Chapter 39: Is this farming?

At three o’clock, Asaba Rika’s mobile phone rings with an unfamiliar caller’s number.

“Moshi Moshi?” Rika picked up the phone and picked up the call.

“What is it? Is it Luo Yan? Your delivery has arrived, come down and get it!”

“Oh! Okay! I’ll be down now!”

Asaba Rika put on a small shirt and ran downstairs to get the delivery.

The door opened a little and she poked her little head out to look outside for a moment.

There was a small cargo tricycle parked at the door with all sorts of parcels on it, and the courier boy was sitting on the seat with a modest cardboard box in his hand reading the list.

This must be the courier

Asaba Rika then came out to greet him, “Hello! Is this my delivery, please?”

” Luo Yan, right?”

“Hmm.”

“This.”

The courier boy took the small cardboard box in his hand to her and left with a twist of the accelerator.

Asaba Rika took a curious look at the delivery parcel and had to say that it was still very fast, she had placed the order the night before and it was delivered this afternoon.

Back in the courtyard, she couldn’t wait to unpack the cardboard box.

I placed an order for marigolds and goldfish and some other flower seeds, but the seller gave me quite a few things, including a small packet of white fertiliser, a small trowel for digging and a small spray bottle for watering the flowers.

Inside are instructions on how to grow it, and not only that, but there is a letter in the box.

Asaba Rika was curious to open the letter and read it, it was handwritten and then printed out, with sincere sentences and blessings, and at the end it said that she had just started her shop and hoped she could give a five-star review, and if it was with a picture and more than 100 words, she could also receive a red packet of three dollars

That’s a great service!

She bought them for a total of $19.90 with free shipping, and the seller gave her so many little gifts, they must have lost money!

Asaba Rika thought I should be considerate, so I opened the app and gave it a 5-star review with a picture and didn’t receive a red packet.

When another big cloud came in the sky and the yard started to cool down, she started planting flowers.

In the utility room on the ground floor, all that could be found was a large shovel, unused for ages, leaning against the corner where small spiders had made their webs.

“Sorry sorry sorry.”

Asaba Rika gave the spider an apology and then took the shovel away, the spider’s web broke and the tiny spider, the size of a green pea, was frightened by her and then she herself was frightened by the tiny spider and ran out of the utility room screaming and clutching the shovel.

The yard was planned to have a flower pond, which was bare, so she took a shovel and turned the soil, piece by piece, hard, and then slapped the clods together with the shovel.

This is a big job for Rika, who has never done any farm work before.

It soon felt as if the delicate palms of my hands were being rubbed raw, and it was quite hot at the moment, with beads of sweat breaking out on my forehead.

Bai Xiaomeng watched her working and wanted to help too, but unfortunately he was only a kitten and could only be cute and sleep with Shen Yu, so he jumped onto the stone table to watch Rika work.

The time passed little by little and at half past four, the gate of the courtyard was opened and Asaba Rika thought that Shen Yu had returned, but it was Su Zhifu who came to play with Bai Xiaomeng after school.

“Huh! Are you growing sweet potatoes, sister?”

“I’m planting flowers, you’re out of school so early.”

“What about your flowers?”

“On the table, those are the seeds, wait a couple of months and they’ll bloom.”

Su Zhifu was intrigued: “Let me help you!”

She grabbed the little digging trowel that the seller had given her on the table and ran to the other flower pond and started digging.

Su Zhifu 挖土的時候，不是向前地挖的，而是像狗刨土一样，弯腰半蹲着，双手反握小铲子，双腿叉开开，向后地刨土。

Asaba Rika looks dumbfounded.

She thought, “Is this how the little shovel is used?” If it is, she doesn’t want to dig like this.

Although Su Zhifu’s digging is extremely ungainly, it is clearly fast, and children have a natural restraint on sand and puddles, so throw a few kids into a mountain of sand and you’ll have a castle.

With the help of Su Zhifu, the soil in the pond was soon turned over.

Then it’s time to sow the seeds.

Both goldfish and marigolds are very good plants and there is nothing to be said for sowing them, just sprinkle the planting evenly on loosened soil and then intersperse the seedlings properly when they emerge.

