strong, I planted the seedlings of tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, pumpkins, and loofahs.
Tomatoes and peppers are planted next to each other, with a row of leeks in the middle and a few sweet basil plants around them. The aroma of leeks can protect tomatoes and peppers from insect pests, while the smell of tomato leaves can repel caterpillars that love to eat sweet basil.
She likes the smell of tomato stems and leaves the most. When she was a child, she could not help but touch the tomatoes grown by her grandmother. After her hands were covered with the smell, she would put them under her nose and inhale. The more she inhaled, the more addicted she became.
When Feng Lixuan delivered the goods later, he also sent some manure and other seeds. There were dozens of dazzling varieties, including vegetables, fruits and flowers. She picked some of her favorite vegetables and planted them, and also bought the onions, ginger and garlic that she forgot to buy.
A row of lettuce and chrysanthemum is planted between the rapeseed, Chinese cabbage and white cabbage. The first three are cruciferous crops, which are most susceptible to insects. Lettuce and chrysanthemum are Asteraceae vegetables, and the smell they emit serves as a natural insect repellent for cruciferous vegetables.
The left side of the small vegetable garden is the leafy vegetable area, the middle is the vegetable and fruit area, and the right side is still empty. I will see what to plant later.
Before, when she lived in the city, she rented a small studio with an enclosed balcony. Due to insufficient light, the crops that could be grown were limited. The vegetables she grew could only be eaten a few times a year, which made her very greedy.
After adjusting the water and fertilizer and watering everything, I looked back and saw a few chickens looking eagerly and ready to go.
Zhao Yeqing quickly drove the chickens and geese into the chicken coop, and then she was in a dilemma when looking at the small vegetable garden. She had originally planned to just use electric appliances to cook, and had not prepared any firewood. If she wanted to fence the vegetable garden, she would have to go out again.
She went back to her room, changed her clothes and shoes, carried her hatchet and axe and went out. There was a bamboo grove not far from her home, just beside the path and only a few minutes' ride away. She rode her tricycle there, cut the bamboo and cut it into several pieces on the spot and brought it back.
Meishan's ecology is well protected. This patch of bamboo is more lush than she remembered. This bamboo is not a protected plant. Zhao Yeqing muttered that she was forced by the situation and cut down three bamboos as big as bowls with peace of mind. Several birds that were napping on the bamboo shoots were startled and flew into the sky cursing.
Panting, we cut the bamboos into sections and loaded them into the car one by one. We also got some unexpected harvests. Although the bamboo forest was not big, several spring bamboo shoots had emerged, which we couldn't miss.
After peeling and breaking the bamboo shoots, Zhao Yeqing found the whole bamboo shoots lying in the bed of his bike. He looked around to make sure that he had not missed a single one, and then he rode home contentedly.
To build a fence, you also need to split the bamboo tubes into strips, and you have to wear work gloves to prevent the bamboo thorns from piercing your skin.
Use the wood picked up on the road to drive a stake at the four corners of the vegetable garden. Use an air nail gun to nail two horizontal beams on the stakes, and then nail the bamboo strips vertically at intervals, leaving a width for the fence gate in the middle.
The fence door is also made by first nailing out a door frame with bamboo strips, then adding a few bamboo strips in the middle to serve as a barrier, and finally using hemp rope to tie a cross beam to fix it to the fence.
After the fence was built, the chickens and geese could be released. Zhao Yeqing went into the house and observed from the window.
When the chickens in the yard saw that there was no one around, they started to walk towards the vegetable garden. She felt relieved when she saw that a few chickens fluttered around for a long time but failed to fly in.
She looked at the time and it was already three o'clock in the afternoon. She thought of the bamboo shoots she had just cut, so she took two and threw the rest into the cellar.
Peel the bamboo shoots, of course, while wearing gloves, cut the peeled bamboo shoots into pieces and blanch them in freshly boiled water.
Take out a piece of bacon and cut it into cubes. After blanching the bamboo shoots, take the pot out of the water and rinse the bacon as well.
