Winter is coming.

The leaves of the jujube tree at Grandpa Hao's door have almost fallen out. The leaves of the jujube trees at the door of every house have almost fallen off. The trees on the nearby hills are yellow. At the foot of the mountain, the long leaves of the bamao are dried up and turned white, and only a little green remains at the roots, revealing its tenacious vitality. The young leaves that had regrown from the fields at the door were eaten up by the cows.

At this time, it is time to go up the mountain to herd cattle.

On weekends, the adults always plan to tell us to herd the cattle.

Herding mountain cattle in winter is different from herding cattle in summer. In the summer, cattle herding is always carried out in the morning and afternoon, and it is not necessary in the morning, but in winter it is a whole day for the cattle. However, it is better to have one thing, that is, you don't need to rush. After breakfast, it was eight or nine o'clock, and the sun had already reached its temperature, so I rode the oxen up the mountain slowly. When they got to the mountain, they let the cattle go, but they were idle.

The older ones were busy picking up dry branches, planning to bring a bundle of firewood back when they returned in the evening.

That's a good bull riding technique. Hang the firewood horizontally on the back of the ox, in front of where you are sitting, and you ride on the back of the ox, holding the firewood with one hand and pulling the ox rope with the other. The flat road is not worth mentioning, the problem is that it is up and down the mountain, oblique, and it is difficult to grasp.

If you go up the hill too steeply, you won't be able to grasp it, and you may slide to the butt of the cow, so that it will slide to the ground all at once. You sit on the ground with your buttocks, and the firewood also slides down and weighs on you, do you say miserable?

If you go down the mountain, it is too oblique, and the person leans forward, and can't grasp it, so he slides straight to the neck of the cow, and stands in front of the horns of the ox, and he can't go up or down. The cow is obedient, nothing is wrong, it is good; The cow has a big temper, and you make it uncomfortable for it, and it raises its head and picks you in the air, and that's really miserable. It's scary to think about.

We've all seen this before.

None of our parents need us to collect firewood. We just need to be able to drive the cattle up the hill and then we can drive the cattle back to the pen.

In our free time, we play pebbles (a game of skill in which we pick five pebbles of the same size, throw one pebble upward, and then immediately pick up the remaining pebbles on the ground either one at a time or two at a time, and catch the pebbles when they fall. The higher the level, the more difficult it is).

Tired of playing with stones, we moved on to "Jumping the Room".

When we got tired of "jumping room", we went to pick up the pine balls. The skin of the pine resin balls that fell to the ground was already cracked, giving off a faint aroma of pine resin. Fortunately, there is no stickiness at all. We held it in our hands and raced to see who threw the farthest. Don't use it to hit people, hit it and get a headache to death.

The happiest thing is at noon, and if it's close to home, send a few home to eat, and then bring food to the rest of the shift. Everyone holds the rice bowl, tastes the dishes in your bowl, and tastes the dishes in his bowl, complementing each other, feeling extraordinarily fragrant and extraordinarily flavorful.

If it's far from home, it's even simpler, just bring a few sweet potatoes. The sweet potatoes hidden in the cellar are especially sweet when eaten raw. You can also eat it baked. A few people who can play together get together, pick up dry branches, light fires, and roast.

Needless to say, of course Hao Junqi followed me. She does what I do. The fire was not burning for a while, so I approached and blew on the fire with my mouth, and the smoke was tearful, and I couldn't bear it, so I blew it again, and as a result, everyone "cried sadly".

But anyway, the sweet potatoes are finally roasted. The skin is slightly burnt, fragrant, broken open, smelled with your nose, the aroma is refreshing. I had a great time.

……

Winter in the countryside is lonely, even deadly. The old man sat curled up in the sun with a torch to keep warm, motionless, like a sculpture.

Children like us have never had winter, and we don't know what loneliness is, we have a way to have fun.

As long as it is sunny for ten days and a half months, look, a few fields by the creek will become our sports field (who called Yongtai Primary School does not even have a playground, just to make up for this shortcoming). The soil in the field was dry, but it was still a little slippery to run, but that didn't dampen our enthusiasm. It doesn't matter if we run, frolic on it, wrestle, fall down, it doesn't hurt anyway.

The most fun is the high jump, draw three bitter bamboo sticks from the fence by the creek, two of them with branches are inserted in the field to make a shelf, and the other one is a crossbar to stand on the two bamboo sticks, and then everyone is lined up in a row, trotting forward and jumping, one after another. If someone jumps over and falls to the ground and doesn't leave in time, the follow-up people will make a little bad and don't avoid it, and they may be crushed into a pile.

In this case, Hao Junqi will always run to the side, we don't care, the picture is lively. It's useless to cry dad and call mother who is crushed at the bottom.

After jumping a round, raise the height of the bar and jump again. Then go up again. There are a lot of people who have been eliminated. The champion was decided.