Asaba Rika is sowing the seeds and Su Zhifu is following her with the little packet of fertiliser, which Puffs has obviously done a lot of in the countryside over the summer, judging by the skill with which she does it.

After the flowers were planted, there was still a lot of open space outside the pond, such as the fertile-looking patch of land under the corner where Shen Yu’s mother used to grow vegetables, such as hollowed-out cabbages and small onions, which could be picked when you wanted to eat them, and then grown back with a little water.

When my parents went to live in a new house, Shen Yu naturally left the garden untouched.

“Sister, let’s plant sweet potatoes here! Then you can plant small onions and garlic!”

Su Zhifu still hasn’t given up on her dream of growing sweet potatoes, and together with Asaba Rika, they have gone through the small vegetable patch again.

“Sweet potatoes and small onions and garlic, I have lots of them at home.”

When Su Zhifu finished, he ran home again, and when he returned, he was carrying a black plastic bag containing a lot of garlic and red onion heads, and a few fava sticks.

As she rubbed her bottom, she said excitedly, “I’m bringing it over!”

“What’s wrong with your ass?”

“Let’s plant the sweet potatoes! As long as we plant them, Brother Shen Yu won’t let us pull them out!”

Su Zhifu did not explain about the buttocks, she knew Shen Yu’s brother very well, she had often pestered him to plant sweet potatoes in his yard before, but Shen Yu’s brother did not agree to it, so he planted them while he was away.

Two girls, one large and one small, are squatting in the vegetable patch planting sweet potatoes and garlic and shallots.

As Su Zhifu buried the last of the sweet potatoes, the gate opened and Shen Yu returned on his motorbike.

Shen Yu was a little dumbfounded to see the yard littered with turned up dirt.

“Are you two weasels?”

Bai Xiaomeng seized the opportunity and rushed super fast, being the first to jump into Shen Yu’s arms and jaw him with his big head, then jumped into the basket of his electric car and waited for him to carry Xiaomeng into the house.

“We planted a lot of things!”

Listening to Asaba Rika and Su Zhifu chattering and sharing, Shen Yu was a bit speechless. He could understand planting flowers, but he thought he was on a farm when he was growing garlic and sweet potatoes.

Asaba Rika went back to the ground floor to get a bucket, filled it with water and prepared to carry it out for watering, but his little body could not lift it even though it was red in the face.

“Get out of the way, I’ll do it.”

Shen Yu enters the house and, seeing this, comes over to help carry the water.

And explained, “I was afraid you’d spill it and the water would run on the hall circuit!”

A bucket full of water was easily lifted by him with one hand and steadily carried outside.

“Awesome!”

Girls have fairy tale dreams, such as the fairy princess in the forest sitting on the shoulders of a giant, and Rika thought to herself that Shen Yu must be so strong that she would have no trouble picking her up.

It was already past five in the afternoon and the sun was setting diagonally into the courtyard, colouring all three of them red.

Asaba Rika took a ladle, scooped water in a bucket and gently poured it on the surface of the soil, the water was absorbed like a sponge and the air smelled fresh and earthy.

“What’s the point of tinkering with this all day?”

Shen Yu muttered, went to the utility room and got a soft hose out, took another spanner water tape and other tools, replaced the bad tap in the yard, put in a new one and connected the hose back up.

The sluice was opened, the tap twisted, he squeezed the end of the flexible hose and the water sprayed out, the fine droplets forming a small rainbow in the sunlight.

“Rainbow!” Asaba Rika and Su Zhifu cheered.

“What a fuss”

Shen Yu is outwardly calm, but quite amused by the adulation of the two silly girls.

“That’s nothing, I’ll get a bigger one to show you.”

“Wow! Si pot to!!!”

“Then I’ll leave the watering to Shen Yu, I’ll go upstairs and make dinner!”

“Hmm.”

Shen Yu carefully watered the flowers, watered Puffs’ potatoes and casually pulled up his trouser leg and washed the parked cars in the yard with the tap.

It was only when it was dark and Asaba Rika called him from the first floor balcony to come up for dinner that he came back to his senses

etc.

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