NFBE Chapter 393 - 208: Liking
Chapter 393 - 208: Liking
Juhua and Qingmu both had woven baskets on their backs. When their mother, Mrs. Yang, heard that Mrs. He was also in the fields, she quickly grabbed two handbaskets, saying she would carry one for her.
When they reached the edge of the fields, Mrs. Yang said to Qingmu and the others, "You go on ahead and start gathering. I’ll join Huai Zi’s mother. Juhua, don’t wander off. Stick close to your brother and Brother Huai Zi."
With that, she walked over to Mrs. He and greeted Zhang Dashuan as well.
Juhua found this amusing and said to Qingmu, "If I trail behind you two, what will I get to pick? Won’t I end up with nothing?"
Zhang Huai reassured her, "Mushrooms grow in patches. It’s rare to find just one or two growing alone. When your brother and I find a spot, we’ll call you over to gather them. It’s the same thing, isn’t it? This is a deep, dense forest. If you wander off by yourself, you could easily get into trouble."
Qingmu added, "Huai Zi and I are always exploring these mountains, so you’ll be safe with us. Oh! We should have brought a small hoe. If we found a wild peach tree or something, we could have dug it up and taken it home."
Juhua laughed. "Let’s make a special trip to dig one up next time. It’s been raining for days, so the soil is really soft. If we find a good one, we could probably dig it out with a sturdy branch."
Reaching the foot of the mountain, Zhang Huai took the lead, using his stick to beat back the tall grass on either side of their path. Qingmu followed, using a knife to slash through any overgrown shrubs that blocked their way.
Juhua stayed close to Qingmu, knowing that mushrooms wouldn’t grow in such dense brush. You had to search for sparsely wooded, slightly more open areas, or flat ground beneath large trees, covered in a thick layer of dead leaves.
She was observing the fresh buds on a tree branch when, through a gap in the foliage, she spotted mushrooms in a grassy patch ahead. They were of all sizes, scattered sparsely through the grass and over the decaying fallen leaves. This grayish, slightly reddish variety was the most common type of mushroom in the mountains.
A flicker of joy went through her. Without waiting for Qingmu to speak, she quickly squeezed past him and rushed toward the grassy patch. Bending down, she cupped the stalk of a mushroom, gave a gentle pull, and plucked the thick yet light grass mushroom from the ground.
As she admired the perfectly intact mushroom in her hand, she heard Zhang Huai turn back and call to her. "Juhua, look, isn’t that... Huh, you’ve already picked it? These are grass mushrooms; they’re safe to eat. But you need to be careful. If you see mushrooms, it’s best to let me and your brother look at them first. Many of the mushrooms on this mountain are poisonous. And don’t even think about touching the brightly colored ones."
Qingmu nodded. "I can identify several types of edible mushrooms. Gray grass mushrooms like this are the most common, along with a grayish-white kind. It’s best not to pick any that you don’t recognize."
Juhua nodded, all the while rapidly gathering the rest of the mushrooms. By the time the boys finished speaking, she had already cleared the patch. There were over a dozen in total, but she had deliberately left one large one behind.
She straightened up to find Qingmu and Zhang Huai watching her with smiles, and said, "Well, you snooze, you lose."
Qingmu laughed. "You may have grabbed a lot, but doesn’t that just mean more for you to carry? How about you put what you gather in my basket later?"
Juhua nodded. "Once I’ve gathered too many, I’ll dump them in yours. Hey! Brother Huai Zi, I left that one on purpose! Don’t pick it!"
Juhua was still talking to Qingmu when she saw Zhang Huai bending down to pick the very mushroom she had purposely left behind, and she quickly cried out to stop him.
Huai Zi straightened up and asked, confused, "Why’d you leave it? It’s a really big one. I thought you’d somehow missed it."
Juhua thought for a moment before replying, "I’m not sure how mushrooms grow, but it can’t hurt to leave a ’seed,’ right? Then we can come back here to pick more next time. If we clear them all out, maybe they won’t grow back."
’She knew nothing about how mushrooms grew or were cultivated; otherwise, she could be farming them herself. For now, they had to rely on wild ones. Regardless, mushrooms couldn’t just grow from nothing, which is why she thought to leave one behind and check on it next time.’
Zhang Huai and Qingmu glanced at each other, then nodded, agreeing it was a plausible idea.
While waving them forward, Huai Zi said to Juhua with a laugh, "Juhua, you want to take everything home, and you even think about how to plant it. Your brother and I have been running around these mountains for years, and whenever we find something to eat, we just enjoy it on the spot. We never think about this stuff. I’ll have to start learning from you. If we could figure out how these mushrooms grow, that would be fantastic. It’d be one more thing for us to eat, right?"
Hearing this from Huai Zi, Qingmu let out a chuckle. "I’m just like Juhua these days," he said. "I see something and immediately think about how to get it home. Even my dad’s like that now."
He then told Zhang Huai the story of how Zheng Changhe had dug up wild chestnut trees to plant in his fields.
Zhang Huai clapped his hands after hearing the story. "That’s a great idea! If Uncle Zheng succeeds, I bet a lot of people will follow his example. I’ll get my dad to go digging with Uncle Zheng. You don’t even have to plant them in the fields. You could just plant them at the foot of the mountain here. They’d be just like wild ones. It’s not like the government would stop you, would it?"