My brother quickly ran to the workshop and called my father back. My father's colleagues heard that my mother had food poisoning and also ran to see. They said that the locals called this kind of taro-like plant "wild taro" or "big taro", but it was completely different from taro. It was very toxic and would be life-threatening if people ate it. When we heard that there would be a life-threatening situation, we were extremely afraid. We wanted to send Mother to the hospital, but Mother kept waving her hand and made a hoarse " Ow, ow " sound, indicating not to go to the hospital. We looked at Father. Father saw that there were no bite marks on the peeled wild taro on the ground. He guessed that Mother did not eat the wild taro. He asked Mother," Did you eat it?"”His mother shook her head, and his father asked again," You really didn't eat it?”Mother nodded repeatedly. Father told her not to send her to the hospital. The poisoning was probably not very serious. She would be fine after the poison passed.
After mother fell ill, the whole family was depressed. Mother was always busy with the family affairs. Although the family was poor, as long as we saw mother's smiling face and busy work, we would feel reassured. As soon as she passed away, the family immediately lost its joy. We brothers sat around mother. Nobody cooked; neither did we have the mood to cook. At 10 o'clock in the evening, mother felt better. She could speak again. Seeing all the family members with sad faces, she insisted on getting up from the bed. Shaking, she went to cook. As soon as Mother got better, the mood of the whole family suddenly brightened up. My brother and I followed behind and helped to make this delayed dinner.
I always remembered that wild taro almost poisoned my mother to death. When I was in my forties, I saw wild taro planted in a flower pot at a stall in the flower market. After asking the stall owner, I learned that the scientific name of wild taro was "Alocea amurensis". Later, I specially looked for flower books to verify that the leaves, stems, and roots of Alocea amurensis were poisonous, and the toxicity was relatively high. It paralyzed the oral cavity, esophagus, and digestive system. If the poisoning was serious, it would be life-threatening. According to the information, people in the southern provinces often got poisoned because they accidentally tasted the taro.
Fortunately, his mother only used her tongue to lick him. Otherwise, the consequences would have been unimaginable. Even so, his mother's mouth and esophagus also suffered from ulcers caused by the aloes toxin, and it was difficult for her to swallow for several months.
In fact, before my mother mistook the taro for taro, my brother and I had already discovered these taro on the gully's wet land when we were picking wild vegetables. However, we had never seen the people in the countryside who harvested pig grass dig up these taro, so we guessed that these taro must not be edible. However, the fat and thick stems and leaves of the taro and its thick roots are very attractive to hungry people. My brother and I have stood in front of the taro by the stream many times and wondered if it could be eaten. We always had the urge to taste it, but we never put this impulse into action. Otherwise, it would not be my mother but my brother who would be poisoned.
After my family came to the mine, the mining site recruited a large number of farmers from Anhui, Jiangsu, and other provinces to work as miners. The so-called mining was actually blasting rocks, but it was copper ore, not stones used to build roads. As long as one could swing a sledgehammer to hit steel drills (fire explosives in the cannon hole), it was fine. Whether one had culture or skill was not important. It was fine as long as one had strength.
These farmers from Anhui and Jiangsu who escaped from famine were the same as my family. They all settled down in the mine with their children. The new arrivals also faced the same fate as my family when they first arrived. There was no food supply and they had to rely on themselves to obtain food.
The arrival of these people caused some changes in my father's way of making a living. Once they arrived at the mine, they would find a place to open up wasteland and plant vegetables and sweet potatoes. My father, who had always been dominated by the inherent concept of trading his skills for food, finally followed them to open up wasteland and plant vegetables.
In the spring of the second year after we came to the mine, our family also had our own vegetable field. Some people gave us some Shanghai green vegetable seeds. When we grew old, we knew that we were planting rape. No matter how much, we ate the rape moss as if it were vegetables. If it were now, the rape moss was a good vegetable.
Mother, who had never done farm work, bought potato seedlings from the farmers, planted more than ten rows of sweet potatoes, planted a row of broad beans, and someone gave us some hollow vegetable seeds. Mother learned to raise hollow vegetable seedlings and put up a shelf on the head of the vegetable field to plant loofah. Every day after school, we brothers no longer went to pick wild vegetables, but to work in the vegetable field.
There was a middle-level cadre in the mine. His family was from Sichuan. His pumpkin planting skills were really first-class. The pumpkin he planted always bore fruit earlier than the pumpkin planted by the people next to him. Moreover, the pumpkin seedlings bore one after another, four or five in a row, all of which grew very big.
