The lotus of the hometown
Text / Angel spreads its wings
Jiangnan can pick lotus, lotus leaf He Tiantian.
The hometown is rich in Xianglian, so it is also called "Lotus City".
In junior high school, "Mom" taught me "Eileen Says." Among them: "out of the mud without staining, Mao Qing Lian without demon, through the middle and straight, not vines and branches, fragrant far away, pavilions and pure plants, can be viewed from a distance and can not be blasphemed" has always been remembered. But the memories of lotus are far more than that...
Xianglian is a very important cash crop in the hometown, and the villagers in Xiaoshan Chongli have planted it in every household. In the era of material scarcity, Xianglian was a villager who paid tuition for their children, bought pesticides, fertilizers... The main source of income.
As soon as the Lantern Festival passed, the fields of The Hills Chong became lively.
In the gentle spring rain, parents and villagers can always be seen wearing bucket hats, cloaked in coats, pulling their trouser pipes high, and stepping barefoot in the cold paddy fields: wielding hoes to plane the fields and hoe the grass; driving buffaloes, ploughing and harrowing the mud that has been silent all winter; throwing a load of manure picked from the pigsty evenly scattered throughout the paddy field; carefully picking up the lotus seeds dug from the lotus field into the field, gently pulling out the mud with bare hands, and planting the lotus roots one by one in a row and gently covering them. Then the place where the lotus seed is planted is surrounded by mud in a circle, and the branches are inserted to mark it.
After several spring rains, the lotus seeds lying in the mud of the field slowly awoke from their slumber and cautiously protruded their heads, and the tender buds, arching through the mud of the field, pierced through the water, and stabbed straight and straight into the blue sky. It didn't take long for you to chase me, and I rushed you out.
The lotus leaves that had just emerged were pointed at both ends and wrapped tightly. The dragonfly with big eyes is always full of curiosity about the sharp lotus that suddenly emerges from the calm water, this plant stops, that plant rests, wipes its eyes, and flies towards another plant, which can't help but make people think: "The little lotus has just shown its sharp horns, and there are dragonflies standing on its head." ”
In the field mud, the lotus seeds are wandering around, the lotus is also moving, the leaves are slowly stretched out, like a water mill, like a disc, breaking through the circle, occupying the entire hill paddy field; the longer and taller, more and more dense...
After the lotus leaves filled the paddy field, the lotus flowers appeared one after another. Straight, delicate flower bones like spears in the hands of guards, standing firmly. Slowly open the cascading petals to reveal the delicate yellow buds. When the wind blows, it sways and swings with the wind. Petals that fall on the surface of the water, like floating boats, paddle across the calm water and wander around.
The xianglian at home is planted in the two paddy fields directly below the front of the old house, and it can be seen by pushing open the door of the old house.
Lotus pond in my hometown.
In June, the weather gradually warmed up, and the hills gradually entered the hottest day of the year. This season is also the most suitable season of the year for the growth of Xianglian. When the delicate pink lotus flowers faded their petals and began to grow into plump, swollen lotuses, the father and the villagers in The Hills and The villagers began the busiest time of the year.
The best time to pick a lotus is when the sun is just out in the morning, or when the sun is about to set at dusk.
My father would go down to the field to collect lotuses when the sun first came out.
In the early morning, the sun on the eastern peak has not yet emerged, and the breeze blows from time to time. In the cool, my father would hurry to eat breakfast, wearing a long-sleeved shirt and trousers, and step into the lotus field that was more than one person tall and full of lotus poles to pick lotuses.
The lotus pole, which is taller than a human, holds up a wide, large emerald green lotus leaf to "drown" his father in a verdant field, and the lotus canopy is hidden in it. The breeze swayed the lotus leaves, like emerald green waves undulating, but the lotus field was airtight, like a steamer. Father one foot deep, one foot shallow in the lotus field slowly marching, searching, one by one to open the dense field lotus leaves, one by one to find the mature lotus, when encountering mature lotus, father will break the lotus together with the lotus rod and hold it in his arms. Until he couldn't hold it, he would go out of the lotus field and put the lotus on the field.
The sun slowly climbed to the top of the mountain, the sun was getting stronger, the temperature was high, and my father never rolled up his sleeves and trousers. Even so, my father could not avoid being scratched by the thorny lotus rod. The scratched place showed dense blood marks, fiery, itchy and painful like fire.
After picking the lotus canopy, the father who walked to Tian Kan always carried a new scratch, soaking wet, unable to distinguish between muddy water and sweat...
Back home, my father used to sit on the gate pier of the old house to rest. Taking off his soaked shirt, he was naked on his upper body, allowing beads of sweat to flow from the top of his head one by one, from his forehead to his face to his chin, and then dripped on the cement floor like broken beads...
Saying that it was a sigh of relief, in fact, the father's hands were not idle.
The father held the lotus canopy tightly with his left hand like a rice bowl, and the thumb of his right hand forcefully pulled open the interval in the lotus canopy, peeling off the lotus seeds inside one by one. When the lotus is long, the peeled lotus seeds can fill two buckets. At that time, there was no machine to peel the shell of a lotus seed in Koyama Oki. The two buckets of lotus seeds require the father and mother to peel off the shell with their teeth one by one, then tear out the envelope, poke out the lotus heart, clean and dry it before being stored.
Sometimes, when I wake up in the middle of the night, my father and mother are still busy.
……
On the days of working outside, from time to time, I will also encounter the lotus field of "the lotus leaves are infinitely blue, and the lotus flowers are different red", and every time at this time, I always remember "out of the mud without staining, Mao Qinglian without demon..." More is the father's sweaty body, the blood marks and those busy days...
【Column Introduction】
The "Prose Grand View Garden" column presents the high-quality prose works of the Red Net Essay Forum, expresses the feelings of the Xiang people with thick and rich thoughts, and tells the story of Hunan in simple and fresh language.