The drought has resolved and everything is back to normal. Hu Kehao and He Xin returned to their hometown in Huaishu Village, Hu Kehao only told his parents that they had returned from a trip, and did not say anything about the Qinglongtan Water Palace, so as not to worry them. The drought was caused by the indiscriminate use of pesticides and fertilizers by farmers in nearby towns and villages to pollute the environment of Qinglongtan, and he really did not know how to deal with the root cause.

At the end of July, according to the requirements of U City University of Technology, new teachers, including counselors, should go to U City Normal University to participate in pre-job training. The training subjects include "Introduction to Policies and Regulations of Colleges and Universities", "Higher Education", "Psychology of Higher Education", "Professional Ethics of Teachers in Colleges and Universities" and other courses. In Hu Kehao's impression, he can only become a teacher if he has studied at a normal university. Now he found that many of the teachers who participated in the training have obtained a doctorate degree in a certain major, and they are all graduates of non-normal colleges, and they are only full of knowledge, but have no knowledge and experience in education and teaching. For counselors, it is more important to learn educational psychology well, so that they can grasp the psychological dynamics of each student, and once students encounter problems, they should be dredged in time to ensure that students do not have accidents in their four-year study and life in college, and do not hurt others or be hurt by others.

According to He Xin, her family is in S County, her parents divorced when she was a child, and she followed her mother. My mother worked hard and devoted herself to her career, and now she has opened a clothing store, and the family's economic conditions are not bad. After her mother divorced, she tasted the bitterness of the world, saw through the heat and coldness of the world, and was strict with her since she was a child, with a little less silent warmth, requiring her to be self-reliant and become a strong woman. He Xin knew that her mother had always loved her and cared for her, but her mother loved her differently, and she had never been close to her mother. After graduating from college, she wanted to rely on her own efforts to find a good job, and wanted to get out of her mother's control and spread her wings.

Hu Kehao attended the pre-job training and returned home. He wanted to go to school early, but thinking that his parents were busy with farm work, he planned to stay at home for a few more days to help his parents with some work. Now it's time to pick cotton. At more than four o'clock in the afternoon, Hu Kehao went to the field to pick up cotton under the scorching sun, and after picking up cotton, the sun was about to set. When they got home, they began to harvest cotton, and on this day they dried a total of four baskets of cotton. A basket is a rectangular board made of bamboo strips, on which things can be dried. I saw that the cotton had been soaked in the sun, fluffy, and like a white cloud in the sky. For farmers, when harvesting cotton, they most hope that the sun will come out of the sky, so that the color of cotton will be good. If it rains, the cotton will rot and blacken, and it will not be sold for a good price. On this day, they harvested a large basket of dried cotton, and pressed a large basket tightly. After harvesting the cotton, they reaped the corn that was drying in the sun. Hu Mu folded the mat from the ground and spread it out diagonally, and the corn seeds in the mat were piled together, and then the corn was collected into the basket, and Hu Kehao carried the corn into the house. After harvesting, they wrapped themselves in a mat together. The mat was not big or small, and Father Hu gently moved the beds into the house.

After dinner, the electricity suddenly went out, and they lit kerosene lamps, and in the dim kerosene lamps, Hu Kehao and his father twisted cotton together. Those who have done farm work should know that this cotton generally has four petals, and of course there are also three petals. It is best to twist the cotton that has been cracked in the soil by the sun, when the cotton shell is black, and the tip of the cotton shell is very tapered. This kind of cotton that is very cracked, the leaves that remain on the cotton peaches are very charred and brittle, and they easily adhere to the cotton, which is very annoying, and it is necessary to sort out these rotten leaves little by little. Some cotton peaches are yellow-green in color, with only a small crack and are also very easy to twist. The most difficult cotton to twist is not cracked at all, and some cannot be wrenched by hand, so it has to be stacked with feet or benches, or beaten with "wall lobates". This "wall loa" is just a large wooden block with a handle.

While Hu Kehao was twisting cotton, his mother was chopping pigweed, the red vine. In the evening, they eat noodles under the tip of the red lettuce, which is very tender and crispy, and can be eaten by blanching it in a pot a little. Under the dim kerosene light, the sound of "boom, boom, boom" came, this is Hu Mu chopping pigweed one by one. Their family feeds six pigs, and every day they have to make a lot of pigweed, and they have to cook a big iron pot. After cutting the pigweed, Hu Mu went to cut a large basket of red roots. They harvested the red weeds last year, and they haven't eaten them all in the summer. After cutting the red roots, Hu Mu put the red roots into the lower part of the large iron pot, loaded the red vines on top, and then added water to prepare to get up the next morning and boil them. When feeding pigs, the red vine can be fed raw, but the red vine must be boiled and raked. You don't know, the boiled red lotus is actually very delicious, much better than the red lotus boiled in white rice.

