Chapter 16 Section 16 Mulberries

Mulberry trees like shade, and they often grow in the miscellaneous woods behind the house, or beside the miscellaneous trees by the river and the Bamang bushes. There is also a saying that it is taboo not to plant mulberries in front of the door and not to plant locust trees behind the house.But when I saw the mulberry tree in front of the door, I was very friendly. It was related to raising silkworms when I was young. There are two kinds of mulberry trees I saw. Big flies with red heads and green buttocks lie on it, enjoying themselves very much; a kind of small broken leaves, light green, the leaves are piled up and rush upwards, and after being exposed to the sun, they appear to be full of vitality and vitality.The mulberry leaves I saw are the largest in Xixi, Hangzhou. It is accompanied by persimmon trees, willow trees, tallow trees, ingot trees and paulownia trees. The leaves are as big as a palm. I feel that there will be big mulberries on the branches anyway. It was autumn when I went , The mulberry is gone, it's not the right time, the persimmons are hanging all over the branches of the persimmon trees, the wind blows the leaves, and the green persimmons are all over the place.The farmer said that the tree is wild and no one takes care of it. When someone takes care of it, the persimmons grow bigger.

Sericulture started around the first grade. When I saw senior students hatching silkworm seeds, they used a ball of cotton to wrap a small piece of paper with silkworm seeds on it. It was mysterious, and it was only for people to see. In the pocket of the shirt, the baby silkworms will be hatched with body heat.The silkworm is black and smaller than an ant, but it can eat mulberry leaves.The silkworms were first put in a matchbox and stuffed with a small piece of mulberry leaf, and they bit out some small holes in the mulberry leaf, which shows how powerful it is.In this way, I also wanted to raise silkworms. I begged for small silkworms to raise them back, and then asked someone to ask for mulberry leaves. There was a family with no children, but the family had fruit trees and mulberry trees. Staring blankly at the mulberry tree.They knew my thoughts and picked mulberry leaves for me. Once, they brought mulberries to my house. They were really sweet, sour and sweet, especially sour. Only mulberry has such a sweet and sour taste.The red mulberry, the juice is not enough, it has a little taste, the delicious one is the dark red mulberry, many small round grains grow together brightly, like small amethyst stones inlaid together.Eating mulberry is never full, it is so small, just tasted it and it is gone.For a while, I had a strong idea to plant a mulberry tree myself. I found a small mulberry tree on the way up from the river at the back door of my house. It was not even a mulberry tree. Come on, the leaves are large, dark green, and lazy.I cut a section of it, put it on the edge of the fence in the vegetable garden, and watered it often.I heard that mulberry trees can be inserted alive, but I couldn't help being curious. I always pulled them up to see if there were any roots. As a result, there were no roots at the broken part, and it gradually rotted. It seemed that there were some small buds on it. The buds also died.I have planted mulberry trees like this several times, but they have not survived.When the silkworms had no mulberry leaves to eat, they fed them with lettuce leaves. The silkworms did not grow well and died after eating lettuce leaves.

When I arrived in Hubei, I saw someone carrying a load of small silkworms to sell. There were many people around, and some bought them while others bought them. I couldn’t squeeze in, so I squatted on the ground and watched. I held a poplar branch in my hand. When the horse came to ride, there was still a leaf on the branch, so I stretched out the poplar branch into the basket containing the silkworms, and immediately two small silkworms climbed up the poplar branch, satiated me, and ran home , Throw out a box of Shiquan Dabu pills, and raise them in its cardboard box, with a few holes pierced in the top of the box to let the silkworms breathe.From then on, I started the journey of looking for mulberry leaves again. I went to the northeast railway, about three miles away, there was a small mulberry tree, which was planted by Zhanmen Lu Village. I picked some mulberry leaves there. The tree is small and does not bear fruit. Mulberries.There are mulberry trees in the Fifth Hospital to the north, the place is a bit gloomy and smells like medicine, and there are few pickings. Only Shimenjia Village under the railway bridge in the east has a big mulberry tree with big mulberries.Of course, that was stealing mulberry leaves. Usually, I would wander there, put my hands in my trouser pockets, look around, pull the grass on the side of the road and play with the ants on the ground. Climb up the tree, grab a few mulberry leaves, jump off and run.When the mulberry is red, the silkworms have cocooned, so they go to pick the mulberry.When the silkworm cocooned, the rapeseed happened to be seeded and turned yellow. Pull back the rapeseed stalk and tie it into a small handful for the silkworm to cocoon on it.It was the first time I raised silkworms to make cocoons. There were only two silkworms. I didn’t know how to use rapeseed straw to make silkworms cocoon. Silkworms made cocoons in the corners of cardboard boxes.It is said that if you hold the silkworm on the glass with a porcelain bowl, the silkworm will produce a piece of round silk.The moths that came out of the two cocoons were both female moths with big bellies. I tore a page of paper with green grids as the text and let it produce seeds. I didn't think about mating, it was terrible, so I went to ask for a male moth. Sure enough, they mated excitedly very quickly, and then the male moth left and died.The mother moth lays many seeds, and that is my only hope.After a few days, the seeds of the moths in front turned white, and the seeds of the moths in the back turned black. I heard that the blackness was due to a small silkworm inside.The newly born silkworm seeds are yellow, a bit like sesame seeds.

In the second year, many small silkworms emerged from the silkworm seeds, the little black ones wriggling slightly.First I picked some small mulberry leaves to feed them. After shedding their skins a few times and turning them into white silkworms, their appetites widened. Picking mulberry leaves became my labor. Every day I dream about picking mulberry leaves.You can't go too much to one place, or you will be recognized by others. When it rains, you have to dry the mulberry leaves with cotton, otherwise the silkworms will have diarrhea and die.Sometimes, some lettuce leaves are also given to them to eat. These hard-fated silkworms have nothing to do.However, I found another eucalyptus tree on a hill behind a village. The eucalyptus leaves were not taken care of by anyone and I picked them to feed the silkworms. Very good, just eat it.One side of the oak tree has withered bark, which was caused by cutting off a big branch. Black fungus grew on it. Fresh and naturally grown black fungus, fried lean meat is very delicious, it is soft and smooth, the taste of fungus is full, and there is a smell of mushrooms.However, when I think of the toil of being overwhelmed by the livelihood of dozens of silkworms, I still feel a little bitter in my heart. This time, the leather shoebox used for silkworm rearing has also been pierced with holes in the cover as usual.In the dead of night, the silkworms eat the mulberry leaves with a rustling sound. The moonlight comes in through the window, and the silkworms eat with vibrancy.

The silkworms made many cocoons, some white, some golden, and some pink, on the rapeseed stalks. I gave the cocoons to others. If they produced moths again, the seeds would be useless.I found that the people who raised silkworms were almost the same, and they were satisfied after raising silkworms to this level. The rest of their mood was just to pick mulberries and eat them.Once, when I was picking mulberries down the tree, I tore my trousers, and there was a blood mark on the inside of my thigh. It wasn’t the farmers who came to catch me, but three dogs, two white dogs and one yellow dog, who frightened me and rushed towards me. He slid down from the tree and ran, running frightened.When I was in the geological team, I also picked mulberries and ate them. I felt that they were not as sweet as before. Although they were still sweet, they were not as sweet as before.When I arrived in Beijing, I found that there were mulberries for sale in the fruit market. There were so many piles of mulberries. I didn’t know how many mulberry trees it would take to grow so many mulberries.The sweetness of childhood is really sweet.