Flowers in full bloom

After everyone sat down, Uncle Zheng also sat down on a stool at the bottom and began to introduce the situation.

"My last name is Zheng Dahai, and there are only three families left in this village."

After Zheng Dahai's introduction, Hua Lei had a general understanding of the personnel situation on the farm.

Uncle Zheng and his wife had two sons and two daughters. The eldest son had married and had a son and a daughter. The two middle daughters were married. The youngest son was seventeen years old and had not yet started a family. The family now had seven people in total, and they were in charge of the fields on the farm.

Zhao Tiesheng and his wife had two sons and a daughter. Only the eldest son, Zhao Dahu, had married and had two sons. The youngest son, Zhao Daniu, and the daughter, Zhao Xiaohua, had not yet been engaged. There were eight people in the family. Several men were in charge of the fruit trees and flowers on the farm. Aunt Zhao and several other women were in charge of the kitchen and vegetable farming.

Little brother Kong, named Kong Peida, is literate and is in charge of the accounts on the farm. He is responsible for signing contracts with tenants, collecting rent, buying seeds, etc. His wife has given birth to two daughters and is now four months pregnant. Behind him are his sick mother Aunt Lei and his younger sister Kong Xiaoya, who has left her family and returned home. There are six people in the family, and he is the only male. Several women are responsible for feeding the livestock on the farm.

Hua Lei glanced at Xiao Kongge's family, sighed slightly, and said, "Okay, I understand the general situation of the personnel. Now let's go take a look around."

"Okay, Manager Chen, Miss Hua, this way." Uncle Zheng took Hua Lei and the others to take a general look at the house. There were five large rooms in a horizontal direction, and three rows in front and back. In addition to the master's room and study in the front row, the two rows in the back should be used as warehouses, where some tools for storing grain were piled up. It was surrounded by a one-meter-high brick wall, and there was a small door in the back for easy access.

Behind the wall was a row of low houses, probably the residences of several farmers, which were not very clean. There were some worn-out clothes hanging under the eaves.

There are five brick houses on the west side, all with doors facing east, where some farm tools and some rice for the people in the village are placed. Next to the yard, there is a well, which is used for the daily water supply of the village.

Several men followed Hua Lei and his group, walked around the house from the west, and saw a large bamboo fence on the northwest side of the house, close to the foot of the mountain, with two half-person-high partitions in the middle.

Seven or eight pigs occupied a cubicle, lying on the ground and snoring. In the cubicle on the right, a few cows were leisurely nibbling grass, occasionally wagging their tails. In a large cubicle next to the left, dozens of chickens, ducks and geese were mixed together, with chickens flying, ducks calling, and geese fluttering, in stark contrast to the peaceful appearance of the cubicle next to it.

The mud wall at the foot of the mountain was covered with thatched roofs and used as livestock sheds. After dark, the chickens, ducks, cows, pigs, etc. would go into their sheds by themselves, and people would just come over and close the door. It was a very reasonable arrangement.

Continue walking along the path to the back, there is a winding uphill road, and on both sides of the road there is a large area of ​​peppers planted. The peppers are only the size of an adult's little finger, hanging on the branches, and you can't see them under the shade of the leaves unless you look closely. It is estimated that in two months, you will be able to see the red peppers.

After passing the pepper field, we went up the small hill behind. The hill was not very high, with the highest point being at most sixty or seventy meters in vertical height. There was a peach orchard here, covering about five or six acres, with more than two hundred trees. What was gratifying was that the peach trees were loaded with peaches, and many branches were bent.

The peaches are still a little green. Hua Bud pinched a few peaches with his hands. They were hard and not yet ripe. If the weather is sunny and there is plenty of sunshine in the future, we should be able to pick them in large quantities in half a month.

Next to the peach forest is a large area of ​​pear trees. Uncle Zhao said that there are about five or six acres of pear trees, with more than 200 trees. However, there are not many fruits on the pear trees, only a few pears hanging sparsely.

Zhao Daniu, who was walking beside him, explained: "These peach and pear trees were planted by the previous owner when he bought this farm three years ago. The previous owner likes flowers and plants, and hopes to enjoy the flowers in spring and eat fruits in autumn, so he planted a lot of fruit trees on this slope, with peach and pear trees being the most common.

There are more than a dozen apricots, hawthorns, red dates, and even lemons. However, not many of these fruits are bearing fruit now.

The flower buds also saw the lychee tree, which is the lychee tree described by the great Northern Song Dynasty writer Su Shi: "I could eat 300 lychees a day and would be willing to live in Lingnan forever."

Don't lychees grow in the Lingnan region? They like high temperature and high humidity, and places with direct sunlight. Generally, the temperature must be 24 or 25 degrees to bloom and bear fruit. Shangjing City is located in the north, and the coldest time is minus 10 degrees. Can lychee trees bloom and bear fruit?

Seeing the flower buds circling around the lychee trees, Uncle Zhao next to him spoke again, "These lily trees were bought from the south by the previous owner at a high price, but they have been planted for more than three years and have not bloomed, let alone produced fruits. I guess they are fake."

Hualei smiled. This tree is indeed a lychee tree, but the growing environment here is too cold and dry, which is not suitable for it. That's why it can't bloom or bear fruit. It seems that although the former owner's wish is very beautiful, to enjoy the flowers in spring and eat the fruits in autumn, these lychee trees probably won't buy his wish.

Hualei walked and looked, there were various flowers planted on the slope, but it seemed that most of the flowers bloomed in spring. There were winter jasmine, Chinese rose, magnolia, rose, and rose. Hualei also saw a few flowers with the same fate as the lychee tree.

In autumn, several golden osmanthus and silver osmanthus were planted, but because the flowering period of osmanthus is relatively short, only about fifteen or sixteen days, it has passed the flowering period now. "Around the Mid-Autumn Festival, the fragrance here is so fragrant that you can smell it from a long distance. My wife also dried a lot of osmanthus flowers, which can be used to make tea. It's a pity that there is no glutinous rice flour and sugar, otherwise I could make osmanthus sugar cakes to eat." It can be seen that Zhao Dashu is also a person who loves flowers, and even more so a foodie. Speaking of osmanthus sugar cakes, he looks yearning.

There are more than a dozen chrysanthemums planted on the low slope. They are blooming luxuriantly at this moment. However, the color of the chrysanthemums is not as bright as the buds seen in the previous life. These dozen or so chrysanthemums are all bright golden yellow.

This reminded Hualei of the famous Tang Dynasty poem "Fu Ju Fu after Failing the Imperial Examination" written by Huang Chao, a poet in his previous life. Especially the last line "The whole city is covered with golden armor" is still fresh in Hualei's memory. On the north side of the hillside, there are more than 20 wintersweets planted, but they have not bloomed yet.