The Tenth Year of the End of the World"

77-79

, saw the flower he mentioned, it was red camellia. There are many tea trees and camellia trees on this mountain. I have seen red camellia and white camellia.
　　It is a happy thing to see such bright and vivid red at this time. The happiest thing is the ginger sheep that has not been able to nibble flowers for a long time. He held the small bag and ran through the messy branches and trees to the camellia plant. By opening the way like this, I didn't have to use a hatchet to chop down the surrounding branches.
　　"Ma, look!" Jiang Yang held up a camellia flower and showed it to me. The camellia bloomed at the bottom, its petals were slightly closed, and there was some snow inside.
　　I glanced at it twice. Jiang Yang thought I had finished reading, so he retracted his hand and stuffed the flower into his mouth. He looked really happy, and he started humming songs so happily.
　　Ginger Sheep quickly finished picking the flowers, and we continued walking up. Not long after walking, Jiang Yang suddenly pulled me again. I thought he saw flowers again, but he covered his mouth and pointed into the bushes.
　　I smiled when I saw it, stretched out my hand and pulled Qingshan, who was still looking for prey, and pointed to him under the trees over there. There were two masked civets hiding there.
　　...
　　The harvest was unexpectedly large. I caught two masked cats under the bushes and a pheasant nearby. It was a little thinner and had no meat. But in addition to these two, Qingshan actually found another wild boar. , although it’s not too big, you can still eat it for a while. It looked like a little wild boar, so we didn't ask for any help. Qingshan put the little wild boar down by himself.
　　After the natural disaster passed, and after recuperating in the past few years, there were indeed many more wild animals on the mountain. If it were in the past, when there were people everywhere, I'm afraid there wouldn't be as many of these animals as there are now.
　　When I was passing by a bamboo forest on my way back, I suddenly thought of something, so I asked the two of them to wait while I went to chop down some thin bamboos with a knife.
　　"Ma, what are you doing to chop bamboo?" Jiang Yang asked.
　　"There are many baskets at home." Qingshan said.
　　I immersed myself in chopping bamboos and said, "I won't make baskets."
　　Jiang Yang said again, "Such a thin bamboo cannot be used to make baskets."
　　Qingshan saw that I only picked up broken bamboos and chopped them, and didn't understand: "There are still some bamboos on these bamboos. It's moldy and white, so it's not
　　easy to make a basket." I looked at the two of them and said, "So, it's not a basket."
　　Jiang Yang seemed to be ready to ask, so I said, "I thought I saw a bamboo rat nearby, you guys?" Let's go find each other, don't keep asking me here."
　　"Oh." Jiang Yang's attention was immediately diverted. There are still quite a lot of mice around here, including mice and voles, but since the orange cat appeared, I have seen a lot less mice. Because when harvesting grain before, there were always rats coming to eat. Even if they were confiscated in the fields, they would be eaten by rats. Therefore, Jiang Yang and Qingshan became angry when they saw rats and would catch them every time they saw them.
　　The voles here are bigger than mice and taste better. Of course, if they are mutated, that is another story. Before Ginger Sheep was born, a mutated big mouse I caught tasted pretty good.
　　I chopped a bunch of bamboo and stood up to call them back, but no one was there. I thought they would come back on their own if they didn’t catch the bamboo rats, but why are they still missing?
　　"Jiang Yang! Qingshan!" I shouted.
　　"Ma! Here! We caught a bamboo rat! Such a big bamboo rat!" Jiang Yang's excited voice came from the slope behind the sun on the other side of the bamboo forest.
　　Did you really catch a bamboo rat? I just said casually, in fact, I have never seen a bamboo rat here at all, so why did I really catch it? I walked over and took a look, and there were really two fat bamboo rats. This thing eats bamboo roots. No wonder there are dead bamboo bushes there, I suddenly realized.
　　It's a good thing to have unexpected extra gains, and I feel better.
　　"Let's go back. Let's make delicious food tonight. Just think of it as...the New Year."
　　"What is the New Year?" Jiang Yang started to ask again.