He saw that I was interested in his pumpkin planting technique, so he took the initiative to teach me his experience of growing early, more, and bigger melons without reservation. He told me to dig a pit three feet wide and two feet deep for pumpkin planting. The pit should be filled with garbage fertilizer and covered with humus soil. Pumpkin seedlings should be selected with large leaves. This way, they will be easy to survive and grow quickly after survival. When the pumpkin seedlings grow to about one meter long, the head of the pumpkin seedlings should be removed to encourage the melon seedlings to grow branches. Limit the main seedlings to only grow three branches. When female flower buds appear on the branches, the tip of the branch seedlings should be removed, and the excessive male flower buds on the branch should be removed. Only two branches should be kept. The nutrients were concentrated on the female flower buds to promote their rapid growth and flowering. The female flower buds bloomed in the early morning. The male flowers that bloomed were picked and artificially pollinated the female flowers that were blooming. The female flowers needed to be pollinated for two days to ensure the success of the female flowers.
Under his guidance, I received good results and truly learned the high-yield pumpkin planting techniques. According to the method he taught, a small pumpkin seedling could produce three or four large pumpkins at the same time. In one growth period, more than ten large pumpkins could be harvested from a pumpkin seedling. Not only did they harvest pumpkin fruits, but they also felt extremely happy because they had learned this technique. Even now, the scene of learning how to grow pumpkin in his youth was still engraved in his heart.
His father was a very hardworking person in everything he did. He would go to the vegetable field after work and tidy up the vegetable field. There was not a single weed. When he saw cow dung on the road, he would bring it into the vegetable field and cover the sweet potato ridges. When others saw it, they would tell him that cow dung had no fertility and was useless. His father did not care so much and still picked it up and covered the sweet potato fields as usual. As a result, the sweet potato seedlings grew crazily. The stems and leaves grew fat and tender. It was just nice to eat at home. He did not care if it would affect the sweet potato seedlings. He would pick sweet potato leaves every day and eat them as vegetables. To a certain extent, it alleviated the hunger of the whole family.
I didn't expect the cow dung to loosen the soil of the sweet potato ridge, which was beneficial to the growth of the sweet potatoes. When other people's sweet potatoes hadn't grown much, the soil on my sweet potato ridge had large cracks. This was the ground that was opened up after the sweet potatoes grew up. Before the sweet potatoes could grow up, Mother had us pick the big cracks and dig out the sweet potatoes to cook.
When I dug up the sweet potatoes grown in my vegetable field, I couldn't help but think of the half of the sweet potato that was discarded by others on the roadside last winter. At that time, we didn't have any food supply and had to rely on wild vegetables to make a living. It was also the season when the sweet potatoes were harvested. I walked along the main road leading to the school headquarters. When I was about to reach the gate of the school headquarters, I suddenly saw a leftover raw sweet potato thrown there by the roadside. I was ecstatic. My feet seemed to be attracted by a magnet. I stood there and stared at the half of the sweet potato. The place where the sweet potato was bitten by the teeth was a little dry. It might have been thrown here for a day or two.
At this moment, other than this half of the sweet potato, my mind was completely blank. I couldn't help but walk towards the half of the sweet potato. Just as I was about to bend down to pick up the sweet potato, I suddenly heard a voice calling out to me from behind. I turned around and my heart almost jumped out of my chest. I actually didn't know that Yi Fan, the girl in my class, had been following behind me. She was the one who called out to me just now. Her call was like a spell that froze my bent body there. It was as if my body had been pierced by countless red-hot needles. A burning sensation appeared on his face, his eyes seemed to be filled with blood, and Yi Fan had also turned red.
"What are you doing?" Yi Fan asked. I opened my mouth and was tongue-tied. I didn't know how to answer. I looked at the half piece of sweet potato by my feet and replied insincerely," I tied my shoelaces."”A rhetorical question pushed me into the abyss again. I'm wearing cloth shoes made by my mother. How can I tie my shoelaces? My waist bent even lower. My hand that was tying my shoelaces almost touched the half of the sweet potato. Heavens, this damn sweet potato, why didn't it roll to the side? Yi Fan must have seen it. Damn it, how could she see me picking up sweet potatoes by the roadside to eat? Moreover, I don't know who ate the leftovers. If she told the whole class about the half of the sweet potato that was thrown into the ditch by the roadside, wouldn't that be the same as hanging me with a rope?
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