It's another yellow flower season.

The sun is like fire in July, and there is a basin of Datong on the continuous loess plateau, which is firmly embedded in this land like a bowl. The bowl is filled with golden yellow, and the breeze is shivering. The green leaves extending below rolled and rustled like waves. This is the well-known yellow flower.

As the name implies, the flowers are all yellow, the petals are slender and curly, and the posture is elegant. They bloom in the hot sun, beautiful and refined.

Yellow flower is a kind of dish with high nutritional value, which can be fried after flowering and has a slightly sweet smell. You can also eat it after steaming.

My hometown has a long history of planting yellow flowers, and the style of the village becomes different every yellow flower season.

Before the arrival of the yellow flower season, with the arrival of a batch of strangers, the village speakers shouted enthusiastically: Who hired the person who picked the "golden needle" to come to the brigade! At this time, the business of the canteen is booming, and rain boots, straw hats and plastic sheets are purchased one after another for picking.

At about three o'clock in the morning, the roar of tricycles sounded like the horn of battle in the silent village, one after another. The car shuttled happily on the field path, and the basket on the car collided and fluctuated. In the dark, you can see bundles of lights swaying and moving in the field, which complement the starry sky. It's a lamp worn by yellow flower pickers. In the dim light, people carefully picked them one by one.

Most children born here began to learn to pick in the fields when they were ten years old. Slender fingers bypass the immature buds, gently pinch the grown ones, and press the middle finger hard. With a crunchy sound and dew splashing, they took it off the tire and threw it into the basket tied around their waist. This is a technical job, it is necessary to keep the bud and speed.

Shuttling between rows of yellow-flowered seedlings, the crisp sound is like music playing, sometimes compact and sometimes soothing. Send away the stars to welcome the sunrise and witness the great moment of each sunrise. The dew gradually faded, and the yellow-green flowers were sticky. Every finger is sticky with sugar, which is refreshing when there is no dew. At noon, the yellow flowers bloom a little, and the yellow stamens are exposed, which is too shy. After flowering, yellow flowers are not easy to steam or sun, so it is difficult to sell. This is why farmers have to get up early to pick.

Picking yellow flowers is more like a distinctive national sport. The streets are full of "fishermen" wearing straw hats, plastic sheets around their waists and rain boots. Everyone greeted with an anxious look: Have you finished choosing a home? And then it flashed by. I hurried into the small restaurant, took out some cakes, and then moved on to the next battlefield, where there was a large golden land.

When the car full of yellow flowers is transported home, it enters the second stage: steaming.

As long as I can remember, every family built a small house with bricks in the yard, in which a stove was built and two cauldrons were placed. There are several rows of thin iron bars on the pot from bottom to top, two in each row, just enough to put down a "steaming plate". The steaming tray is woven from branches, round and flat, and the size of a cauldron mouth.

Set the plate with yellow flowers, cover the plastic door and make a fire. I saw that the whole village was full of "wolf smoke" and the smoke was rolling. Observe the color change of yellow flowers from the plastic door when adding firewood. Yellow is only green, too green is immature, too yellow is too ripe, and after sun exposure, it loses weight seriously.

In recent years, small boiler gas supply has replaced wood heating, which has improved efficiency and saved us a lot of time.

The steaming yellow flowers will disperse in the sun after cooling for a period of time. The roof and yard are covered with yellow flowers, and even the cement street is occupied by the enclosure. The street where two carts could pass was divided into a winding narrow path where only one bicycle could pass. There are yellow flowers everywhere.

This also added special fun to our childhood: going to the roof. The children in the neighborhood, the children in front of and behind the house, stood on the roof, shouting and chatting. One by one, they can connect from the north of the village to the south of the village. It's fun. You can enjoy the sunset on the roof, overlook the dense canopy outside the village, and watch the smoke curling up. The artistic conception is beautiful.

Suddenly there was a strong wind, and a rainstorm hit, and people climbed onto the roof one after another. The dark clouds were getting closer and closer, and the whole village was boiling. I saw people on the roof, in the yard, and in the streets and alleys trotting in a hurry, burying their heads in holding yellow flowers and stuffing them into steaming plates, and carrying them into the house, which became a pot of porridge. Yellow flowers are afraid of being rained. If they are dried after rain, they are not yellow but red.

If it rains hard and hard, we can only watch the yellow flowers that have not come and been collected float all the way across the streets and gather in the ditch outside the village.

The whole picking process of yellow flowers lasts for one month. On the first day, the big one was picked, and after a night, the small one grew into a big one. At the beginning of the month, the amount is small, reaching a peak in the middle, and then continuing to decrease.

Yellow flowers, golden in color and shaped like needles, are called "golden needles". There is no treasure jade in the sharpening farm, and yellow flowers are everywhere in Jin Baihe. It is expensive not only because of its high nutritional value, but also because it is full of hard work of farmers.