"It's Erchun again. Every time I hear his mother and the old ladies in the village talking about something, he keeps telling me about it." Zhou Yiding patted him and said, "I forgot to tell you that Erchun is going on a blind date today. I heard that the girl is from your mother-in-law's family."
Zhou Huaian thought that almost all of Yangjiapingzi were relatives of Yang Chunyan's family, "My mother-in-law's family, that guy wouldn't still want to be my porter, right?"
"What do you mean?"
"Last time he asked me to ask Chunyan about my cousin's daughter."
"Oh!" The two of them kept chattering along the way like nagging old women. After looking around the mountain, they went back home.
Zhou Huaian went home and saw Yang Chunyan had prepared everything for the trip up the mountain. "Yan'er, what do you want to do?"
"I want to go see if the Chuanxiong we left behind is still there. If it is, it should have bloomed and produced seeds by now. We can also collect seeds and dig up roots for the stinking peony and coral grass."
Yang Chunyan put on her straw hat and said, "We will go up the mountain to dig up the stinking peony and coral grass and plant them in the sweet potato field on the back mountain. We will transplant them behind the new house next year."
Zhou Huaian shook his head repeatedly, "Forget it, you are not feeling well right now, you should just rest at home, I will go and call Ding Ding Cat to go with me."
Yang Chunyan glared at him in reproach. "It's not a very long mountain. I went to the back mountain to pick corn and it was fine. Why can't I go? Doctor Wang said that you have to be careful when you go up the mountain to pick herbs."
Zhou Huaian thought about it and said, "Okay! It's getting late now, let's go dig up the Chuanxiong and the stinking peony. The coral grass is too far, so we'll go there tomorrow."
"Yeah!" Yang Chunyan handed him the straw hat, "Are the bushes on the mountain at Yiding's house going to be cut down?"
"That guy hired a few people to do the work, and he stayed at home with his legs crossed, listening to the radio. Only when I got there did he ask me to go up the mountain with him to take a look."
After hearing this, Yang Chunyan smiled and said, "He is someone who knows how to enjoy himself!"
Zhou Huaian thought about it and took the gun with him, "That's right, after we divide the family, we can hire people to do the work when there is a lot of work, so that we don't have to work ourselves to death like a cow."
"We have never grown herbs before, and we don't even have any experience in growing them. How can we gain experience if we don't do it ourselves?"
"Then we'll wait until the herbs are planted and we've gained some experience before hiring someone to do the work."
Thinking about collecting seeds, Yang Chunyan picked up a basket and took two bags. They said goodbye to Zhou's mother and went up the mountain.
Going up further, I only saw some cockleburs, and even the common sticky grass was gone.
"It will take some time before the cockleburs are picked. I think there are only cockleburs and bitter eggplants left on the road."
Zhou Huaian said: "The herbs in the back mountain are dug up as soon as they grow. You are right. If you want to dig herbs and sell them for a long time, you have to collect seeds and sow them yourself."
"Yes, my second sister-in-law also said yesterday that all the nearby hills have been searched, and only places farther away still have some."
"Will those Chuanxiong be dug up by someone?"
"I haven't received Chuanxiong at home, so it should still be there, right?"
"Never mind! Go check it out first. If someone else digs up the things in the wild, there's nothing you can do."
"Huaian, after the herbs are planted, you have to find a way to fence off the forest. Otherwise, it's such a large area, and you won't even know if someone comes and digs it all up at night."
"Well! We have to cut some bamboos and make a fence first, then dig some golden vines as you said last time, and plant some roses, chicken shit vines, chicken blood vines, etc., and plant them in a circle at the base of the fence."
"It's the only way."
Zhou Huaian looked back at her sweaty forehead, "It's hot, isn't it? I told you not to come, but you came anyway!"
Yang Chunyan glared at him in reproach, "It's even hotter in the cornfield than in the mountains!"
"Alas!" Zhou Huaian sighed, "Things have all come together, and I can't even let you take a good rest."
"I'm glad you think this way." Yang Chunyan pointed ahead and smiled, "Do you still remember the first time you went up the mountain with me, when we were digging motherwort and you were too lazy to move?"
"Hey~" Zhou Huaian led her upstairs, "You didn't know their value at that time. If you saw them now, you would have run over to dig them up."
Yang Chunyan pointed to the Chuanlianzi tree in front and said, "We are here again. Let's sit down and rest for a while. Then we can go down and dig Chuanxiong."
"Hmm!" The two sat down against the tree trunk. Zhou Huaian looked up and said, "The bitter egg is almost yellow. By the time it turns yellow and starts to fall, our new house may have been completed."
"I see the carpenter has started sawing wood. Maybe he's going to make door frames?"
Yang Chunyan looked up and saw that the leaves of the bitter egg tree had begun to turn yellow and the tree was full of green fruits.
The scientific name of this tree is Toosendanzi, and its fruit is also used as medicine in traditional Chinese medicine, which is the dried mature fruit of Toosendanzi, a plant of the Meliaceae family.
Toosendan fruit: cold in nature, bitter in taste, slightly toxic. Has the effects of promoting qi and relieving pain, and killing insects.
The shape of Toosendan fruit is similar to quail eggs, with a golden to brownish yellow surface, slightly shiny, wrinkled, or slightly concave, and dark brown spots on the peel.
The exocarp is leathery, and there are often gaps between it and the flesh; the flesh is soft, light yellow, and sticky when moistened by water. The best ones are large, plump, with golden skin and yellow-white flesh.
In winter, people in the mountains would pick up the white flesh of the liana fruit and apply it on their hands to prevent and treat frostbite.
Zhou Huaian took out a kettle and handed it to her. "I asked them to help make beehives. Ding Dingmao and I plan to make some beehives and put them in the forest farm. We can lure some bees in them, which will make it easier to collect honey in the future."
"If you're not afraid of bees stinging you, it wouldn't be bad to put a box on the mountain."
The two men rested for a while, then carried their backpacks down the mountain to the place where they first dug Chuanxiong. They saw a lot of Xanthium sibiricum, sticky grass, and Solanum lycopersicum growing among the waist-high weeds.
There are also Viola yedoensis and Plantain on the sticky grass slope.
When I pulled aside the weeds, I saw several Chuanxiong flowers that looked similar to celery flowers, some of which had already set seeds.
"Yan'er, I read in a book that Chuanxiong can be propagated using Ling stems, and can also be propagated by direct planting or raising seedlings. For Ling stem propagation, you can start planting stems in May in plains, and this month in the mountains."
"You still have a good memory!" Yang Chunyan looked at him happily, "Then let's collect the seeds first, then dig them up with the roots, cut the ling stalks and plant them in poles to try!"
The two of them collected seeds and pulled weeds at the same time.
There were about twenty or thirty Chuanxiong plants left last time, and they were all growing well and growing naturally.
Yang Chunyan looked at the fallen seeds and thought about coming back next year to see if any seedlings had grown.
After they finished collecting the seeds, Zhou Huaian picked up the hoe and said, "Just move aside and I'll do the digging."
"Let's dig together those Viola yedoensis on the slope." Yang Chunyan said as she picked up the hoe and dug along the rhizomes.
Chuanxiong has a shallow root system, so it didn’t take long for all twenty or so Chuanxiong plants to be dug out.
"Yan'er, let's just leave the dirt on top."
“Yes!”
The two carefully put the Chuanxiong into the backpack, and then went to the slope to dig the Viola yedoensis. (End of this chapter)
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