"Little Stone, where is your brother?"
After school, Pei Che went straight back to his residence. The first thing he did was to call out to Jiang Miao, but no one answered. He looked around the yard, but there was no sign of Jiang Miao. Instead, the two children were in the study doing their homework.
Xiao Shitou and Pei Mu have been taking classes here for ten days and have gradually become accustomed to the teaching methods here. In addition to Master Tan, there is also a young master in the Mengtong Hall. On weekdays, Master Tan teaches them knowledge from books, while the younger master teaches martial arts. Recently, as soon as they come back, they rush to do their homework. After finishing their homework, they run to the yard to seriously recall what Master Wu taught them, and sometimes they pick up a small wooden stick to use as a sword.
Hearing Pei Che's question, Little Stone raised his head and said, "My brother said he had something to do and would be out for a while. He told us to stay home and study hard."
"Did he say what it was?" Pei Che frowned. This situation had been going on for two or three days in a row. He didn't take it seriously on the first day, but now he had to take it seriously.
"Brother Miao...didn't say." Pei Mu said, seeming a little unhappy. He must be unhappy because he wanted to follow but couldn't because he had to do his homework.
"Forget it, just do your homework well." Pei Che said, walked out of the study and closed the door gently.
He wanted to go out and look for it, but the mountain behind was so big that there was no place to look, so he had to give up. He found a place to sit in the yard and took out the book from his bag to read, but he had to look up at the gate every time he looked at it, which greatly reduced the effect of his reading.
About quarter of an hour later, voices were heard outside. In addition to Jiang Miao's voice, there were also some female voices. The content of their conversation was not very clear, but the joy contained in it was still clearly audible.
Pei Che suddenly became alert. He put down the book in his hand, quietly walked to the door, and tried to listen to what the people outside were saying. But the heavy door blocked his view. Their voices were numerous and mixed, and the content of their conversation was impossible to catch, which made Pei Che anxious.
He pricked up his ears and listened carefully to their conversation, but he didn't notice that a series of brisk footsteps were coming this way. When the door was pushed open, it was too late for Pei Che to leave, so he had to stretch out his hand and pretend that he was about to open the door and go out.
"You're back?" Jiang Miao still had a smile on his face.
"I came back half an hour ago. By the way, where have you been? The two children said they were hungry." Pei Che pulled the two children out as an excuse, and did not forget to go out to look for the person who had just been standing and chatting with Jiang Miao.
Jiang Miao didn't notice his look. After hearing what he said, he said in surprise, "But when I picked them up, I gave each of them a steamed bun. How come they are hungry?"
At this moment, those people had already walked forward along the path, their bodies were blocked by the courtyard wall at the bend, Pei Che only saw the hem of her skirt, and didn't see anything else clearly. He retracted his gaze and made up an excuse: "It should be that you have consumed your energy in the martial arts class, so it's normal to get hungry quickly. But you seem to be very busy recently, and I haven't seen you several times when I came back."
Pei Che's tone sounded very casual, but his eyes were fixed on Jiang Miao, eager to hear the answer from him.
Jiang Miao walked in and said, "Nothing much, I just followed those aunties to plant some vegetables. I found a large piece of empty land behind here, and there is nothing to do here anyway, so it will be very convenient to plant some vegetables and eat them."
"Grow vegetables to eat?" This was something Pei Che could not think of no matter how hard he tried. "Why grow vegetables? If the vegetables they bring are not to your liking, you can send someone to buy them and send them up every day. I will pay for all the expenses."
Pei Che didn't want Jiang Miao to work hard every day. In his opinion, growing vegetables was an extremely hard job.
Jiang Miao explained: "I'm not trying to save money. I have nothing to do every day, so I just do some work to kill time. I can also make some fresh food to eat. Isn't it killing two birds with one stone?"
He definitely wouldn't want to make a living by farming, but he is still very interested in tending one or two vegetable plots and growing some vegetables that he likes to eat.
After hearing Aunt Luo say that he could ask the canteen staff to order food that day, Jiang Miao went to pay. After eating there for a few days, he found that among the dishes delivered, the meat dishes often changed, but the seasonal vegetables were always the same three or four kinds.
