Wild vegetables in spring

Text/Xue Liquan

Spring came quietly. After a winter's dormancy, the earth happily opened its sleepy eyes. Under the nourishment of the spring rain, the wheat seedlings turned green, the trees sprouted, and the wild vegetables and grass in the field scrambled to stick their heads out and painted the earth green. Looking around, there are vibrant scenes everywhere.

When I was a child, every year after the Spring Festival, my family would buy back two newly weaned piglets. I like pigs from the bottom of my heart. At this time, my mother would encourage me to say, "If you like, dig wild vegetables and feed it every day, and it will grow up soon." I am naturally very happy about the tasks assigned by my mother. I changed the habit of being lazy in bed. Every day at dawn, I turn over and get up, carrying a basket to dig wild vegetables in the field.

In early spring, the spring is chilly, which is the season when "the grass seems to be near, but it is not". I carefully searched for wild vegetables on the grass and under the protection of the morning sun. These early spring wild vegetables, such as shepherd's purse and bitter vegetables, which grow in warm environment, have been drilled out of the ground, and I can dig one or two in half a day. When I got home, my mother chopped up the wild vegetables and mixed them in the feed to feed the piglets. Piglets really grow fast after eating such delicious fresh wild vegetables. As the pig grows up, its food intake is also increasing. In addition, the novelty has passed, and the picking of wild vegetables has not become as beautiful as originally imagined, and it has become a task that has to be completed.

As the weather gets warmer, there are more and more varieties of wild vegetables suitable for raising pigs. There are seventy-seven hairs growing in the ground, and the leaves are wide and covered with burrs. Be very careful when planing, otherwise the burr will easily prick your hand. Seventy-seven hairs can also stop bleeding and reduce swelling. Occasionally there will be bleeding wounds. Rub it, squeeze the seven or eight hairs, and the juice will drip into the wound, and the bleeding will stop immediately. It's amazing. Gray vegetables grow in fields, roadsides and near houses, and their stems are upright, thick, angular and green or purple; Pink grows by rivers and wet places. Wide leaves are red and green with big black spots in the middle. Those with the same shape and no black spots in the middle of the leaves are poisonous and pigs can't eat them. Crouching donkeys grow in low-lying places with flat and wide leaves, which is a good wild vegetable for pigs. Mazar-e (Portulaca oleracea L.) has plump meat, creeping stems, scattered on the ground, light green or dark red branches and flat and thick leaves. Cabbage leaves are big, fat and green, and most of them grow on fertile land; Shancai grows in Shan Ye and cliffs, and likes to grow in clumps. It is also a variety that people like to eat. Gouqi head is the tender head of wild Lycium barbarum in spring, which grows on the edge of the garden or on the ridge of the field. ...

There are more than a dozen wild vegetables eaten by pigs in spring, but because every family raises pigs, everyone digs wild vegetables, and there are no wild vegetables in front of and behind the village. In the distant ravines, fields, ridges and dry reservoirs, I left my wild vegetables everywhere.

In order to get more wild vegetables, sometimes you have to take some risks. My hometown is a small mountain village. There are ravines around the village, and mountain vegetables like to grow on cliffs. Because of the dangerous terrain, most people can't reach it, and the mountain vegetables are flourishing and gratifying. Whenever I see it, I will be like Spider-Man who picks mountain products in the mountains, except that he has a rope tied around his waist. I'm climbing branches with both hands and hanging baskets on my belt, facing the same risks in rolling in the deep. When I put a lot of mountain vegetables on the cliff,

My primary school is in the village. I remember one noon in the second grade of primary school, I took advantage of more than an hour's lunch break, carrying a basket alone, and soon came to a wheat field bordering the neighboring village. At that time, it was still the production team period, and it was not allowed to dig wild vegetables in the wheat field. Usually, someone is watching the slope. At noon that day, maybe the slope keeper went home for dinner, and no one was in charge of the wheat field. The more I walk into the wheat field, the more excited I am. The ridges are covered with tender and fat gray vegetables, and the number is unprecedented. I spit the gray vegetables into the basket at a breakneck speed. When the basket was almost full of gray vegetables, I suddenly heard someone shout, "put the basket down!" " "I suddenly looked up and saw a middle-aged man standing only two or three meters away from me, with a puzzled expression on his face and combative. I picked up the basket and ran, followed by middle-aged people. I hurried home along the ridge, always keeping a distance of five to ten meters from the middle-aged man. The wheat field is two or three miles away from our village. Exhausted, I barely ran to the village entrance, and the middle-aged man stopped chasing. At this time, I looked at the basket. Most of the gray vegetables in it were knocked off during running, leaving only a little bottom of the basket, which made me feel distressed. Fortunately, I was not caught by a middle-aged man, so as not to delay the afternoon class.

