Sweet 80s

After dinner, the weather was very pleasant.

As we approach May in the Gregorian calendar, the temperature is rising steadily.

The couple sat in the yard and watched their sons carefully cleaning and feeding the chickens and rabbits.

During the chat, Wang Shuping slowly revealed the topic of helping Li Xianglan direct the May Day program.

"I heard from Aunt Xianglan that your company will have family members performing on May Day."

"Yeah, you want to go see..."

Before she could answer, Lin Xiangdong continued.

"Don't go. What can those few people do? They can only sing and dance a few times. If you ask me, Manager Du has too much to do. It would be better to give everyone a few days off."

Hearing this answer, Wang Shuping mistakenly thought that her husband didn't want her to get involved, and her face became a little more worried.

Although Lin Xiangdong is only 187cm tall and appears to be a strong man at first glance, sometimes he is more thoughtful than anyone else.

Without hearing his wife's response, he sensitively captured the change in her mood and leaned towards Wang Shuping.

"There's a basketball game this afternoon. Come and watch me play."

If I agreed to Li Xianglan's request, I would probably be in the transportation company by then.

"Well, okay, but you won't lose, right..." Wang Shuping said jokingly with a smile.

"How could that be? It's absolutely impossible. I have never lost a game since I joined the army, let alone in front of you..."

Wang Shuping tilted her head and fell onto his shoulder.

The next day, Saturday morning, Lin Xiangdong came back from jogging and went straight to work.

Although he said he would not lose, he was not 100% sure in his heart, so he went to the company basketball court to practice alone.

After Wang Shuping handed her two sons to her neighbors, she took a small shovel, carried a bamboo basket, and went to a small hill behind her house with Aunt Pang.

Because the mountain is located at the back of the entire compound, people living here call it the back mountain.

There is no one contracted to grow on the back hill, so whatever grows and bears fruit depends entirely on God's grace.

There are several wild fruit trees growing in areas with plenty of sunlight and water.

Before autumn comes, people come to pick the fruits on the trees, and some simply fall to the ground.

Rotten fruits will attract many green bean flies with green heads and large wings.

In particular, there are a few unpopular fig trees. I don’t know why people here don’t like to eat them. In short, the fruits on fig trees are the most attractive to flies.

In the era of food and oil shortage, some people ate wild vegetables to fill their stomachs, but sometimes they ate them to taste the unique flavor of nature in this season.

As soon as several housewives from the compound arrived, they started digging vegetables.

?He walked into the green field with a small basket, squatted down, and looked for wild vegetables in the grass.

With every shovel and dig, the harvest is rich.

Wang Shuping was used to eating motherwort in Northeast China, so this time she focused on the slightly bitter motherwort.

Some places prefer to call it by its full name, dandelion.

Aunt Pang was busy digging vegetables. When she looked up, she saw that Wang Shuping's basket was full of the same vegetable. She thought she was from another place and didn't know other wild vegetables, so she took the initiative to introduce them to her.

"There are so many things to eat here. Don't just dig dandelions. Look over there..." Aunt Fat pointed to the distance.

"Shepherd's purse, side dishes, noodles, and the trees on the hill over there are also growing pretty good things, such as Chinese toon, elm seeds, and locust flowers. You can eat them all."

After saying that, he took Wang Shuping's arm and walked forward.

"This is shepherd's purse, and this is rapeseed. We call them side dishes here."

Auntie Pang pointed at some clumps of fresh green weeds and said, "Look at the flower buds on them. In three to five days, once they bloom, they will be old and hard to eat, and not as delicious as they are now."

"We have it in the Northeast too, and it's so delicious when it comes to making dumplings."

"Yes, yes, the shepherd's purse and meat dumplings are really delicious, and there are also rapeseed noodles. Do you eat noodles in the Northeast?"

"I sometimes eat porridge, but I've never eaten noodles. I also eat rapeseed..."

Wang Shuping carefully recalled the days when she lived in Northeast China and realized that she had never seen rapeseed flowers once.

That's because rapeseed flowers in the Central Plains usually mature in March every year, but in the Northeast it is freezing cold at that time and it is difficult to see large fields of rapeseed flowers.

Of course, I have never eaten rapeseed flowers.

"That's perfect. Don't cook lunch at your house today. I'll teach you how to make noodles when we get home later. You can also try the side dishes."

Wang Shuping was happy to learn from Aunt Pang's enthusiastic invitation. After all, the more dishes she knew how to cook, the less trouble she would have in cooking.

The entire back mountain is quite large, and it is unrealistic to pick all the wild vegetables, so everyone only picks the newly grown sprouts.

While the army was busy digging wild vegetables, Dabao at home was also busy.

Although Wang Shuping was worried and entrusted her two children to her neighbors, children are not cats or dogs that will just stay put if they are tied in the yard.

After a while, Dabao found an excuse to take his younger brother back home and took out a bag of wheat straw from under the bed.

The two little kids unbuttoned their autumn clothes.

He poured out all the wheat straw with a loud splash, then sat down on the ground and began to sort out the suitable straws.

Dabao took out a stick of suitable length, width and length and handed it to Erbao: "See, just follow this standard and pick out all the ones that can be used."

Erbao first took the pole, scanned it up and down with his eyes squinting, and then looked at a field of golden wheat straw. He suddenly felt top-heavy.

He trembled and shouted in surprise, "There are so many. Can we pick them out one by one? We won't be able to finish picking them up before dark!"

He is just small, but not stupid.

It immediately became apparent that this was an impossible task.

"So do you still want the cage? Hurry up and pick it up before mom and dad come back."

Erbao stared with his eyes wide open, wondering if his brother was deliberately making things difficult for him in order to avoid making a cage for the katydid.

He pouted and hesitated to take any action.

"Hey, I can help you, okay?"

Children's eyes and hands are always quick, and they pick up a lot of usable things before the expected time.

"That's enough, that's enough. Erbao, throw the rest of the wheat into the chicken coop and the rabbit cage."

After dealing with the "crime scene", Dabao finally started to weave the cage under the watchful eyes of his younger brother.

Making katydid cages with wheat straw is the simplest of all production methods.

There are 5 steps in total.

Dabao first trims the wheat straw into the same length with scissors, usually about 15-20 cm, so as to ensure that the woven katydid cages are of uniform size.

Then, Dabao stacked four wheat straws crosswise.

He also found some of the leftover thin iron wire that Lin Xiangdong used to build the chicken coop and rabbit cage last time, and fixed the wheat straw together to form a small circle.

Once the bottom is fixed, all that's left is to weave the sides. Wrap a piece of straw around the circle at the bottom and weave it all the way up to the required height.

When the sides are done, bend the straw inwards to form the dome, cross it or pass it straight through the top and secure it.

All that remains is finishing and decorating.

Erbao watched the whole process intently from the initial prototype to the final shape and then to the complete form.

Deep down, he admired his brother's hands-on ability.

I couldn't help but take it and examine it carefully. The next step was to wait for the weather to get warmer and for the katydids to chirp in the grass.

This little cage really comes in handy.

A busy morning brought me great rewards.

Several women went home to prepare dinner.

After putting the wild vegetables into the kitchen, Wang Shuping brought her two sons to Aunt Pang's house to learn how to make rapeseed flower noodles.