After Mother Hu finished some things about feeding pigs and cooking them, she came to accompany her family to twist cotton. It was already past eleven o'clock in the evening, midnight. Many of the others had finished twisting the cotton and went to sleep, but they were still working under the dim kerosene lamps. In the darkness of the night, the kerosene lamp flickered and flickered.

The next day, the family went to the street to catch the market, but they didn't catch a car, they all walked. There are a lot of people on the street, and there are many stalls, some selling clothes, some selling rat poison, some selling vegetables, and selling dog skin plasters. Hu Kehao saw a stall selling corn jelly. The jelly is golden, as well as bright red chili oil, and green green onions, which look very gluttonous. Hu Kehao and his parents ate a bowl together, and the more they ate, the more fragrant it became, the more spicy it became, and the more spicy it became, the more fragrant it became. After eating the cold noodles, they asked the boss to pour a bowl of boiled water.

There are more and more people eating jelly, and there are fewer and fewer seats. The boss stared at Hu Kehao a few times, meaning that he should hurry up and give up his seat, and the other guests would come to eat cold noodles. Hu Kehao hurriedly drank the boiling water and left the jelly stall with his parents. Tang Ao from Group 2 of Huaishu Village, he sold grain today, bought pig feed, passed by the cold powder stall and came to eat cold powder, saw Hu Kehao, and asked, "When are you going to work?" ”

"School is about to start, I'll go in a few days." Hu Kehao said.

"It's better to choose a day than to hit the day, are you free today? Go to my house to tutor and educate my youngest son Tang Ning, who never likes to study seriously. Tang Ao said.

On that day, Tang Ao took his son Tang Meng to Hu Kehao's house, and Hu Kehao just said in passing that he would go to his house when he was free in the future. I happened to meet Tang Meng again in the market today, so I agreed to go. He said to Tang Ao: "Let's go to the street again, and we'll go to your house later." You don't have to wait for me, I know your way home. ”

Hu Kehao was tired of walking on the street, bought some fruits, and came to Tang Ao's house in Group 2 of Huaishu Village alone. Tang Meng studied at home, but Tang Ning was not at home, saying that he went uphill to collect firewood. Tang Ning is good at rock climbing, tree climbing, digging birds' nests, playing slingshots, and likes to go uphill to collect firewood, which Tang Ao is accustomed to. By noon, Tang Ning had not returned, and Tang Ao stood in the courtyard and shouted loudly for Tang Ning to go home, but did not answer. There are people in the village who are working outside, and when it is time to eat, they usually open their throats and shout at home. Tang Ao shouted for a long time, but Tang Ning never answered. Tang Ao panicked and wanted to go out to find Tang Ning, Hu Kehao also went out with him, he thought that there were a lot of thorns and weeds on the slope, so he brought a horse grass sickle.

The hillside is lush with trees, and it is known that it is constantly chirping. The firewood collector picks up the dead branches of the paulownia tree, cypress tree, and acacia tree from the ground, and picks it up and burns it at home. Acacia trees have thorns on their dead branches, so be very careful when picking them up. Cypress branches carry oil, can be burned without being completely dried, and bacon can also be smoked with cypress in winter. It is the time for the tree to bear the seeds, so they are plucked and the peels at both ends are cut off, and the viscous juice is oozing, which can be used to dip things. When the paulownia grows old, it turns black like a walnut skin, and the fruit inside can be squeezed for oil, and the village used to light tung oil lamps, but there was no kerosene at that time. The old people in the village said that children who are not over 12 years old cannot play with Tongzi, otherwise they will become children's dolls - the meaning of early death.

When Hu Kehao was a child, he often went uphill to collect firewood and pigweed, and he was very experienced in walking on the sheep intestine trail on the slope. Tang Ao and Hu Kehao searched everywhere among the weeds and trees, and searched for all the places they could think of on the nearby hillside, but they still didn't find it. Tang Ao was especially afraid that Tang Ning would fall off the cliff and be injured.

They searched farther away and unknowingly came to Wangjiawan. Seeing a woman working in the red field, Tang Ao knew her, she was Wang Juan, the daughter of Wang Hong in Wangjiawan. He was turning over the red vines in the red lotus. Why turn the red vine? Because of the vigorous vitality of the red vine, each section of the scar is easy to take root when it encounters soil. If you don't turn it, after the pimple scar takes root, it will grow a small red root, although the red root is small, it absorbs the nutrients in the ground, and the red root of the taproot will not grow big. Breaking off its small roots is to let all the nutrients in the ground nourish the big red root of the taproot.

"Sister, have you ever seen a teenager collecting firewood?" Tang Ao asked.

"Nope. How can you let a little child go up the hill alone to collect firewood? Wang Juan's hands were covered with mud, and she rubbed her face with her hands from time to time, the mud and sweat were mixed together, and her face seemed to be smeared with a layer of yellow makeup.