The kids with bilnd box

In the middle of the loquat orchard, there is a piece of open space for wind and air, and the ten loquat trees donated by Lao Zhu surround this rare flat place in the mountains. This is also the parking lot for the fruit vendors' small pickup trucks to transport their goods during the loquat harvest. Now, the loquats are still half yellow and half green, and city families who have adopted loquat trees often drive to visit "my loquat trees" on weekends. This is a way for the city families to help the village primary school. When he was young, Lao Zhu worked as a substitute teacher in the village primary school, but later had to retire from his teaching position because of the lack of diploma, and contracted loquat plantations to support his family.

He has been very successful in this business, and since he started planting saplings, he seems to have the golden finger to take care of loquat trees. "The loquat used to be a hobby, not asking whether it was sweet or sour. The remaining nuclei are wrapped in yellow mud and scattered among the hedges. The spring breeze demolishes the sprouts, and the shrub is like a hazelnut. A single plant grows alone, pale as a mountain." Old Zhu felt that Fan Chengda's poem was describing his own years in the mountains. The loquat trees were soon as high as the roof, and the loquat trees were becoming more and more numerous. When Old Zhu finally became rich, he thought of doing something for the village primary school, buying some books for the empty library and a basketball hoop for the empty playground. He knew that a sixth-grader had the talent to be a director. Last summer, the boy wrote his own script and acted out the play with three classmates on the sunbed, bringing to life the conflict between parents who work outside the home and grandmothers who stay behind to educate their children. This child, like him, also surnamed Zhu, according to the genealogical calculation is also a generation higher than the old Zhu, considered his distant young uncle. In order to play the role of the grandmother in the play, the child took out his years of money saved up to buy a gray wig. Old Zhu saw in him, when he was a teenager to make everything into the heart of the child, old Zhu also saw the little Zhu grandmother, the spirited old woman while scolding her grandson a basket of crooked ideas, while laughing out of tears, frequently with the back of the hand to wipe.

At that moment, Xiao Zhu saw that the child's performance talent, like the splashing loquat juice, made the stubborn old grandmother wrinkle her nose, and she was sour and sweet. After spending these twelve years with her grandson, the grandmother only felt the heavy load of life, that day, the old woman suddenly felt the child's thriving vitality and his hot feedback. This feedback, all the way to the grandmother's nasal cavity and eyes, let her and happy and sigh, and sad and smile.

Old Zhu was so moved by this scene that he thought of making things easier for his "little uncle". Of course he could have donated the money from the loquat sales directly, but on second thought, the annual harvest of loquat trees is also a small guess and risk. Today's city dwellers like to guess and take risks, and it might be more attractive to start a blind box program to adopt loquat trees. Lao Zhu was amused by his new idea - if a fruit tree could attract city kids, along with their parents, to drive to the countryside to experience the hard work of farming, smell the scent of the mountains and eat freshly picked loquats; or to meet the black and smart "Zhu Guiding", who is as black as a loach, and act with him to eliminate the loquat. It is not necessarily a good thing to meet the black and witty "Zhu Gui", who is as black as a loach, and perform the summer drama with him.

In this way, last October, Lao Zhu started to sell "loquat blind boxes" on WeChat. If you pay 1600 yuan in advance and adopt a tree, all the loquats on this tree will be yours in the coming year. All of them are good fruit trees that have been growing for ten years and can produce at least two hundred pounds of loquats if the wind and rain are favorable. The tree can be adopted by one family or by several families together. Old Zhu promised that he would donate the income from the adoption of loquat trees to the village primary school immediately. He hid a bit of selfishness and earmarked 20% of the income for his "little uncle" to help him set up the first drama club in the mountains. Lao Zhu expects that this will encourage the boy to keep a little spiritual life above the world, no matter what he does in the future.

At the end of October, when the loquat trees bloomed, Lao Zhu taught them how to thin the flowers, and in late March this year, when the green fruit on the loquat trees came out, he taught them how to thin the fruit. -Only four or five fruits are kept on each spike to ensure that the loquat produced is large and sweet. For all these farming tasks, they had to set up a ladder, get into the dense canopy of loquat trees, and carefully, either by leaning down or leaning up, or with the posture of a monkey fishing for the moon, or with the simplicity of a panda lying down, stretch out their shears to do the work. To Lao Zhu's surprise, just like the "barefoot daxian" like "Zhu" who loved to play the drama of the sun and snow, the well-off city people were all excited about climbing trees and thinning fruits. Hearing that loquat leaves can relieve cough, they even pull off a handful of leaves, rinse off the lint on them, cut them up and try to make tea. The blackbird loves the loquat tree, and after pecking a few bites of loquat, it can sing at the top of the tree, singing a full drama.

Suddenly, the thrush that was singing proudly never thought that another bird that changed its voice faster than it would appear, and the thrush in the tree flew while fighting for its voice, trying to make the later retreat with its gorgeous turn of phrase and hoarse, smoky voice, but it could not force the later away. The thrush wiggled its tail in confusion and sighed as it sang, and the city kids saw it through the binoculars and snickered.

As soon as he heard the ventriloquism, he knew that it was the "Zhu Guiding" who was so alive and well. How to pick loquats gently, how to boil the incomplete loquats, how to roast loquats on the charcoal fire, there is no trick that "Zhu Guiding" does not know.

The children of the world can become friends without the need for a match. In a short time, Lao Zhu, who had just caught a running chicken from the loquat garden and was preparing to serve the distant guests, heard the sound of children laughing and fighting from the white tent, and then the city children and the country boys seemed to have reached some kind of competition rules. The wild loquat in the East River. The wind from the fire tree turns the red flame, and the sun rises on the red veil." Old Zhu remembered that this poem is none other than Bai Juyi's "Mountain Loquat".

When the loquat is ripe and the warm wind is smoky, peel a loquat, the thick juice is sour and sweet, and it flows into the cracks of the fingers, making the stickiness between the fingers multiply, as if webbing has grown out. At this moment, it is a good time to listen to children's chanting and laughter under the loquat tree with leisure and mood.