Chapter 56 Wild Grapes
People in the mountains go to bed early, so unless there is work to do at night, the two of them will basically go to bed at ten o'clock.
At five o'clock in the morning, Mu Xi got up to water the vegetable garden, and Zhao Yeqing slept until six o'clock.
She didn't sleep well last night. In her dream, Mu Xi pinched her neck like a chicken and swung her around.
As a result, when he saw Mu Xi after waking up, his eyes were full of resentment.
After breakfast, Mu Xi went out to chop bamboo for her, and Zhao Yeqing walked around the house to see if there was any work to do.
Since there is no shortage of sweet potato leaves, I don’t have to cut grass for the rabbits in the morning. Just cut two handfuls of leaves from the sweet potato field and they are enough to feed them.
Mu Xi would clean the rabbit poop every morning. When she woke up in the morning, the rabbit pen was always clean, which helped her to be in a good mood for the day.
The little rabbits have grown a lot, and each one is a furry little ball, so cute.
The chickens and geese in the yard had not been fed yet, and they stretched their necks and clucked loudly.
The symphony of giggles and yueyueyue is really a headache.
There were too many sweet potato leaves, so I cut a handful and brought them back to serve as a snack.
It's time to change the water in the pond behind the house that's used to cool the geese. Basically, she comes to change the water in the pond every three to five days. This frequency is becoming insufficient as the weather gets hotter.
The water in the pool evaporates quickly and becomes smelly more easily. It seems that I will need to replace it every two days in the future.
The sun rises slowly. The sun that just appears is still a fiery orange. The sunlight now is not scorching enough. This kind of sunlight is the best for sunbathing your back during the dog days of summer.
Zhao Yeqing put on a straw hat to shade his face from the sun, and went out in the sunshine to finish the drainage ditch that had not been completed yesterday.
The drainage ditch in the small vegetable garden is still half done, so she plans to start with the one in the big vegetable garden. The small vegetable garden is partially covered by the wall, so it won’t be too exposed to the sun if she does it later.
Digging ventilation holes and then drainage ditches was not a small undertaking. When Mu Xi returned home carrying the bamboo, she had just finished digging the ventilation holes and had not done any drainage yet.
After Mu Xi found out how she was going to dig the drainage ditch, he sent her back home to make the water curtain device.
A long bamboo log was placed in the yard. Mu Xi did not drive the tricycle there, but carried it back on his shoulders, so it was a whole log and had not been divided into sections, only the leaves had been removed.
Zhao Yeqing measured the length of each greenhouse and sawed the bamboo according to the size.
After drilling holes in each bamboo and measuring the distance, the water channel is fixed between the load-bearing columns and placed between the devices.
The heights of the greenhouses are uneven, and the water flow must also be considered. Only by building high first and then low can the smooth flow of the entire waterway be guaranteed.
Start from the tallest greenhouse for climbing vines, then to the fruits and vegetables, then to the fruit area and finally the leafy vegetable area.
Root vegetables are covered with mulch and are not suitable for installation. Potatoes, sweet potatoes and carrots are relatively drought-resistant, so she gave up on this area.
Finally, all the water will flow into the forest from the drainage ditches in the leafy vegetable area, and can also water the plants in the forest that are suffering from high temperatures and lack of water.
The device was tied to each greenhouse and the taps were turned on for the first test run.
The first time was not smooth, the water flow was too strong and the hole in the device was drilled a little small, so the water was washed away before it could flow out of the device.
Zhao Yeqing tried to turn down the water flow from the faucet, which was better than the last time, but the area covered by the water flowing from the hole was too small.
I did experiments in a small vegetable garden before. The greenhouse of the small vegetable garden was small, so the water flow from the holes was barely enough to cover the area. The large vegetable garden outside was too large, and the small holes were not dense enough, so the water flow could not cover the entire area.
Mu Xi walked over and took a look. "Why don't you put something on the shed?"
Zhao Yeqing instantly understood what he meant and set up obstacles on the plastic film of the greenhouse. When the water flowed down and touched the obstacles, it would be split, and one stream of water would become two streams, doubling the coverage area.
However, the obstacle cannot be too big or too thick, otherwise the area under the obstacle will not be able to cool down. It may also cause the water flow to not stick to the plastic film and splash out directly when it hits the obstacle.
Therefore, the contact area between the obstacle and the water should be a smooth arc.
Mu Xi suggested, "Why not just use the simplest toothpick."
Zhao Yeqing took a few sticks and tried to insert one into the plastic film. The water flowed down from above and split into two strands the moment it touched the toothpick.
This is good. You can directly insert it into the membrane without fixing it. However, it still needs regular management later. If it is tilted by the water flow, it needs to be adjusted.
After the diversion is done, the whole device can be operated perfectly at the initial stage.
Zhao Yeqing ran up to the terrace on the second floor and took a picture looking down.
Mu Xi was in the yard, collecting the tools that Zhao Yeqing had confiscated after he finished the installation, and asked the people taking pictures on the terrace, "Before I cut the bamboo, I went over to take a look and saw some wild grapes. Do you want to eat them?"
"eat!"
Zhao Yeqing turned around excitedly and ran downstairs. How could she forget that the most delicious thing in the mountains in summer is wild grapes.
Wild grapes grow near streams, upstream of small pools.
When Mu Xi went to see it in the morning, he cleared part of the road and saw from a distance that the wild grapes were still there, with quite a few fruits hanging on them. So he didn't go over there, thinking that after telling Zhao Yeqing, she would definitely come.
It is estimated that this road has never been visited by anyone except when the two elderly people were still there. It is overgrown with weeds, and the shortest ferns are almost knee-high.
Thatch grows the most vigorously, and its leaves have reached two meters in height.
The surrounding trees were covered with vines, and there was complete silence all around. Even the bird calls became less frequent. The only sound that could be heard was some frog calls coming from the stream not far away.
The overly lush vegetation made clearing the path very difficult, but it was not completely fruitless as Zhao Yeqing found a nest of eggs in the thatch pile.
Mu Xi looked over as she exclaimed, "This is a pheasant egg."
Zhao Yeqing happily picked up the egg and put it in the waist basket. "I'll take this back to my chickens to hatch it. Can it hatch?"
"Yes, as long as the eggs can be hatched, it should be fine."
I would wait until I got home to check, and if there were fertilized eggs in the eggs, I would give them to the hen, saying that if not, I could still raise a nest of pheasants at home.
The two of them cleaned for more than an hour and finally cleared the path which was less than 500 meters in a straight line.
This patch of wild grapes grew more vigorously than when I was a child. The vines climbed up the branches and spread over a large area. There were bunches of black and purple fruits hanging on them, which looked very spectacular.
The fruit of this wild grape is different from ordinary grapes. It is small and round, and the fruit is smaller than a marble. Zhao Yeqing reached out and picked one, put it to his mouth, squeezed out the flesh and ate it, squinting his eyes because it was so delicious.
Just like when I was a kid, there’s hardly a hint of sourness, and the fruity flavor is so rich it’s intoxicating.
She couldn't wait to let Mu Xi have a taste, only to find that his attention was on her feet.
There are some animal footprints under the grapevines, they are very messy and unclear, but what is certain is that there is definitely more than one kind of animal.
Some of the grapes hanging down near the ground had been bitten a lot, and it seemed that the animals were not very tall.
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