There are two grapefruit trees in front of the gate of the nunnery, near a steep slope, growing on the edge of a bamboo forest. One left and one right are next to each other, the old dragon clock, the blue trunk, so thick that one person can't hold it, and I can't guess how old the tree is.

Two grapefruit trees, growing luxuriantly, every Mid-Autumn season, will be hung full of yellow, orange and orange pomelo, it is very beautiful, but it is difficult to wait until the pomelo is ripe, when it is still green, it is picked up.

The grapefruit trees are tall and verdant, and they have always been vigorous, narrating the prosperity of the incense in the past of the nunnery, and tenaciously expressing a glorious memory, but this tenacity does not last long, and finally they are full of caterpillars, lost their vitality in the erosion of caterpillars, and finally withers and dies, and even disappears without leaving a trace.

Yellow, orange, orange, orange grapefruit, see more and eat less, it seems that I have not eaten it in my memory, they are not only remembered by children, but also by adults, there are few fruits in the countryside, usually not until they are fully ripe, there is no more.

When I was a child, I accidentally ate peaches and plums, and I would leave the kernel and bury them carefully in the soil, hoping that it would take root and sprout and grow fruits, but it rarely grown, and even if it grows, it will not produce decent fruits.

Later, I learned that fruit trees still have to be grafted, and they can't grow without grafting, no wonder there are few fruit trees in rural areas, probably because they don't know how to graft and don't master this technology, so they can't plant fruit trees.

The grapefruit tree is very weak in disease resistance, and the bark and leaves deposited by the deep green are often prone to parasitic insects. When the trunk is bitten by insects, it will shed milky white resin, which will solidify and turn into transparent amber, which will accumulate over the years, layer upon layer, and hang all over the trunk.

Amber is crystal clear and very beautiful, and we often break it down and admire it as a curiosity. According to my father, amber was often wrapped in small insects, and we looked for it, but we didn't find it anywhere.

Amber can play a lubricating role, when rural women take the soles of their shoes, they pull the twine of the sole of the shoe, pull it through the amber forcefully, bring the amber grease, and then penetrate the twine into the sole, it is particularly labor-saving.

Cutting cloth to sew clothes will leave a lot of leftovers, and the leftovers of coarse cloth are very suitable for making soles. The leftovers are piled together, glued together with rice, and then tightened with twine thread to make the sole.

The twine is taken from storage hemp and is particularly tough. Hemp is a large-leaved herbaceous plant, taller than an adult, with a thumb-thick stem and thick, slender epidermal fibers. When it grows, cut it down and tie it, find a ditch with water nearby, soak it for a while, and after the epidermis decays, the fibers will disperse.

The rod is useless and kept for firewood, and the rotten skin is peeled off and cleaned, and twine and rope can be made. Twine is used to hold the soles of shoes, sew clothes, hemp rope is used for many purposes, to make farm tools, to make furniture, to tie items, to serve as handles, and so on.

In addition to hemp rope, there is also a stronger type of brown rope, which is made of brown silk growing on palm trees. The palm tree is a very common plant in Jiangnan, with layers of dark brown silk on the trunk, which is thicker than the mane of a horse, and is particularly tough.

The brown silk is peeled off layer by layer, and the silk is wound up with a special tool to make a brown rope, and the thick brown rope is pulled continuously by several cows, and the reins of the cow are used for the brown rope. The use of the brown rope is even greater, and it can be seen everywhere when making agricultural tools and working in the fields.

The leaves of the palm tree grow peculiarly, from the brown silk of the trunk, grow a thick branch, the sides are toothed, unusually tough, the tip of the branch is fan-shaped to divide the leaves, the leaves are connected together, stretch outward, and finally split into slender strips of palm leaves.

The palm leaves are soft and tough, picked together with the branches, cut into a heart shape according to the shape, wrapped in coarse cloth outside, sewn into the edge with hemp rope, it is a well-made pu fan, which is cool in midsummer, repells mosquitoes, and the fan is on fire, and every household in the mountains has it.

The brown silk on the trunk of the tree is still the best material for making the cloth, which is generally collected directly, sewn together piece by piece with hemp rope from top to bottom in order, and made into a cloak shape, which is a complete cloth.

Hats are the standard equipment for people in the mountains to work in the field on rainy days, so they are made from simple to make, light and strong, and no rain gear can replace them before plastic film is popular.

The hemp rope is light, the brown rope is thick, and each has its own purpose, becoming an indispensable thing for farmers. In that era, in my memory, it seemed that there would be a few tall palm trees near every household, and one or two acres of hemp fields would be planted, just to solve the needs of production and life.

In the era of shortage of materials and insufficient productivity, plastic snakeskin bags have not yet appeared, and the shipment of rice or rice, in addition to baskets, is sacks.

Therefore, the state will also buy hemp silk to produce sacks, and my family has planted stored hemp, and in addition to household use, it should have also been sold to the state, because I have planted a lot of it in my memory, and I have planted it for many years.

I have two pieces of amber at home, and I don't know where my parents got them, I don't know how many years they have gone through, I don't know how many soles I have accepted, and after the twine has been pulled, there are dense deep grooves left on them.

It is very laborious to make the sole, the coarse cloth used to make the sole does not know how many layers are padded, so the sole is called "mille-feuille bottom", and even the needle is difficult to penetrate, and the strength of the hand alone is not enough, so when the rural women take the sole, it is common to put an iron ring on the thumb, and the small holes deliberately made on the iron ring are used to push the needle through the sole, so it is called "thimble" by the rural people.

The thicker and more comfortable the sole, the denser the twine, the stronger and more durable, a pair of soles do not know how many stitches to sew, how many times to strangle, the stitches are fine, one by one next to each other, and I don't know how much time it takes, how much it contains.

There is a lot of work in rural areas, so it is common for women to seize the drip time, with "thimbles" on their thumbs, special sewing plates on their knees, and stitches on the soles of their shoes.

In addition to the sole, hemp rope can also be used to sew insoles, and the principle of production is the same as that of the sole, but it is much thinner than the sole. The purpose of the insole is to protect the sock, so it is also called "sock sole".

The sewing of the insoles is more exquisite, and the ingenious peasant women will embroider exquisite patterns on it, and such insoles are often given to the lover as a love object by an unmarried girl.