(i)
Lantana, or corn, is called "ma ying" in our place.
In my years of studying abroad, I once regarded all the people who called "corn" "Maying" or heard of "Maying" as relatives.
"Ma Ying" is a dialect, in fact, it should be "lantana". I don't know if there is a second place in this world, besides us, to call "corn" "Ma Ying"? Anyway, growing so big, I still haven't heard of it.
Why is it called "Ma Ying"? Because it is innate, it has existed since ancient times. At first, I didn't think about it deeply, but later, the more I grew up, the more I couldn't understand it. I have asked my parents and consulted my neighbors. "Ma Ying, it's Ma Ying!" Where are there so many whys? "Is this kid stupid?" I couldn't help but ask the root of my questions, and I couldn't stand my questions again and again, someone began to take my question seriously, and the more plausible answer I got was: the tassel of the corn ear, that is, the corn whisker, red, yellow and yellow, looks like a horse's neckband ornament, that is, the lantana ear. It is pronounced "Ma Ying". Human beings are really wise, so when you think about it, it is straightened out, and it is really quite image.
Just when I thought that everyone in the whole world knew about "Lantana" as much as I did, I went to my grandmother's house twenty miles away, and when I said it, it was not far away, and they didn't know what "Ma Ying" was. They are called "Jade Runes". Therefore, I was blindfolded again, and it turned out that the thing "Ma Ying" was unique to us here.
(ii)
It is undeniable that every one of our children here grew up with "Ma Ying" or "Lantana". Our familiarity with Ma Ying has reached the point of completely ignoring it and treating it like air. Sometimes he even hates it, hates it, and falls around, and although we eat it and use it without it, we have never treated it as a good object.
A life without planting Ma Ying is incomplete.
We usually have two methods of growing hemp, one is spring stubble, that is, before the wheat is ripe and not harvested, it is planted in the wheat ridge. This method is very troublesome, to grow a good hemp, but also to take care of the wheat around, be careful to hurt and mess up the wheat ridge. I'm usually caught trying to cope with the situation. I won't plant Ma Ying wholeheartedly, it is not my main business. When my parents were too busy to come, they would ask me to come and help. This is the cooperation of two people, one person planing a pit, every step or so a long distance to plan a pit, the other person followed closely behind, sprinkling two or four hemp seeds mixed with pesticides in the dug pit, and then buried and filled.
It's a boring job, I think, maybe it's about the mood. The pit needs strength, and I haven't cut the pit, just the one that sows the seeds. This is somewhat like performing cross-talk on stage, one is praised, one is funny, although the two have a primary and secondary, but they are indispensable. At that time, I seemed to be in adolescence, irritable, depressed, confused about life. My father also shrugged his face because of the fatigue of farm work and the pressure of life, and we had our own concerns and did not care for each other. Just mechanical work, the dull air is suffocating. Now that I think about it, sowing seeds can be completely happy, and the future should be envisionable, but there is none, and all that is full of hatred and escape is.
Mai Mang's stabbing made people itch and ache, and I only followed, numbly moving forward in the surging mood of "for giving new words to say strongly".
Another method is to sow seeds after the wheat is harvested, which is much easier, but it is best to see if it will rain, otherwise the ground is too dry, which is not good for sowing.
For the budding of lantana, I still like it. In the dry wheat stubble field, within a few days, a green sprouted, the wind came to the green, and the heart became soft. At this time, I have to hoe the grass and the grass, I can understand the weeding, but the seedlings are not willing. "Well, why pull out a tree?" "Only one tree can be left, and more will affect its growth." My mother said, "So why didn't you put only one seed when you planted it, but put so many of them?" "There is money to buy seeds, but there is no money to buy seedlings!" Mother sighed. It turns out that farming is not just about contributing, there are so many reasons! I was ashamed of my ignorance, and I didn't feel sorry to look at miao. The so-called "reluctance" is best interpreted, and I think all farmers understand it.
(iii)
After a few spring rains, the corn, or Ma Ying, began to grow wildly, and the west of the village was quickly flooded with green.
Growing from a ruler to about a person tall, corn almost doesn't want anything, blindly absorbs nutrients, moisture and sunlight, and grows upwards. It was as if someone was shouting, neatly and orderly. The hue is also single, like a green sea, and the wind comes slightly, making the farmer who bends down to hoe the grass look like he is in the middle of the blue waves. It grows quickly, and after a few days of not seeing, it will reach a new height, which is surprising. Verdant, lush, full of vitality, and like a group of adolescent teenagers.
I hurried past the edge of the ground, sniffing the fresh air of the green forest, going to school or busying with something else. What a green yarn tent! My cornfield.
Throughout the summer vacation, we are inseparable from the cornfield, to remove the grass, that is, the "hoe" of "hoeing the day of the afternoon", this technique I have never mastered well. We went to mow the grass and weaved through the growing corn bushes, the corn leaves from weak to thick, and the thorns hurt people. As it gradually rises above an adult, a green gauze tent forms. In order to cut more grass, we sometimes burrowed into the cornfield, like an unfathomable sea, the air was dull and terrible, but fortunately there were young men together, and we hunched over, like fish swimming around, and like guerrilla fighters who were wandering around, and now, when we think about it, we all feel terrible.
