About ten days after the confinement period, Lin's father and mother came to visit, bringing with them small clothes, chickens, eggs, longevity noodles, red dates, longans and other food for the mother that they had prepared in advance.
They were not the first ones, and they were not in such a hurry. They finished their housework and prepared everything before coming.
Mother Lin smiled and held the child in her arms. "Fortunately, this is your third child. I hope you give birth quickly and everything is fine. I thought Adong would send you back after the New Year."
"He was thinking that in the spring, our family would start picking tea again, which would be too busy, so he didn't want to cause trouble for you. Besides, our location is remote, right by the beach, so it's convenient to get on the boat if anything happens. We can go to town or somewhere else to stay for a day or two before coming back."
Father Lin also nodded. "That's right. We were in the mountains for the entire last month. We went up the mountain before dawn at four in the morning and came back in the evening. There was no one to look after you when you were there."
"Let's not talk about this anymore. Just give birth."
"What's my cousin's name? She has so much flesh on her face, it seems like it's about to droop..." My eldest nephew Lin Guangyuan also came to play today, and he stretched his neck to watch.
Mother Lin glared at him in reproach, "You can't say that."
"Call me Ye Xiaoxi." Ye Chenghu shouted from the side.
"Call Xiaojiu!" Ye Chengyang shouted unwillingly.
Lin Xiuqing smiled and said, "The fortune teller said that she has everything she needs, so she can be named anything. Ah Dong said that the names of the younger ones all contain water, so Xiaoxi is fine. There are three of them in the family, and she is the ninth among her cousins. The younger ones all call her Xiaojiu."
Ninth sister, ninth sister, beautiful sister...
When Ye Yaodong heard some naughty boys calling her "Jiu Mei" a few days ago, the melody of this song came to his mind involuntarily, and he thought it was pretty good...
You can call me by any nickname.
"Now that you've given birth, who's going to take care of you? Your mother-in-law doesn't live with you anymore."
"She takes care of the laundry and cooking here during the day and goes home after dark. It's Ah Dong who gets up and does the work at night."
Mother Lin was surprised for a moment, and then she couldn't stop smiling, "Did Adong change his diaper? Haha, he's really getting better. He's worked so hard, he had to get up several times at night."
Father Lin: "Didn't he go out to sea at night?"
"No, now he goes to pull the trap every other day during the day and brings back some fish and shrimp to help me produce milk. I told him I could change his diaper myself, but he refused."
When Lin Xiuqing talked about this, her face was filled with happiness. She didn't expect that he could do this.
Although he was very reluctant to change her diaper every time, as soon as Xiaojiu cried, he would get up and touch her to see if she had peed or was hungry.
He had never been so attentive when he had his two sons.
"You're giving birth at a good time. You can eat seafood."
Looking at her daughter's fair and tender face, Lin Xiuqing also smiled and said, "Yes, now we have fish soup every day, which is much better than when she gave birth to his two brothers."
Ye Yaodong stayed in the room with them and went out after listening to their conversation for a while.
A group of children were standing at the door, making an appointment to go to the beach to dig clams and pick crabs.
He also looked up at the beach and made sure the tide had receded, then went to the village to call for help.
His boat had been in the sea for a long time, and a bunch of juvenile clams and barnacles had grown under the boat. When he went out to pull traps these days, he felt the serious draft.
In the vast ocean, the things that are most abundant are microorganisms and parasitic animals.
In particular, there is a creature called barnacle, which can attach to natural reefs, dock dams, ship buoys, seawater pipes, and also to living things such as blue whales and turtles.
The bottom of ships that sail on the sea for a long time, regardless of size, will be covered with barnacles, juvenile shells, and water spinach. The longer they are not cleaned, the more and larger they will grow.
They will increase the draft of the ship, increase the resistance of the ship's navigation, and at the same time the speed of the ship will become slower and the fuel consumption of the ship will increase. Therefore, every ship needs to be cleaned regularly.
After collecting the traps in the morning, he would moor the boat on the beach, and when the tide receded, it would run aground on the beach.
It just so happened that his father-in-law and mother-in-law came today, so he scraped the bottom of the boat and got some fresh oysters and dried vegetables to take back for them.
He called a group of young men he was familiar with, as well as a few cousins, and went to the beach with a few bundles of ropes. They had to turn the boat over first.
A group of kids were excitedly picking up stranded seafood on the beach, when they saw Ye Yaodong coming with a group of people, and they all gathered around.
"Uncle San, why are you here? Are you guys going to fish in the sea too?"
"Uncle San, look, we caught quite a few crabs and picked up a lot of snails and clams..."
"I have another fish..."
"I have sea urchins and starfish here..."
A group of children carried their small baskets and wanted to show them to him as if they were presenting treasures.
Ye Yaodong smiled and comforted, "Okay, okay, go pick it up again, I'll call you for help later."
"What are you doing, Uncle San?"
