What are the words flowers, trees, grass and clouds?

After leaving my hometown in northern Jiangsu for many years, I gradually reached middle age, which coincided with the late autumn season. I miss my hometown more and more and miss the autumn in northern Jiangsu.

Autumn in my hometown, in my childhood memory, when the cold of winter strikes, autumn will wither with the fallen leaves and gather into a kitchen (kitchen), leaving only sparse green wheat fields, dead leaves and lonely trunks and branches. Before that, the whole autumn was a process in which green leaves slowly turned yellow and withered, and dust fell with the autumn wind that was getting colder every day. It was a tragic time when the barren annual rings gradually faded, and it was also a sad time when a beautiful time quietly passed away.

Trees planted in roadside, fields and ditches are mostly Populus simonii, willow, paulownia, Robinia pseudoacacia and jujube, all of which are cheap and common. Growing fast, you can change money to supplement your family. With the process of urbanization, conifers, Metasequoia glyptostroboides and flowers used for greening and beautification are gradually increasing. In winter, the fields are green, lying on the ground, looking from a distance, there is only a faint log color, which I don't like or warm, and some are cold in the countryside. Children are not afraid of the cold and are chasing the hope brought by frolicking. Occasionally see blue, that is Maling Mountain, that is looking forward to visiting relatives and looking up at my sister-in-law's house. The mountains are covered with coniferous pines, which I feel sacred and my heart is full of curiosity and yearning.

The impression of childhood autumn, which occupies the most mental imprint, seems to be not beautiful. But on the contrary, the footprints from late autumn to winter are engraved in my heart, with the innocence of children, the call of my mother, the warmth of my old home and the nostalgia of my friends.

Of course, autumn is the harvest season. When the crops are ripe, adults are the busiest, scrambling to harvest and sow day and night. It is also the season when children are happiest and less controlled by adults; It is also a season when you can get many delicious foods by yourself without going through adults, which can generate many whimsy and create a new way of eating.

Let's cut into my autumn theme. After all, autumn is the season of harvest, joy, warmth, happiness and satisfaction, the season with the richest and ever-changing colors of crops and trees, the highest and coolest time in the sky and the richest time in a year. All kinds of fruits, such as pears, dates, radishes, green onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, peanuts and rice, are fragrant. Let's start with food.

The age I can clearly remember is the late 1970s and early 1980s, when I was seven or eight years old. At that time, China resumed the college entrance examination, the Cultural Revolution became a thing of the past, and the earth was rejuvenated. My hometown is surrounded by mountains and rivers, with streams flowing freely and clear water and green grass, but the rural people are still poor and the fields are still barren. My mother sewed me a beautiful cloth bag. 1980 in the early autumn, I finally had enough in the soil, was sent to school, and started my reading career. I am happy and carefree, and poverty is just a word for me when I was a child, because the full love of my parents and family and the true love of my brothers and sisters occupy my whole heart, and there is no room for poverty and pain.

Sweet potato land is my first clear childhood memory. Wheat yield is low, and white flour is hard to find; It should be to pray for satiety, high yield and pest resistance. Sweet potato is widely welcomed by parents and communes. As a result, the sky is full of fields, and the plots that fall in the corner. In the autumn season, at first glance, a ridge and a bed of sweet potato seedlings are crawling all over the world, everywhere in front of the house. I, a gentle and very sensible rhubarb dog, heard the movement of voles and soon disappeared into the ridges and ditches where sweet potato plants were flourishing.

Before and after the Mid-Autumn Festival, the air turned cold in the morning and evening, the dew was crystal clear, and the green forehead was wet. I knew it was time to harvest sweet potatoes. It's just that sweet potato seedlings are still growing wildly. It seems to be saying that it is still strong. "Man, can you dig slowly?"