Teenagers who have not drilled cornfields have not been young.
(iv)
The beauty of corn is specific to the beauty of its flowers, leaves and whiskers. These are all things I have discovered in the last few years of my age, a feeling of proximity to it again after I have been away from it for many years. Corn it is divided into male and female flowers, green leaves, clean and tidy, the top of the male flowers are tender yellow and reddish, branched, long spike-like, dense calyx order dotted on it. The female flowers are at the waist, which is what we call "lantana", which is also yellow and red, curly, fluffy, silky, light and dark in color, looking very enchanting and wild. The popular "corn hot" is to imitate it, a picture of untamed appearance. After the male flowers mature, they fall to the female flower buds under the action of the wind and complete the fertilization before they can bear fruit. When I was a child, whenever I passed by, we would grab a handful and classify it into the twist braid we wanted, and even the air was filled with fragrance. This is the happiness that urban children can't buy with money now.
After reaching middle age, I miss the days of growing up with it more and more. I ran far to the countryside and let its leaves caress my shoulder again, and I took a lot of pictures of it, its flowers and the way it grew, and they were beautiful in the shot.
(5)
Maybe it's too common, too much beauty in life, to blind the impetuous mind.
Before the lantana bears fruit, the first thing I can see is its stalk. It's too much like sugar cane. In reality, there is no such species as sugarcane, and corn stalks are. I don't understand why I was so hungry at that time. Once with the girl next door, I went down to nibble on every corn stalk, cut off the sweet one, and chewed it up and sucked its juice like sugar cane. I dare say that no one can mouth it anymore, but the memory is sweet.
The buds at the waist of the corn are getting bigger and bigger, and the male flowers on the top of its head are somewhat wilted, slowly starting to turn white from tender green, and the female filaments are also dry and shrunk at the end of the buds. At this time, the leaves of the corn also began to have an old image, but the plants became more and more straight and firm, and some of the roots were exposed to the ground, firmly dominating the ground. Corn, accumulating the strength of the whole body, puts all the nutrients on the corn buds.
Green corn is used to be eaten on fire. It is wrapped in layers of corn husks, which are also green. Break a spike down, plant it with a dry branch, at this time, light a pile of fire, and the homemade barbecue corn begins. Don't talk about taste, just the novelty, anticipation and excitement, the joy of sharing with people.
I'm glad I did.
(6)
Today, I received a photo from my daughter, who was traveling on a trip to Sichuan, sitting in the middle of piles of orange and yellow corn cobs, posing with various excited and happy exaggerated expressions. I despise it, Ma Ying! Corn is strange, I have seen more to go.
Every year, when the Mid-Autumn Festival arrives, the corn also ripens.
It's time to collect the lantana. In the vast field, the corn has lost its former cool and heroic appearance, as if the people are old, and the male flowers on the top of the corn plants have turned white, and from a high place, they look down like a group of old people. My parents and I each carried a basket, starting from this end of the ground and breaking one by one. Fill a basket, carry it to the ground and pour it out, and then break it again. It's a tedious process, there's no wind, snow, and corn leaves around your neck and face. Long, endless.
When the corn piles like a hill are piled up on the ground, indicating that the harvest of this land is also nearing the end, we will pick it up one by one and push it home. Harvest, unremembered joy, or, at that time, I could not experience and feel very well, some, just bitter and tasteless annoyance.
Crouching in the yard, peeling off its skin one by one, this is the third time after my hand, the yellow corn really reveals its true face. The grains are neatly arranged, the same color as gold, and the warmth like sunshine. Just like what I saw in my daughter's photo, we also built blocks, with a lot of shapes, hanging trees, roofs, square piles in circles, spread into pieces, fun and beautiful.
Now that I think about it, it was so beautiful, and it was then that I was thinking of something else.
(vii)
If there is Hema Ying, there will be a lot of Heying derivatives. Ma Ying Beard is one of them.
The corn spike pillar with corn particles removed is called "Ma Ying Beard". It was simply a natural toy for children, and we used them to build palace buildings, carefully, and then collapsed.
Then there's the corn husk. Peeling off layer by layer, thinner and thinner, more and more crystal clear, exploding, like a blooming flower. We used it to tie straw shoes, drag them on our feet, and waddle along.
There are also corn whiskers, which I later heard were Chinese medicinal materials with high application value, but they were all thrown away as waste by us, and we couldn't take care of it.
The "Ma Ying" trees that had been broken off the corn cob were left with only their bare bodies, the straws, still in the ground, the leaves dried up, hunched down, without spirit and moisture, like a group of defeated soldiers, becoming a group of wastes waiting to be removed, depressed in the cold wind.
The cut-off orange poles, lying horizontally, were neatly stacked in the ground, and I was shocked to find that these fallen soldiers were no longer lifey. Their roots are sharpened and pierced into the sky, and they appear abruptly in the Ichima Hirakawa River. This is the last line of poetry they write to the earth, and their walking ends here.
The yellow-orange-orange Heying, the corn, were all collected by us in the barn.