fictionpage Chapter 396 - 209: Wood Ear (Part 2)
Chapter 396 - 209: Wood Ear (Part 2)
Seeing Zhang Huai carrying Juhua’s creel, Qingmu took her hand and asked softly, "Are you alright to walk?"
Juhua nodded. "I’m fine, not too tired. We really had a great haul today. If Liu Xiaomei finds out I picked so many mushrooms without calling her, she’ll probably curse me out. I was going to call for her earlier, but you guys were rushing me to leave."
Qingmu smiled. "You can just ask her next time. It’d be best to have Sanshun or Ershun go with her, though. After what happened with Meizi getting bitten by a snake, everyone’s reluctant to let girls go up the mountain without someone watching them. It wouldn’t be a big deal for us to bring her, but if we couldn’t watch over her and something happened, it would be hard to answer to her parents."
Juhua nodded. "That’s true. Everyone’s reasonable when things are fine, but if something goes wrong, I’m afraid they’d take their anger out on others. Last time, when Meizi was bitten by a snake, I was so scared. I was worried that Gou Dan’s mother would blame me since I was the one who first called them to go up the mountain to pick bamboo shoots. Thankfully, everything turned out okay."
Hearing this, Zhang Huai turned his head and reminded her, "You need to be more careful from now on. It’s fine when you girls are doing needlework or other things together, but for going up the mountain, it’s better to ask a family member to come along. Even if you don’t get bitten by a snake, if you trip and fall, it’ll still be an awkward situation. If her parents get angry and say a few harsh words, you won’t be able to take it."
Juhua nodded in understanding.
They crossed the grassy field and entered the woods again, but this time they were heading downhill.
Zhang Huai, walking in front, suddenly stopped. He said with delight, "There’s wood ear fungus here. Whoa! And quite a lot of it."
As soon as Juhua heard this, she quickly let go of Qingmu’s hand and ran over to look. An old, dead oak tree had fallen in the forest. Its bark was swollen from the rain, and clusters of dark red wood ear fungus grew on its trunk.
She said cheerfully to Zhang Huai, "This tree can grow wood ear fungus, that’s great! If we plant more oak trees in the future, we can just chop down the old ones and grow fungus on them!"
Hearing this, Zhang Huai glanced at Qingmu and suddenly burst out laughing. Qingmu also watched Juhua with a smile.
Juhua asked, bewildered, "What? Did I say something wrong? If the tree can grow fungus on its own, then we can definitely cultivate it. We’d just have to experiment to figure out how. How do you think this stuff grows, anyway?"
Qingmu didn’t answer her question directly. Instead, he explained to her, "Huai Zi is laughing because every time you see something, you want to plant it. Whenever you find something new, you immediately think about how to grow it."
Juhua finally understood. Thinking about it, she realized it was true, and she couldn’t help but laugh as well.
When he finished laughing, Zhang Huai said enthusiastically, "Juhua’s right, though. That’s exactly how it works. We won’t wait to try later. Let’s just get this log back home today and study it. Given enough time, we’re bound to figure out the trick to it."
Qingmu circled the log and said to Zhang Huai, "This thing isn’t light. It’ll take both of us to carry it back. Let’s go down the mountain first, drop the creels off at home, and then come back for it."
Juhua hurried forward to pick the fungus, saying, "Let’s pick this wood ear first, or it’ll be hard for you to carry the log. It might get scraped off on branches while you’re carrying it."
Hearing this, Qingmu and Zhang Huai helped her peel the wood ear fungus off the log. They gathered over a jin of it.
Zhang Huai scanned the surroundings, memorized the location, and then said to Qingmu and Juhua, "Let’s go!"
On their way down the mountain, they took a different path. Even though they weren’t deliberately looking for mushrooms, they still found quite a few. Gradually, all the Lanzi and creels they had brought were filled. So, Zhang Huai took off his outer shirt and wrapped up some more.
As they were walking, they heard people talking in Lin Zi ahead, but they couldn’t see anyone.
Juhua tilted her head to listen for a moment. Filtering out the sound of the wind and birds in the woods, she recognized Mrs. Yang’s voice and said to the two men, "It’s Mom and Aunt Zhang."
Then she called out loudly, "Mom!"
The group pushed aside branches and quickened their pace. When they got closer, they saw it was indeed Mrs. Yang and He. They were wandering around, chatting while scanning the ground under the trees for mushrooms.
When Mrs. Yang saw them coming down, she smiled at He and said, "They’re certainly quick. Look, they’ve already filled their creels."
He looked cheerfully at the mushrooms piled high in Zhang Huai’s Lanzi. Seeing he was also carrying a bundle in his hand, she laughed. "What a haul! We’ve never picked this many in past years. Oh! And you even found wood ear fungus? You guys really know where to look."
Zhang Huai told her that there was a dead tree up the mountain with a lot of wood ear growing on it, and that they were planning to carry the log home.
As they were talking, Juhua started to feel a bit hungry. She pulled up some tender cogongrass shoots, peeled off the outer layer, and ate the soft core inside. "Let’s hurry home, I’m getting hungry," she said to the others. "We can cook some mushrooms for lunch. Oh! Just talking about it is making me even hungrier."
Her words made everyone laugh.
He said, "Juhua’s making my mouth water, too. Huai Zi, let’s go home and slaughter a rooster to cook with these mushrooms. It’s not like the roosters lay eggs anyway, keeping them is just a waste of feed. And with too many roosters, they just fight."
She was finally no longer too reluctant to even slaughter a single chicken. Not to mention last year’s harvest, they were raising more chickens this year than ever before. Killing one occasionally to satisfy the children’s cravings was a parent’s greatest joy.
Zhang Huai nodded, smacking his lips. "We’d better hurry then," he said. "Mom, what you said is making my mouth water."
They chatted and laughed all the way down the mountain. As she walked, Juhua plucked some thorny stems from a briar patch, peeled them, and ate them.
Seeing this, Mrs. Yang laughed. "You must be starving."
Juhua quickly said, "No, it’s not that. These stems are sweet and tasty. Try one, Mom, if you don’t believe me."
Mrs. Yang laughed. "I don’t need to. I can’t tell you how many of those I ate when I was little. Back when I was cutting pig feed, I ate everything—cogongrass cores, thorny stems, dug up ’chicken legs’... you name it."
Hearing this, He chimed in, "Didn’t we all grow up the same way? We’ve all done those things. Back at my parents’ home, there were lots of wild berries. Every time I went out with Huai Zi’s third and fourth maternal uncles, I’d always pick one or two jin."