Text: Dust
After a few spring rains and spring breezes, everything in the mountains sprouts, old trees grow new shoots, and new greenery dots the branches. The mountain is no longer the solemn mountain of winter, but the pine tree, cypress, fir tree, and dark green leaves, and most of the other tree species have lost their leaves, leaving only the bare trunks and branches standing abruptly in a dark green. The mountains in spring are a completely different landscape, and the peaks seem to have suddenly changed their nature, if the mountains in winter are a virtuous and wise man, then the mountains in spring are a big girl to be married.
In spring, the flowers in my orchard bloom one after another, the pear blossoms are white, the plum blossoms are warm and delicate, they all have white skin, and the cherry blossoms are white with a hint of redness, and the peach blossoms are like a shy girl who wants to see her sweetheart. I imagine these flowers as different beauties, pear blossoms are dignified and elegant ladies, cherry blossoms are noble and noble fairy trees, plum blossoms are warm and cheerful little jasper, and peach blossoms are bright and amorous spicy girls.
During the flowering period, my home is not as beautiful as the real world. Every time after school, I walk all the way home along the hillside, and when the sun sets, the green green and flowers bloom is my home. The sunset stretched my small figure, there was an old man herding sheep on the side of the road driving the sheep home, the stones on the side of the road still left the residual temperature after the sun had been exposed during the day, I carried my schoolbag and sat on the stones to rest. The smell of food came from the air, people had already begun to cook, the smoke was swirling, slowly rising, drifting around, white smoke stained everything in view, my home, blurred by the smoke of the cooking, as if we were no longer on earth, no longer on earth. I believe that God must have looked at my home tenderly, otherwise how could it have become so rich in longevity and warmth and beauty that I will never forget.
I did a lot of things to keep the beauty of this moment. When I got home from school, I put down my schoolbag and rushed out, breaking off one flower branch after another, and holding it in my arms, as if holding hope and seeds for the future. I put them in the small yard in front of the door, hoping that after a while, the flowers will grow more and more like leaves, and turn my home into a sea of flowers.
My dream was shattered after only three days, how can a flower planted in the soil take root? After a few days, the flowers wilted, and the branches dried up, so it was better to keep them in a vase for a long time, so a few times, I understood the mystery, and I stopped tossing these flowers.
When the flowers bloom, it is also the time to sow seeds. Corn, tobacco and all kinds of vegetables are ready to start seedlings. At the edge of each acre of field, my mother would use a bamboo sieve to sift a thick layer of fine soil and spread it on a flat seedbed. Last year's fire manure can also be pulled out of the ground, carefully mixed with the fine soil, poured with manure water, and you can start to beat nutrient blocks. The mother uses a machine similar to a briquette to beat nutrient blocks, sucking up the soil each time, and then pressing the middle crossbar, spitting out two nutrient blocks at a time. As soon as we saw the nutrient cubes spit out, the two of us quickly picked them up, put them into the bamboo knead, and after filling them, we moved them away and arranged the nutrient cubes evenly on the seedbed. Put a seed in the small eye in the middle of each nutrient block, and after all the pieces are done, sprinkle the remaining fertile soil with a layer and spread a white plastic film before it is finished. After a few days, the temperature is getting higher and higher, and the strong corn seedlings break through the soil, tender green, like a little baby, very cute.
After the seedlings broke the ground, we had to remove the film every morning, fearing that the sun would be too poisonous and the seedlings would be damaged. Every evening, before the sun sets, we re-cover the film and carefully cover it with clods of soil, because the temperature is low at night, and we are worried that the seedlings will be frozen or killed by the rain. Every day, we take care of these seedlings like newborn babies, and they are our hope.
Growing vegetables is not so troublesome, and the pepper seeds are left from the old peppers in the pepper field last year, which is very surplus. We followed my mother with a small hoe to plant peppers in the vegetable field, first hoeing the weeds in the field, and then using the small hoe to dig a nest in the field one after another, this is the new home we prepared for the peppers. We carelessly sprinkle chili peppers in these nests, bury them in a thick layer of soil, and leave it alone. We handed over the rest to the mountain wind, to the rain, to the sun and time. Like the gods of ancient times, who held the secrets of their growth, they cast sorcery on these seeds, allowing them to one day break through the ground.
In the evening when I had finished my work, my mother had put away her hoe and gone home with her basket to cook, and I was ordered to bring back the lambs that had been grazing on the hillside. The lamb was already well fed, and its belly was swollen, and from a distance it looked like a woman about to give birth. As soon as I approached, the lamb bleated incessantly, and I pulled a handful of tender grass in the field and stuffed it into the lamb's mouth, and the lamb was ecstatic and wagged its tail in a hurry to express its gratitude to its master.
After feeding the lambs, I got up and went to the edge of the field to see if I could find the tender Houttuynia cordata. There are a lot of Houttuynia cordata growing on the edge of my family's field, and when I opened the corn stalk that I put here last year, there was a large clump of tender Houttuynia cordata. I carefully removed the soil with a small scythe, and pulled out the white and tender roots of Houttuynia cordata. In the spring, the roots of Houttuynia cordata are like the white and fat legs of a baby, thick and tender, and the houttuynia cordata is like a naughty boy wearing a crimson straw hat, which I pulled out of the nest one by one, and after pulling enough, I stopped, went back to the hillside to lead the lamb, and went home with a good swim.
I couldn't help but swallow my saliva and speed up to run home, and the lamb saw me running faster, I grabbed the sheep rope in my hand, and was pulled by the lamb to run, and followed breathlessly behind. It was as if I was not the owner of the sheep, but the sheep became my master, and I was led home by them.
After closing the sheep, Mother's supper was ready, and the simple and coarse meal was so delicious to eat when she was hungry. The rice is steamed in a steamer with rice (minced corn and rice are mixed together), and the dish is fried shredded potatoes in oil, plus a few slices of fatty bacon and green peppers cut by my mother, which is delicious. When my mother saw the Houttuynia I was taking, she washed it and chopped it finely, patted some garlic, accompanied by some chili noodles, fresh pepper leaves, and a little vinegar and salt, which was really delicious.
With these simple meals, I ate two large bowls beautifully. After eating, I sat on a small chair in the yard, looking at my extracurricular books with a thin and faint gaze, my mother washed dishes and fed the pigs, my father carried a cigarette gun and smoked a cigarette, and my brother went to the eucommia forest to make sandbags. Looking into the distance, the mountain flowers are still splendid and warm, as gentle as water, and as ethereal as smoke, adding a touch of smart color to the solemn mountain. Such a simple day has passed, a year has passed, many years have passed, generations have passed like this.
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