The Sweet Little Fulang

Although they talked about the bad things in the past, but after they stopped talking about it, the meal was still very happy.

   The autumn wind rolled up the yellow and green leaves on the ground, and the sun was still quite strong at noon. In the large fence outside the courtyard, the fluffy chickens and ducklings screamed from time to time, pecking the grass and chasing insects.

    Lu Gu released them today, and picked peppers outside the courtyard with a bamboo basket.

    He was afraid that the ducks would swim along the river when he couldn't see them, so he didn't put them in the pond. Anyway, the ducks also ate the leaves and the caterpillar, so they were locked in the fence with the chickens.

Autumn peppercorns were turning red, bright red peppers were numb, and they should be picked within two days, otherwise the peppers would be dried and cracked by the sun, and it would be difficult to pick up when they fell to the ground, and it would be worthless if to sell.

    Bunches of bright red peppercorns were picked off and thrown into the nearly full bamboo basket at his feet. His hands were black and dirty after picking them all morning, and there was a smell of numbness. Be careful, or it would hurt if you got pricked by it.

    There was  only one person in Lu Gu. The two peppercorns trees were quite big, and there were a lot of peppercorns. He had only picked half of them now, and he would have to work all afternoon like this.

    Just picking it off was not enough. If the sun was  good these days, it would be dry in the sun for two days. After drying it, you could store it up. This thing was  not like vegetable. Even if you used it for every meal, you couldn’t eat much. If so, a large bamboo basket may not be eaten until the beginning of next spring. After a while, he would go down the mountain and carried a basket back home.

    Once before, he saw that Ji Qiuyue fried the dried peppercorns in oil when cooking, and the oil became numbing after it was taken out. After heating it up, she poured it on the cold dishes with a prickly sound. It tasted very special. .

    Because he wanted to finish this job earlier, Lu Gu worked alone for a whole day. He ate two steamed buns at noon and served with sour watercress to satisfy his hunger. Even dinner was a simple meal. The eggs, which he was not willing to eat, were stuffed in the pot together with steamed buns, and he just waited for Shen Xuanqing to come back and cooked some rice wine, poured some rice wine and added some water, and boiled it to drink, which was  faster than cooking rice porridge, and there was  no need to worry about setting fire.

    It was simple, but compared to the spicy fried rabbit meat and fish soup before, it was good for country people to eat scrambled eggs.

    When Shen Xuanqing came back in the evening, he heard a dog barking and hurried out from the side of the west wall, and three dogs ran over to surround him. During this period of time, even the black dog was familiar with him, but because of the previous incident, Lu Gu still liked Dahui the most.

    His hands were black and dirty, and he didn't touch the heads of the three dogs.

    Shen Xuanqing unloaded the heavy bamboo basket at the gate of the courtyard. Seeing that he hadn't finished his work, he also went to look outside the west wall.

    "Not much." Seeing that there were not many peppercorns left on the trees, he simply picked them together with Lu Gu, and it wouldn’t be too late to eat later.

    The chickens crowed in the fence circle, the fence door was closed, and Dahui stood upright, resting his front paws on the bamboo fence and looking in. He seemed relieved, and after getting down, he regained his composure. The other dogs itself were not very stupid, and they would follow suit, and imitated him and took a look inside.

    Lu Gu and Shen Xuanqing turned their backs to them, and they didn't see this scene.

    Shen Xuanqing ran in the mountains for a day and didn't see Lu Gu all day. He also wanted to talk to fulang when he came back, so he thought of a word and asked, "What are we eating today?" 

Lu Gu seldom asked what he got, so he had to ask Lu Gu.

    He wasn't annoyed if Lu Gu didn't ask him, he was a timid character, and every time he took something out of the bamboo basket, Lu Gu would squat beside him, watched and listened carefully.

    As soon as he heard that rice wine needed to be cooked, Shen Xuanqing said: "Then you cook it first, and I'll pick the rest and carry it back."

    In this case, Lu Gu obeyed and went back first, and saw Shen Xuanqing's big basket at the gate of the courtyard, He wanted to carry it by hand, but he didn't move after a while, it was so heavy that he had to give up.

    When the sky darkened, Lu Gu cooked the rice wine and put the food on the table. He was about to go out to call Shen Xuanqing for dinner when he saw him coming back with the peppercorns and bamboo baskets while driving the chickens and ducks.

    After a day of hard work, he was able to rest after closing the courtyard door. The black dirt on Lu Gu's hands couldn’t be washed off after several times of washing with wild bath beads, but it could only slowly fade away. That was how it was when picking peppercorns. He was not in a hurry, just washed it and it would be clean in a few days.

    "The fishes and shrimps in the river are getting fatter, and the loaches are fatter too. I won't go out tomorrow. I will cast a net by the river to catch some fish, then catch some purple belly and green snails, and take them down the mountain to sell in two days." Shen Xuanqing was still eating, he took a bite of scrambled eggs, and he was satisfied. There were not many eggs brought up the mountain this time, and they had eaten them twice. This time, there should be no more eggs.

    When it came to this season, some people said, "When the autumn wind blows, the loach is fat, and the loach is better than the ginseng in early winter". In the past few years, he had learned from the people in Fucheng that they paid attention to "eating autumn". Wild things were sold well in restaurants in the town. Why not sold it for some money, at this moment purple belly and green snails were quite expensive.

    Shen Xuanqing was tired of running around in the mountains and forests every day. He had no horses or carts, and only relied on two legs to run around. After a long time, people who were hard-pressed couldn't stand it. Now he didn’t   had to work hard to earn money, but also wanted to change jobs to rest your legs.

    The other one was his selfishness, he seemed to be getting more and more familiar with Lu Gu, but he could only see him when he came back at night, besides, he had never experienced what other people said about being newlyweds. Don't mention anything else, it was inevitable that he had some thoughts in his heart, and he wanted to spend more time with fulang.