Sweet potatoes are beginning to grow. My brothers and sisters and I gathered around the iron forks and claws of the adults, watching strings of sweet potatoes, big and small, sticking their heads out of the soft and shiny black soil, shaking their bones, jumping for joy, hugging or hugging, gathering in piles and playing one by one. Rhubarb wags its head and tail, sometimes running, sometimes jumping, rubbing people's trouser legs and skirts, and feeling the joy of harvest together.

The sun shines obliquely on the hard-working people from the western paradise, and the thin fathers' faces are full of dark light, tired and smiling. Short, old adobe houses are hidden among the sparse willows of green and yellow, and a few pieces of sorghum and corn stalks that have been harvested stand in the field. Mother and women began to slice sweet potatoes together and spread them on flat fresh soil to dry. The excavated soil has a faint fragrance, and with the milk of sweet potato, the air is filled with a slight sweetness.

This sweetness annoyed my desire and aroused my appetite. I shouted "roasted sweet potatoes" and "roasted sweet potatoes" with my friends ... My sisters went to collect firewood, and my brother pestered my father to make a stove, dig a hole and order fodder. At this moment, with the help of my mother and adults, I picked the sweet potatoes with moderate slender heads and buried them in the fire soil one by one. Everyone sat around the fire, and through the gap between work, they gradually sniffed out the attractive fragrance of baked sweet potatoes and suddenly became rich. Father and brothers poked the stewed food with branches, carefully and quickly held it in their hands, and judged which one was ripe and could be eaten.

Our children scrambled to reach out and catch the sweet potato, chasing and playing ... As a result, everyone's mouth, hands, cheeks, face and finally sleeves were more or less stained with dirt and mashed potatoes, which was ridiculous.

It was getting dark, the sun was setting on the western hills, and the straw houses and trees were blushing for a long time. The fields were covered with gold, and friends hurried home. Mother cooked several simple and delicious meals, and the world gradually became quiet and dim. Rhubarb paced up and down at the table, waiting. Sweet potato piles and potato chips sink into the darkness of the world with the night.

One year there was a bumper harvest of sweet potatoes, but other crops were reduced. So almost every family eats sweet potatoes, boiled potatoes, burned sweet potato porridge, baked sweet potato pancakes and steamed sweet potato rice every winter ... Finally, they eat too much, and they are afraid. If you don't digest it, your stomach will keep swelling and you will burp. I always avoid sweet potatoes.

After many years, sweet potato has become a coarse grain for adjustment, and proudly stepped onto the table of healthy eating for urbanites, which was expensive at one time.

Lake Rome is two miles south of my home. The lake is deep, clear and spiritual; The lake is boundless; The reeds are dense and endless; The fishing boat is small, such as floating; Fish fly on the peak and birds fly in the sky. According to legend, in the Heavenly Palace, the little dragon horse called naughtily, which disturbed the jade emperor's afternoon dream. The jade emperor was furious and wanted to kill the little dragon horse. The old dragon and horse interceded for him, but he was banished to the world, stuck in the mire and squeezed out a piece of water. After being preserved, the water gathered into a lake, named luoma lake, and the homonym has been passed down to this day, becoming the Roman Lake.

Luoma lake comes from Yimeng Mountain with water and rain, connecting the upstream Grand Canal. The water quality is natural and excellent, without any pollution source, and the aquatic products are rich and delicious. For a whole year, my childhood was closely linked to Lake Rome. Shrimp and crab are plentiful in autumn. Fish, shrimp, turtles and crabs can be found in ditches and ponds around 1980' s house at any time. However, rural people don't want these fresh waters, perhaps because they are short of oil and food and can't make special fragrance, or they are too used to it.

When we are free, we will run to the lake along the big weir in the west. The big weir is the main channel to irrigate farmland. Most of the crops of the production team in the southeast of the commune rely on two electric irrigation stations, which are pumped from the back river of Lake Rome for irrigation. Rolling clear water, humming cheerful waves, rushed to the fields of thousands of farmers in Qian Qian, Qian Qian, assiduously infiltrating the black or yellow soil, and all kinds of green seedlings made a sound of happy growth. We grew up with this sound.