She stocked up several pounds of ribs in the refrigerator, divided them into bags of one pound each and put them in the freezer. She took out a bag, broke off a few pieces, thawed them and blanched them.
Put all the ingredients into the casserole, bring to a boil over high heat then simmer over low heat. Then take out the small electric rice cooker for one person that she sent me and cook half a cup of rice.
The temperature on the mountain is still a little low now, which is not very suitable for the growth of vegetables. While the soup is not ready yet, Zhao Yeqing puts the transparent plastic film he prepared earlier on the fence, pulling it from left to right so that the entire vegetable garden is covered, and then presses stones on both sides to fix it, which can both moisturize and keep warm.
After more than an hour of hard work, the soup is almost ready.
Zhao Yeqing opened the lid of the pot. There are very few dishes that are as delicious as Yan Du Xian. She doesn’t even need to taste it. She can smell the ultimate freshness just by opening the lid. This dish is not available in her hometown. It was highly recommended by a roommate from Jiangsu and Zhejiang when she was in college. After tasting it, she has to make it several times every spring.
The soup is a light milky white in color, the bacon is crispy and fat, the spareribs are tender, and the bamboo shoots are fragrant and crisp. There is no need to add any additional seasonings, and the salty and fresh taste goes straight to the top of your head.
The temperature in the mountains is less than ten degrees now. After drinking a bowl of hot soup, Zhao Yeqing showed the only smile in the past two days.
With a pot of soup and a bowl of rice, she ate until her belly was full and sighed with satisfaction. At least she was still alive, so the more she ate, the better.
If you count her relatives, only Feng Chunyan's family is left. Her parents divorced and started their own families, and her grandparents who raised her passed away a few years ago.
In this case, keeping a calm mind and living one more day is a gain.
She was now extremely grateful that she had built the wall and installed anti-theft doors and windows a few days ago, so that even if an infected person came, she would be able to hold out for a while.
Now many social media platforms have closed the upload function, preventing the circulation of pictures and videos. Only posts about this situation on the external website that use a VPN are still continuing to ferment. She usually does not have the habit of using a VPN to access the Internet, but she saw someone on pyq posting a screenshot.
This is a post written entirely in Chinese. It is estimated that it cannot be published in China, so it can only be shared with Chinese people on foreign websites.
'According to experiments, the attacking behavior of the infected people after being infected by the virus is blood-seeking. My experiments have confirmed that chicken blood and duck blood are useless, and living animals are not very attractive to them. They have the vision and hearing of ordinary people, and have a very sharp sense of smell. They are very sensitive to the smell of human blood, and their pain sensation is weakened. Their physical fitness (seemingly) is no different from that of ordinary people. There is a chance that they will win in a one-on-one fight. If you can't avoid it, please actively fight back.'
The Meishan Mountains are very long, and most of them are protected areas with almost no inhabitants. If the virus is hemotropic, her safety factor will be greatly improved.
Zhao Yeqing saw that it was not yet dark, so she picked up a shovel and went out. She walked to the small intersection. The small truck that she brought back yesterday was still parked on the side of the road. The image of Wang Chao's body yesterday emerged in her mind. She took a deep breath to clear her mind.
She planned to dig a deep pit at the intersection of the path. She didn't know if it would work, but at least she wanted to give herself peace of mind.
The pit is three meters deep. The infected have no rationality and they would not be able to get out if they fall in. However, if an ordinary person is fleeing up the mountain and falls in, it should not be a problem for him to climb out by grabbing the mud nearby.
They had dug halfway and probably wouldn't be able to finish it today. It was getting dark, so Zhao Yeqing drove the truck into a low-lying area on the side of the road and covered it with leaves and dead grass.
Parking on the side of the road is too risky and can easily expose her location. Even ordinary people who are not infected should try to avoid it.
Zhao Yeqing zipped up his coat to the top, covering half of his face, mouth and nose to prevent mosquitoes from biting his face.
Maybe it’s because the weather has been getting warmer recently, mosquitoes seem to be much more active than in the past few days.
Listening to the calls of various unknown insects in the mountains, she didn't know if she was too sensitive now, but she always felt that something was different from usual.
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