In August, Wen Qian was on the mountain picking mugwort everywhere, this is a kind of plant often taken to sell in the countryside, both wet and dry are fine.
When Auntie Chen was free, she would also go around picking, even going to the remote valleys in the mountains to pick.
Sometimes Wen Qian would go with her, each looking for a place, but absolutely staying within shouting distance of each other.
The two could go together to pick, but Wen Qian only went with her to sell mugwort once, the rest she dried on the roof and stored it.
Wen Qian really liked the smell of mugwort, and she also liked using mugwort to soak in water for bathing.
When she was little, whenever she grew lumps or itchy spots on her body, her grandparents would give her a mugwort bath, which was good for her skin.
It didn't rain at all throughout August, so many provinces had power shortages, including Ontario which was usually abundant in water and electricity. Now because of the depletion of water resources, high electricity demand caused tight electricity supply.
Many places turned off their night lights, air conditioning electricity was tight, why keep ornamental ones on.
Shopping malls in many cities also had rolling blackouts floor by floor, which showed the severity of this heat wave drought.
There were rolling blackouts in many places, even the industrial park where Wen Qian used to work had two blackouts, each lasting a day, because residential electricity usage had to be prioritized.
These were what her former colleagues told her. In mid August they still contacted Wen Qian twice, because there were some unclear handover issues at work passed onto her colleagues so they came to ask her.
When they heard that Wen Qian was living at home without looking for a job, they even expressed envy. Wen Qian just said she would be back next year.
As for rural areas, blackouts became the norm, basically every week there would be one or two blackouts.
From 8am to 8pm like this. Fortunately it wasn't several days in a row.
Otherwise with fridges in rural households now, too long of an outage would also cause problems.
And because of the hot and dry drought and little rain, like Ontario, some places in hot provinces also had sporadic mountain fires.
The village party secretary here also started going to every household to urge fire prevention.
Wen Qian also cleared the weeds in front of and behind her house, and picked up all the firewood on the mountain.
However this was not just a phenomenon in some places in one country, it also happened in other countries.
Online people were saying the climate was abnormal, this year's climate went from bad to worse.
Places that were supposed to be flood prevention, now became drought resistance, places that weren't supposed to rain, now had torrential flooding.
Whenever times were like this, people would start saying the world has become hard mode.
Some people also said wait until next year people would still say the same, just like teachers always say the class they teach this year is the worst class.
August ended, Wen Qian summed up what she did this month.
She went to town alone and bought a lot of tools, including everything on her list like sickles, she bought several more, as well as some stainless steel tools and bamboo containers.
She built a new toilet.
At the same time Wen Qian also stored a lot of water in the water tanks she bought for home, no matter how severe the drought she wouldn't be thirsty.
Wen Qian also gathered a lot of oak branches on the mountain, the side branches with leaves she left on the mountain to dry then she would bundle them back home, oak branches with leaves burned very well.
The dried oak branches, Wen Qian also stored some in the shed, the rest she put in the pig pen.
The arm-thick oak branches needed to be air dried for a period of time. When Uncle Chen's family made charcoal, she could go learn with them. In the future she could make some charcoal herself and store it, only leaving some outside.
September was still mid August in the lunar calendar. A kind of fruit called August melon ripened in the countryside.
Opening it the white flesh wrapped black seeds inside, very sweet and sticky. If there were no seeds, the texture would be a bit like banana, but there were just too many seeds.
Whenever these August melons ripened, her grandparents would pick some to bring back.
Picked when they were about to split, brought home they would split open on their own.
If they split open on the vines, then the fragrance would attract all kinds of bugs and birds to feast.
Then humans could not eat them.
Just as Wen Qian was only eating them as fruit, Auntie Chen went around looking for these fruits to pick.
Unbroken ones could be sold. There were buyers at the purchasing stations in town. They would later slice and dry them, it seemed to also be a medicinal ingredient.
Speaking of which, everything that could be foraged from the rural mountains could be medicine, everything could be sold.
Uncle Chen often could not name these plants. He just saw what the plants looked like at the purchasing stations, then relied on memory to look for them when he came back.
When free, they would go into the mountains to look for these things, according to the purchasing stations' requirements whether they wanted wet, dry, or fried, to sell. The prices were pretty good.
Wen Qian was also looking for these things, just she was using them to make videos and photos, to introduce the plants growing in her surroundings to everyone.
Many people commented below these plants' dialect names in their local regions, the dialect terms were all different in each place.
Of course, if one really wanted to use these things to make money in the countryside, the money earned would really be hard-earned money.
You'd have to traverse the woods and mountains, climb up and down the mountains, and also watch out for snakes, insects, rats and venomous bees.
A nearby village's elderly, just trying to pick wild chrysanthemum flowers to sell for money, then accidentally falling into a pit and breaking bones.
Now nothing they sold would be enough for medical fees, leaving the children sighing, and having someone come back specially to take care of the elderly.
Yet the elderly's original intention was just to supplement their own living expenses right?
All the way until the end of September, the lowest temperature reached 17, 18 degrees, gradually as the temperature dropped people in cities didn't need air conditioning, electricity supply was finally not so tight.
At home Wen Qian also greatly reduced her use of electric fans, her time able to stay outdoors became longer.
In mid September Wen Qian planted vegetables with Auntie Chen. Although it was still very dry, there was now a big difference between day and night temperatures, so there was a lot of morning dew.
Wen Qian's field and Auntie Chen's were both plowed by Uncle Chen. Only now did Wen Qian know that the Chen family also had a small shallow plow machine.
So Wen Qian paid some money for oil and labor, and treated Uncle Chen and Auntie Chen to a meal, asking them to help plow her field.
What greens they would eat in winter depended on Wen Qian's seed sowing skills now.
