Text |Liu Baoshan.
When I came home for the Mid-Autumn Festival, I went to see them, the two chestnut trees on the hill of my grandfather's house.
Some childhood memories, under the trees, are still alive, like a movie, I often think of them.
When I was very young, they were already so tall, and from the time I entered the school to the time I graduated from college, they bloomed and bore fruit every year, and they never stopped. I never imagined that one day, the tree would grow old.
But they're old. The whole canopy and even half of the trunk were dead, only a few branches and leaves were still green, some chestnut balls were stubbornly cracked, and there were scattered chestnuts under the tree, but no one picked them up, not even a squirrel.
I felt my heart panic. When did this happen?In my memory, they were tall and straight, with verdant foliage. During the blooming season, buzzing bees fly around the entire canopy, tirelessly wrapping their furry hind legs in pollen and flying into the bee bucket behind the grandfather's house, turning the pollen into sweet and fragrant honey.
I haven't met my grandmother, she left early, and she was gone when my mother was ** years old. My grandfather was alone with the five older children, and my mother was the second of them. Grandpa will always be so hardworking, so kind, so kind, so reliable, and so understanding of you. With him, returning to his grandfather's house became a beautiful memory of childhood.
The honey mentioned above is a case, and you can taste its sweetness from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. During the Dragon Boat Festival, the green dumpling leaves are washed, the white glutinous rice is wrapped, and the dumplings are cooked after two hours of simmering. You can peel it off and eat it, but it's not the most fragrant. Pick up the charcoal fire in the stove, put the cooked zongzi with zongzi leaves on it, and roast it until golden brown, which is called a fragrant, and it is a must to dip it in the honey of a hundred flowers. Rage grass baba in early spring, artemisia baba in early summer, bud grain baba in autumn, and glutinous rice cake in winter can all be prepared in the same way.
There is only one thing, you can't eat too much, especially the child's stomach has not fully grown, and the food made of glutinous rice is not easy to digest if you eat too much. I did it once, once my grandfather picked us up to go to the "moon and a half", with the newly harvested glutinous rice to cook fragrant rice, and killed the chicken and stewed chestnuts, stewed a pot of bacon, I was greedy and went to bed early, I had a seizure at night, vomiting and diarrhea in the middle of the night, and then my grandfather picked a few Huoxiang leaves from under the chestnut tree, mashed and flushed the water for me to drink, and finally fell asleep.
Most of the Tujia people love to eat glutinous rice, glutinous rice, glutinous rice, zongzi, sweet wine, soaked rice, and so on. Our family is no exception, and although I had the experience of accumulating food as a child, I have never changed my love for glutinous rice. My cousins, my parents-in-law, and my cubs all love to eat glutinous rice. Every year when I go home, the honey given by my parents, uncles and aunts will also be used, maybe this is called fate, but also inheritance.
Under the chestnut tree, the joy of picking chestnuts is also transmitted, and my dad and his grandson are picking chestnuts under the tree. I also have a chestnut tree in front of my house, which I planted when I was in the second grade of elementary school, and the trunk is now a hug between the two of us. Under my father's care, chestnuts are harvested every year, and every year when I go home for the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day, I can experience the joy of picking chestnuts.
Do you know what time of day it is best to pick chestnuts? In the silence of the night, whenever the wind blows, you can hear the sound of small pebbles falling on the trunk of a tree, which is the chestnut rolling down from the open chestnut ball. In this way, the autumn wind was busy all night, shaking countless chestnuts. Early morning is the best time to pick chestnuts, and they can be found everywhere among the fallen leaves, under the dead branches, in the grass, on the edge of the ridges, in the crevices of the stones, and under the trees. Clever little squirrels are always the first to arrive, and you hear their noisy cries in bed. You don't have to think about it to know that they have already begun to get busy, and one by one, nature's porters, are quickly moving chestnuts into their warehouse.
Grandson, hurry up, I dropped a lot of chestnuts yesterday, get up and pick up chestnuts, otherwise I will be moved by the mink rats in a while. "My grandfather used to say this to me, and now my dad is doing it to my cub.
The fun of picking chestnuts is a combination of pleasures such as finding, discovering, harvesting, trying and saving. You search every corner carefully for fear of missing a chestnut, but sometimes you turn a blind eye to what is close to you, just as we do with certain things, such as happiness. Happiness is like a chestnut falling from God, only when we calm down will we find it, and there are often many that we don't see or even miss, but fortunately they do exist, and some can take root and sprout and then grow into a big tree.
Before returning to the city, I took my wife and children and kowtowed respectfully in front of the grave of my grandparents and grandmother. Turning around, there was a chestnut orchard in the distance.