I was born in the 1960s, and I was lucky to escape the natural disaster for three years. When I was a child, I seldom ate wild vegetables at home, but when I picked wild vegetables in spring, I often had the experience of eating wild vegetables raw, which was full of fun to recall.

I like to eat thief garlic (wild garlic) best in spring. The stems and leaves of garlic are slender, hollow, triangular or semi-cylindrical, and the roots are spherical and grow in pieces. Dig out the garlic at the bottom with a shovel, rinse it in the running water of the river, and eat it with the stems and leaves, which smells like new garlic. Dripping sticks (cat teeth) are also a kind of treasure that you like to eat in spring. This is just the tender tip of thatch. Take it out, peel off several layers of foreskin wrapped outside, take out the inner core as white as cotton candy and chew it directly in your mouth. It tastes sweet and delicious. The time to eat the drip stick is very short. After the first day or two, the inner core becomes hard, chews like forage and loses its edible value. Sloppy claws grow on hillsides or thatched roofs, similar to the current "fleshy" ornamental bonsai. The leaves are juicy and fleshy, and when chewed in the mouth, they feel sour and sweet, refreshing and delicious. I don't know the name of this book. Its roots are as thick as fingers. The earth has just thawed, and the chickens have sprouted gray buds. At this time, it tastes best. Dig out the root with a shovel, peel off the thick epidermis, expose the inner layer like radish pulp, and take a bite. Crispy, sweet and refreshing This is an unforgettable spring.

19 years old, went out to study, left his hometown, and bid farewell to his hometown wild vegetables for a long time. Until many years later, I have settled down in this city. Every spring, I am still excited to see the squares, parks and buildings in the city covered with green wild vegetables, and I often have the impulse to gouge them out.

My lover is from my hometown. I had a similar life experience when I was a child, perhaps it was a nostalgic complex, perhaps it was a nature of advocating nature. My lover likes picking wild vegetables. With the expansion of the city, there are no fields around the city. Every early spring, my lover always drags me to dig vegetables in the outer suburbs more than 30 kilometers away. That place is endless fields, green mountains and green waters, and there is no environmental pollution. The first crop of shepherd's purse has quickly drilled out of the ground and scattered on fields and hillsides. I always look around and enjoy the natural scenery in spring, followed by shepherd's purse. My lover, however, is different from me. She concentrated on planing everywhere, which was extremely efficient and gained a lot in half a day. When I got home, I chose to wash shepherd's purse. I like shepherd's purse tofu best, and my wife likes shepherd's purse pork dumplings. Half a day's harvest can always kill two birds with one stone, get what you need and enjoy the gift of spring.

After the weather turned warmer, my lover began to pick the mountain vegetables, and the first mountain vegetables were fresh and tender. After returning home, blanch the selected wild vegetables in boiling water, then soak them in cold water, drain the water, cut them into fine powder, add cooked peanuts and bean paste and mix well. This wild vegetable is my mother's favorite. Every spring, the wild vegetables in our family flow back from our small home in the city to the dining table of rural mothers.

Time has passed, and wild vegetables have quietly sprouted on the earth as always. In the famine years in history, every spring, crops and wild vegetables that are green and yellow have become people's hopes for saving lives; When the year is good, it will become a delicious food for many livestock and poultry to gain weight; Nowadays, life is rich, and wild vegetables are still treasures on people's tables. Eating them will make them healthy and affectionate.

When winter goes and spring comes, the quality of wild vegetables is always the same. Whenever spring returns to the earth, I look at the spring wild vegetables growing everywhere, and I will have infinite awe of them. ...

About the author: Xue Liquan, a native of Huangdao District, Qingdao, is a member of Qingdao Writers Association. He likes to record his life in words, as well as travel, photography and hiking. He has published many essays in Qilu Evening News, Qilu Evening News, Qilu One Point, Qingdao Daily and Qingdao Evening News.

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