I farmed and built a villa in ancient times

Chapter 22 The Old Maid

"It's a bit spicy, I'm sweating." Zhou Chenyu took a breath and looked at Baoyu, his mouth was as swollen as a sausage, "Hahaha, Baoyu, hahahaha."

Li Xiuju also took a look and laughed so hard that she fell forward and backward.

Zhou Baoyu was still out of the situation, blinking blankly: "What's wrong with me?"

"It's nothing, you eat what you have." Li Xiuju laughed until her stomach hurt, and turned around and entered the kitchen.

Zhou Chenyu suppressed his laughter and said seriously: "We just think you look good when you eat snails."

He looks good?
Zhou Baoyu's face dropped. He couldn't believe a word his sister said. She must be making fun of him.

"Come on, come on, the sweet potato porridge is cold and it tastes spicy in your mouth. This is just right."

Li Xiuju scooped out several bowls of sweet potato porridge, and Zhou Chenyu took a sip. The porridge water was refreshing and anti-spicy, and the sweet potatoes were sweet but not greasy. It went well with the spicy snails.

At night, Zhou Chenyu lay on the bed after eating and drinking, listening to the natural sounds outside the house. There was no disturbance from the work force, no anxiety about saving money to buy a house, and no fear of unemployment as he got older.

This kind of life of working at sunrise and resting at sunset is actually quite happy.

Without working days in weeks, time seems to fly by quickly, and it will be Qingming Festival in a blink of an eye.

In Zhoujia Village and even the entire Qingshui Town, Qingming is the most important festival after the Chinese New Year.

During this period, the people not only clean the graves of their relatives and ancestors, but also worship the common ancestors together with the clan. After the memorial ceremony is completed, the whole village finally gets together to have a big pot meal.This can not only miss the loved ones who have passed away, but also bring the living relatives closer together.

Every village with the same surname has a common ancestor. The grave of the ancestor in Zhoujia Village is located on the hilltop on the left side of the paddy field opposite the village. Standing there, you can overlook the entire village.

On the day before Tomb Sweeping Day, before dawn, Li Xiuju took the glutinous rice she had bought earlier and rushed to a house with a stone mill in the village, where she stood in line in advance to grind flour.

Zhou Chenyu and Baoyu also went out early after breakfast, preparing to pick the freshest mugwort.

Wormwood grows mostly in plain areas with fertile soil and abundant rainfall.Li Xiuju said that behind the hilltop where the ancestors of Zhoujia Village were buried, there was an abandoned white city wall, and the area was covered with mugwort.

Although the spring rain has faded, a new round of sun has not yet risen. The weeds on the fields are stained with morning dew. Zhou Chenyu and Baoyu ran towards the dilapidated white house. Halfway through, their trousers became wet. Half done.

"Sister, it's right across the street!"

Zhou Baoyu straightened the brim of his hat and pointed at the deserted white roof tiles on the opposite side of the paddy field. The egrets hidden at the foot of the mountain were startled by him and flew into the sky, running in a line towards the distance.

Zhou Chenyu raised his head and looked at the sky, thinking of the poem in the Chinese textbook, "A row of egrets ascending to the blue sky", which might describe this scene.

Zhou Baoyu picked up his pants, ran across the field ridge to the opposite side, and then a big head popped out of the grass: "Sister, mother is right, there is wormwood here, there are so many wormwood here, I can't pick them all up!"

"Zhou Baoyu, hurry up and get reincarnated! Wait for me!" Zhou Chenyu came to his senses, and Zhou Baoyu had already run to the other side.

She cursed and followed, walking along the wet field bank to the end. At the end, there was a stone staircase made of piled stones, leading to the main entrance of the deserted white house.

The house was in disrepair and was covered with weeds all around. The grapefruit tree growing next to the house was as bare as the house, with only two hanging shriveled grapefruits left.

"Don't tell me, this place is quite suitable for filming ghost movies." Zhou Chenyu walked up to Baoyu and poked his shoulder, "Hey, is this place haunted? No one lives in such a nice house, right? Do you have any novel stories?" Zhou Baoyu has had the house there since he could remember, and he really had no idea what had happened.

"Sister, are you scared?"

Zhou Chenyu sneered, "When I go to work, I'm more resentful than a ghost. I'm afraid of being fucked."

"Going to work? What do you mean going to work?" Zhou Baoyu frowned and raised his big eyes to stare worriedly, "Sister, are you out of your mind again?"

"You're just out of your mind. You're all..." Zhou Chenyu stopped and just scolded him. He couldn't scold himself too.

She cleared her throat, "What does mugwort look like? Let me take a look."

Zhou Baoyu picked out a tender, green and tooth-shaped plant from the short grass at his feet. It looked a bit like a short version of chrysanthemum. "Sister, this is all. You pick it tenderly and fill the basket with us." You can go back.”

"Row."

Zhou Chenyu took the example given by Baoyu and squatted down to pick it up. He filled his palms with what he picked up and put them all into the basket. This action went over and over again. The sun shone on the eaves of the white wall and the dewdrops evaporated, and the mugwort leaves They all withered and drooped, and the baskets were filled with mugwort.

Zhou Baoyu hid under the eaves to block the sun and took a look inside the house. Zhou Chenyu stood there with his back straight and heard the sound of a bell.

Following the direction of the sound, a strong and fat buffalo came out of the forest, gnawing on the weeds on the ground, and the bell tied to the cow's neck kept making a clanging sound.

Behind the buffalo, a boy no more than fifteen years old was holding a thin bamboo and standing near the buffalo to watch it eat grass.

"It's so pitiful that you come out to herd cattle at such a young age." Zhou Chenyu couldn't help but sigh.

Zhou Baoyu walked up to her and said with a drooped face, "Sister, raising cattle is not something ordinary people can afford. In our village of [-] households, only three of them can afford to raise buffaloes."

what?
Zhou Chenyu looked at the little boy whom he called pitiful. It turned out that he was much richer than himself.She was heartbroken again: "The clown is actually me."

After picking up the wormwood, they carried the basket to the stream and washed the wormwood one by one before returning home.

Li Xiuju has also returned from grinding flour and is frying peanuts in the kitchen. "Is there any mugwort?"

Zhou Chenyu showed the basket in his hand, "Yes, there are a lot of them. They are all washed."

"That's great. Mom can knead the dough and make Ai Ci later."

Li Xiuju poured the fried peanuts out of the pot, asked Baoyu to mash them, and added an appropriate amount of sugar powder to make a candied peanut filling.

She boiled a pot of hot water, poured the washed mugwort into it, boiled it once, and boiled out the dark green juice. Then she replaced it with clean water and repeated it until the water turned into a light green color.

Li Xiuju kneaded the softened and blackened mugwort into a ball, put it into the flour, added the flour and hot water little by little, and kneaded it into an evenly distributed dough.

Zhou Baoyu brought the candy-centred peanut filling and went to the kitchen to heat hot water. When the glutinous rice cake was ready, he could quickly cook it.

(End of this chapter)