"We are going to turn the boat over and clean the bottom of the boat. We will ask you to help pick it up later."
"Okay, okay~"
There are people playing, why shouldn’t they respond
Everyone followed them and walked towards the boat, no longer running around.
"Stay away, don't get in the way, wait over there."
After Ye Yaodong sent a few children aside, he climbed onto the boat and tied up the ropes. Amid the children's excited shouts, the boat was also straightened up by a group of young men.
"Ah, there are so many vegetables under the boat."
"And barnacles..."
"So many! Wow~"
As soon as they saw the boat being stood up, they ran over excitedly and were about to dive under the boat, but Ye Yaodong immediately stopped them.
"Everyone, get out of the way. No one of you can get close to me until I tell you to. Otherwise, you'll be crushed into a pulp. Are you afraid?"
They immediately scattered like birds and beasts.
After being reborn, he became more patient with these children and would always think of taking them out to play whenever there was something going on.
After the boat was standing steadily on its side, he thanked the group of people, and after they left, he took out a sack from his pocket, shook it, and then excitedly greeted the children.
"Come on, come on, I'll do the shoveling, and you guys will help put it in the sack later."
"Yeah… "
There was a pile of shells growing densely under the boat, with all kinds of shells. There were large and small water spinach growing in patches, and there were green ones, but they were not as delicious as the black and purple ones.
There are barnacles that look like little craters, oyster juveniles growing inside, and shells that are pretty useless.
The bottom of his boat was not painted red, so the shells he caught were all edible.
The bottom of the ship is usually painted with a special red paint, which can drive away or kill the creatures attached to the bottom of the ship.
In order to prevent these shells and insects from attaching to the bottom of the ship and to reduce the corrosion of the hull by sea water, toxic paints such as copper oxide, mercury oxide and iron oxide are applied under the hull below the waterline.
These toxic substances mixed into the paint are all red, so the bottom of the ship is red.
Seafood is adsorbed on this layer of paint and is generally inedible when it is broken off.
His kind of boat was not painted with this kind of paint.
Ye Yaodong held a large iron shovel in his hand, aimed at a small patch of densely grown radish, and scraped it hard towards the bottom of the boat. In an instant, a large bunch of radish connected together fell off.
The little boy on the side rushed forward, "I'll do it... I'll do it..."
"Uncle San, please shovel more..."
"Okay, you guys step back first, I'll shovel down more, and then you guys pick it up slowly, otherwise it will hit you."
With all these guys surrounding him, it was difficult for him to move his tackle because if he shoveled it down he would hit them on the head.
"Then hurry up."
"I know, stop nagging..."
These dancai are not big in size, but the green ones are relatively large. They are all called dancai, and called green mouth in the market. With a strong shovel, another piece falls off.
He shoveled away small pieces at a time, and a pile of them fell on the beach. His hands were a little sore, so he stopped and asked a few children to pick them up first.
He took out two sacks from his pocket and shook them. The bottom of the boat was packed with things. How could one sack be enough
"Be careful not to cut your hands. The edges of these shells are very sharp."
"Do not worry… "
"Uncle, it's so fun here. There are so many things to pick up on the beach..."
"Isn't it fun? I asked you to come over to play with us a long time ago, but who told you not to come?"
"They didn't take me with them, saying it was a long way to go..."
"Ah? You came here on foot, why don't you take a tractor, even though that tractor is not comfortable to ride..."
Ye Chenghu started to talk about how the tractor was so bumpy... how uncomfortable it was to sit on... and that his nostrils were filled with dust...
Ye Chenghai wanted to hit him a few times after hearing this, "Forget it, others can't sit down even if they want to, they can only sit on their legs, I haven't even sat down before..."
Ye Yaodong said as he picked them up: "If you think it's fun, stay for a few days, eat and sleep with your two cousins, and let them take you to the beach for a few days."
People living by the sea think the mountains are more fun, while people living in the mountains think the seaside is more fun!
"Okay, okay... Then little uncle, can you help me... Ah, there are bugs... A lot of bugs... Are there earthworms on the beach?"
Ye Yaodong looked up and saw several worms on the beach in front of him, which looked like intestines and were wriggling there.
"It's a sandworm! Not a worm. Where did the worm come from on the beach?"
Others also discovered that a large number of sandworms suddenly emerged from the beach around them.
"It's like the earthworm attractor, it seems."
"so many… "
"There are some over there..."
"There are also..."
“Ahh… so disgusting…” Several girls looked at the densely packed sandworms and cried out in disgust.
"Tsk, what's so disgusting? Haven't you ever played with earthworm bait? Catch it quickly..." Ye Chenghai shouted excitedly.
The other boys were also very excited. How could they feel disgusted or afraid to catch them? They had caught many insects to play with.
Ye Yaodong also shook the sack excitedly, "Use this to fill it!"
Fortunately, he was thoughtful and brought a few extra sacks.