As the sun sets, the smoke fills the floor, and it's time to go home. Our trousers were all sticky and muddy, and we went home and waited for our mother to nag us up.

Sometimes we also go to the "kiln to close the charcoal".

It was also a sunny day, one afternoon, of course. The sun is warm on the body. It was quiet and lonely in the field, and there was hardly a person to be seen. The flow in the ditch has long been cut off.

We found a ridge with a certain height, dug a hole in the wall of the ridge about ten centimeters from the top, that is, the so-called kiln, and then made a small hole at the top to make a chimney. Making a chimney is a technical job. If the force is too strong, the whole top will collapse, and the force is too light, and the small round hole will not know when it will be opened. The key is that the top is of the proper thickness.

Everything is ready, and we set out to "fire the kiln".

Hao Junqi had already picked up a handful of firewood, but it was all soybean pockets planted on the ridges of the fields - the roots of the main soybean trunk and the section five or six centimeters long above. The soybean pocket is not dry enough to burn. I had to find some other dry firewood.

We ran to the foot of a nearby hill to find it. I found some pine branches under a pine tree. Now that's good. The red pine needles are just a little bit. The flames are blazing. We were busy making the pine branches into small sections so that they could be put into the kiln for burning. The pine branch is so dry that it is very elastic when broken, and it bounces back and hurts our little hands.

The fire in the kiln burned more and more. Hao Junqi was happy. Smoke came up from the small round hole. It's really a success.

We burned a fire. The temperature of the fire bakes our faces piping hot.

When the firewood we picked up was almost burned, we began to "close the charcoal". We'll pick up everything that hasn't burned out yet. There was a pile of fiery embers left in the kiln. Hao Junqi felt like she stepped aside, and I pulled out my little one and poured it on the embers. You hear the clang. Then dust flew up. The ashes were all extinguished, leaving behind clumps of black coal. "Closing the charcoal" was a success.

Hao Junqi came back to me. She suddenly smiled.

"What are you laughing at?" I'm baffled.

Hao Junqi smiled even more happily. She pointed to my face, "It's as black as Bao Gong." ”

"Oh." I unconsciously touched my face with my hand.

Hao Junqi smiled even more happily.

"Didn't you erase it?" I was surprised

"Erase? It's darker. It's like a black man this time. Hao Junqi squatted on the ground with a smile.

I looked at my hands. The palms of the hands are black. I had a bad idea in my heart, and I wiped it on Hao Junqi's face while she wasn't paying attention.

"Oops." Hao Junqi shouted.

I ran away quickly. Hao Junqi caught up with a smile and shouted, "Bad brother, bad brother."

……

Since it's winter, you can't do without snow. It's best to have a light snowfall. The small east gate could not stand the heavy snow. My mother said that as long as it snowed for a day and a night, half of the people in the village would not be able to sleep. It's not excitement, it's worry. Worried that the thatched hut would be crushed by heavy snow.

I have the impression that the snow falls frequently in winter.

Unlike today's Jiangnan, children look forward to snow as much as they look forward to a holiday. Occasionally, there is a snowfall, and before the children have had enough, it all melts.

At that time, as long as the sky sank for a few days, the snow came. First it snowed. Xuezi fell on the big camphor tree in front of Grandpa Hao's door, and there was a loud noise. Yukiko descended through the thatched roof and danced on the dining table and basin. We rushed out of the house, looked up at the sky, stretched out our hands, and let Yukiko land on our faces and on the palms of our hands. After a while, the snow was falling. The snow was getting heavier and heavier, and in an instant there was confusion everywhere.

The next morning, we woke up earlier than our mother. The snow has stopped. There was white snow everywhere. On the ground, on the branches of the jujube trees, on the thatched roofs, and in the fields, there was a thick layer of snow. We take a closer look at our thatched hut, will it be crushed by the snow? We looked at it for a while, it didn't move, it should be fine, right? Anyway, that's the grown-ups, let's play our go.

We pulled out a small bamboo branch from the firewood chopped by Grandpa Hao, and together we stuck it deep into the ground, making it stand in the air, and then we were busy gluing snow balls of different sizes on the various branches of the bamboo branches. Hao Junqi got the red round fruit out of nowhere, pressed it on the snow ball, and looked good. The whole looks like a fruit tree, and the fruit tree is full of fruit.

Our faces and hands were red from the cold, and we hurriedly put them in our mouths and rubbed our little hands up and down, warm and warm.

"Kiki, look." I say.

"What?"

"Ahead."

Hao Junqi looked forward, and I took the opportunity to put my hands into her neck socket. Ah, it's so warm. Hao Junqi shouted. I run.

Hao Junqi stood there, "No, no, no." ”

I returned to Hao Junqi, "Come, come." ”

Hao Junqi put her little hand into my neck. Ah, the ice! But I let it freeze. Hao Junqi is not a rude person, so she won't keep freezing me.