Jiang Miao has always been very careful with his money. He thought it was not worthwhile to spend money to buy vegetables. He was afraid that the running fee would be more expensive than the price of the vegetables. So he came up with the idea of growing some vegetables for himself.
After searching for a while, Jiang Miao did not find the broken clay pot, but he found a piece of vacant land covered with weeds. The weeds here were very lush, which showed that the soil underneath was very fertile. Jiang Miao was heartbroken. It was such a pity to leave such land uncultivated without planting anything! Unfortunately, this piece of land was not his.
He walked back with a face full of regret, and on the way he met Aunt Luo who was returning with something. Seeing Jiang Miao's look, she wanted to comfort him. When she figured out why Jiang Miao was worried, she couldn't help but laugh.
"This land belongs to the Imperial College, but no one has cultivated it for a long time. If you want to plant something on it, just take it." Aunt Luo said.
Jiang Miao was a little hesitant: "After I plant the crops, will someone come to trouble me, or take the land back?" He didn't want to waste his efforts.
"Haha," Aunt Luo laughed, "Don't worry, I promise you, no one will cause you trouble or take the land back."
Jiang Miao felt even more puzzled when he heard her solemn oath. He wondered which official in the Imperial College this Aunt Luo was married to. She sounded quite important. Since she said so, Jiang Miao would not back down.
That day, he squatted in the field, slowly pulling out the weeds, and also picked out some wild vegetables from the weeds and put them aside so that he could take them back to eat later. After pulling for a while, Aunt Luo brought a few aunts dressed similarly over. They all heard that Jiang Miao was going to grow vegetables, so they came to watch the fun.
"Brother Jiang, what are you looking at here?" As they were looking at it, someone suddenly pointed at the pile of wild vegetables that Jiang Miao had sorted out and asked.
Jiang Miao looked up and said, "This is lettuce, and that is purslane. They are both wild vegetables. They are quite appetizing when mixed with cold vegetables. If you don't mind, you can take some away later."
Aunt Luo said, "That's great. We were just worried that they wouldn't have anything to eat during the hot summer. Brother Jiang, we won't take your food for nothing. We will help you pull out the weeds later and you can teach us how to cook this dish." It was obvious that Aunt Luo was the leader. As soon as she gave the order, the others went down to pull out the weeds without saying a word.
Jiang Miao wanted to dissuade them, but he was completely ineffective. The weeds in this large field were pulled out in one afternoon. Fortunately, the soil here was soft, so it didn't take much effort to pull out the weeds, otherwise my hands would definitely be blistered.
Jiang Miao distributed wild vegetables to everyone and patiently told them how to process them to make them tasty and not bitter. After trying them, the aunts found that the wild vegetables really tasted much better.
The next day, when Jiang Miao borrowed farm tools to start reclamation, he found that these aunts had come again. They lived in the back mountain all day and there was nothing new. Now Jiang Miao's vegetable planting made them quite interested, so they would not let it go.
Jiang Miao answered their questions while digging the ground. Jiang Miao saw that they were very interested in this matter, so he asked them if they wanted to grow vegetables together. The aunts were a little tempted, so Jiang Miao directly divided the land into several large pieces with a hoe and allocated a piece of land to each person. Anyway, he couldn't grow crops on such a large piece of land, and if everyone grew crops, they probably wouldn't harvest his vegetables alone.
Everyone took turns borrowing Jiang Miao's farm tools to cultivate the land, but since they were not used to doing farm work, most of the land was dug by Jiang Miao.
After the ground was dug, Jiang Miao and his team asked someone to buy some seedlings and seeds to plant in the field. In the evening, they did not forget to water the field to prevent the vegetables from being killed by the sun after a day's work.
Pei Che didn't know how to persuade him after hearing him say this, so he could only say, "Then I'll come back earlier and work the vegetable fields with you." He still believed that farming was a very hard job.
Jiang Miao burst out laughing, he was amused by the scene he imagined. It was really hard for him to imagine Pei Che farming. This man had mysophobia, and it was probably his limit to walk next to the vegetable field.
Pei Che didn't know what he was laughing at. He just thought he was happy that he was going to help, so he laughed too.
(End of this chapter)