Soon we ran to the lake, where a boatman was waiting for us. Taking a boat in luoma lake is somewhat timid and fearful for us children who are not familiar with water. However, driven by curiosity and competitiveness, the friends still crustily skin of head and boarded the wooden boat in the oblique wind blowing from the lake in early autumn. When the boatman swung his oars and the wooden boat rocked slightly to the far lake where water and sky were the same, a stream of red and sweet water vapor fainted head-on and lay prone in the cabin. We looked at the lake carefully, and the water waves made fine waves, leaving only a vast piece for the whole world. ...

Up to now, every time I go home, I have to go to the completed avenue around the lake, watch the sparkling luoma lake, listen to the tide lapping on the shore, and greedily swallow the breath of fresh home.

The spring breeze of reform and opening up has blown to my hometown. Production quotas has decided that each family will plant in different fields, and the days will get better every day. My Beihu Lake is divided into nearly 3 acres of farmland. In addition to growing wheat in winter, my father chooses to grow peanuts when he is busy in spring.

Peanuts? Thinking about it is great happiness. What kind of ocean of happiness should these 3 acres of peanuts be?

When I was young, peanuts were a rare luxury. Peanuts only grow in the loess mountain area north of Yaolian, about 7 or 8 miles away from home. Every year at the end of October and the beginning of November in the solar calendar, when the autumn harvest is about to plant wheat, my brother and sister and I always get up early, go to that mountain with baskets and pancakes, rummage through the soil that others have fished for many times, and look for peanuts that others may have missed. If you are lucky enough, you can catch half a bag (about 6, 7, 8 kilograms) a day if you find a place with few fishing times. More often, except for food, you only have three or two kilograms. At the end of the day, I was hungry and tired. I was thirsty and wanted to drink the spring water dug in the mud. When I was hungry, I wanted to chew some pancakes and weigh the spoils of my labor, but I always felt a little satisfied.

I clearly remember that in the first year of 3 mu peanut harvest, my father prepared bedding and materials early and set up a straw shed in the middle of the ground. The harvest season of peanuts happened to be the Mid-Autumn Festival that year. There are seven people in my family, two brothers, four sisters, my parents, my grandfather and rhubarb lying on my lap, having a special reunion festival in front of the straw shed in the peanut field. Before the bright moon, eating delicious moon cakes and cooking delicious peanuts in a big pot, listening to grandpa tell me that once upon a time, mom and dad were pulling their families and watching the silver peanut seedlings, and the whole earth was listening to our happiness. I have already buried my heart in that quiet and peaceful scene, which I will never forget. It lasted for a long time in Mika.

I still remember that there were two seedlings in the peanut field, so I went to visit them from time to time, counted a few melons, smelled the sound of ripe melons, and took them home, waiting for the whole family to cut them carefully, and the melons were fragrant and shared happiness together. I still remember the joy of sitting in the field and barbecuing when the soybeans are ripe. I still remember holding my breath in Catch Fish in Sesame Field. I still remember the thrill of finding sweet straw when the corn was about to mature.

There is a private plot in the east of the home, and autumn is full of joy: green onions, radishes, garlic peppers, tomatoes and leeks. Northerners love to eat raw food. They picked up pancakes and rolled green onions. Wash the radish and it will be crisp. Pepper and garlic are surprisingly spicy.

Maling Mountain is located on the north bank of the Roman Lake, next to my aunt's house. Pear trees and apple trees grow at the foot of the mountain. When autumn comes, the mountains are full of melodious fruit fragrance. We gathered at my aunt's house to collect onions and harvest corn. In my spare time, my uncle took us to pick pears, and the crisp and sweet yellow pears soon filled everyone's stomachs. About the scenery of Maling Mountain and more memories, leave it to a special chapter.

Suffering years are mostly beautiful memories, because of the protection of love. Autumn in northern Jiangsu, now every time I go home, it is the call of my wife and children, the expectation of my parents, and my deep attachment.