Green vine red heart sweet potato love
Text/Jin Xiaoxian
Sweet potatoes are a must-grow crop for people in mountain villages every year, and almost every family is full of sweet potatoes in front of and behind their houses and on the slopes and ravines.
The children in the village have planted sweet potatoes. Last night's stars, still blinking their eyes above the chimney, woke up the old house, the wooden door "creaked", and a ray of morning light squeezed in. Father tamed the hoe and prepared to renovate his life and plant hope in the land of Yakou. Following the call of his father, stepping on the sound of cicadas, following the veins of the sun, the small hand pulled out the sweet potato vine from his arms one by one and inserted it obliquely into his father's newly beaten nest. After planting the sweet potato vine, my father pulled the hoe out of the ground layer and gently pressed it twice on the ridge surface, and a sweet potato plant was planted.
The freshly planted sweet potato vines will soon hunch their heads and absorb the sullenness of the season. The potato vines, the dejected heads, and the noisy birdsong, devoured my will. I threw down the potato vine in my arms and said, Dad, I don't grow sweet potatoes with you anymore, I want to play.
Father said no, these days of the sun is suitable for growing sweet potatoes, do not grow sweet potatoes how to raise pigs to sell money to pay you tuition.
I said I don't care, you planted it yourself.
My father didn't theorize with me much, pointed to the open space and drew a circle with gestures, and said, give you a dollar to buy something to eat, you help me plant this land, okay?
Looking at the money in his hand, I stood on the ground and rubbed it for a long time, reaching out and silently taking it. But in my heart, I hated the sun, hated the vigorous potato vine in my arms, and picked up the potato vine and riveted it into the soil nest, until all the potato vines were conquered by me. The sunset had sprinkled a light drunken red on the village.
When the sun composes its music under the wings of cicadas, the potato vines are as strong as summer. In the free afternoon and dusk, the flying potato vines are a beautiful scenery in the countryside. These potato vines creeping on the ground are in close contact with the soil and grass with their breath.
All summer, the densely packed vines keep you from getting in. However, the mother had to take advantage of the sunny day to turn the potato vines up one by one, so that they could change direction and not let them grow wildly. The heat in the sweet potato field rolled in, and the mother squatted in the field to pull grass, whole vines, and pine plowing. The ripped weeds were exposed to the scorching sun and withered in an instant. Somewhere on the ground, father would pop up and give a grassy smile. I persisted for a while, but finally couldn't stand it and hid in the grass. However, the grass is as hot as the forest. So, drink water, like a mother, take a big gulp.
The figure of my hometown gradually blurred in my wandering sun and moon. Back in the sweet potato field of his hometown again, the dwarf trees were cut flat, emitting angular shouts, the mountains carried similar melancholy, and the mother who was turning potato vines, her sideburns piled with snow, with a floral smile.
Nostalgia has nowhere to hide, wake up among the potato vines, take the place of origin, and swim towards the heart. But I did leave that homeland for many years! Once again, faced with patches of green potato vines, I had to lower myself and the city where I lived.
Deep in the Bashan Mountains, everything is buried drunk, and above the red village, there are butterflies smuggling from the border of autumn. Some of the weeds left emerald green footsteps. My young mind drifted away as the artemisia waned. The father polished the spirit of the sickle to a bright and shiny look, and harvested the face and love of the potato vine. The ground cut off from the potatoes was exposed to the sun, box by box, well-defined. The topsoil around the sweet potato is propped open, cracking many cracks, and some sweet potatoes simply drill out of the cracks.
On a fine day, my father followed the roots of the ground, the hoe rose and fell, and the sweet potatoes were turned over. They are like a string of spindles, with a very full water color, the red skin and red heart, fresh and colorful. While picking sweet potatoes, I picked up sweet potato roots, trying to remove the ripples from the boundless old things. Those who had been cut off from their roots, wounded, bare, did not scream or even groan, but only came out of the white milky potato syrup, which condensed on the wound.
Tired of digging, my father sat alone under the tree, put down a river from his body, put down the whirlpool of hardships, read about the family's livelihood, smiled, and did not care whether I was in front of me. Looking back now, my father's casual laughter contained more tears, and when he twisted it casually, he could hear the sound of the strings - to be merciful to my sweet potato men and make life more merciful to me.
When the native chickens on the beams finished their last chirping and pounced on the yellowing days, the mother settled the cooking smoke, carefully wiped the soil off the sweet potatoes, and classified them: tattered pigs, cracked plows, sliced, dried, and stored intact cellars.
In the years of "sweet potatoes as rice to the age", the aroma of sweet potatoes not only drunk my barefoot days of chasing the white clouds, but also accompanied me through a long academic career. When I was in junior high school, my family was tight, and in order to save money, I steamed the sweet potatoes in a pot full of sweet potatoes, which was the dry food that I brought with me.
Nowadays, from the city to the countryside, food and clothing have long been solved, eating is nutritional, and dressing is pompous. Occasionally, when I saw sweet potatoes at dinner, I always had to take a few pieces to eat first, the taste was as fragrant as ever, sweet as ever, and easily brought me back to my hometown, back to the hometown of "red hearts and green vines all over the hillside, triumphant spring and summer songs", sour, sweet and bitter suddenly surged into my heart...
So I put down the stone ladder and learned from the countrymen, using foul language, accusing other delicious, lazy wine aromas, and failed to give me an antidote to my nostalgia.
However, whenever I see sweet potatoes, I feel very kind, that is the taste of nostalgia, the taste of hometown, the taste of parental love, such as the green vines of potato vines crawling and crawling, in my dreams, in the city where I live, deciphering the woody countryside, and returning my body to the wind and rain...