Talking about planting trees, it’s actually not easy in Zhuo Feng and Feng Xing’s small apartnt, which is narrow and not spacious enough. It’s already good enough that the little apartnt can accommodate three adults.
Zhuo Feng has been away from ho for a while, and Feng Xing has been busy with work, so the furniture in the house has already gathered a layer of dust. The aunt and nephew pair packed up all their luggage, organized a bunch of cardboard boxes, and the space in the room looked a bit larger, but there was still no extra space to plant orange trees.
"This apartnt was built in the early 90s. A couple of old professors sold it to us before they went abroad. The house is well-maintained, it’s just that the lighting and design are not good enough, there isn’t even a balcony," Zhuo Feng opened the window regretfully. Old buildings, generally not built very high, and in Beijing where skyscrapers sprout like bamboo shoots after a rain, such small floors and units will eventually be subrged among the buildings.
Zhuo Feng’s ho is on the fourth floor of the old apartnt, one floor up is the balcony. In the sumr, the sunlight is strong, and the room feels like a large steaming basket, even the wind from the fan is hot, and air conditioning was not widely available then, so every sumr was the most painful season for Zhuo Feng.
Since Xiao Zhang’s family, who lived on the second floor, was burglarized two months ago, Feng Xing had anti-theft bars installed on the windows, and the protruding window sill beca the only place in the house where a few potted plants could be placed.
Zhuo Feng sprayed so water on a few pots of aloe and spider plant, noticing Xiao Xian still looking out the window, "No need to look anymore, how big can a window be? The orange tree you brought is over a ter tall, it won’t survive if planted there."
"Aunt, I see there’s a balcony upstairs," Xiao Xian looked at the rooftop. The city is different from Ge Village, no one builds tiled houses, the North has less rain than the South, and it’s mostly bungalows. This six-story old apartnt actually has six and a half floors, with the half-floor being the rooftop balcony.
"There is a balcony. But it’s been abandoned for a long ti. Your uncle dislikes the hot weather. In the sumr, he just goes up to water and cool the floor. They say the balcony is filled with old furniture from past tenants, who knows how many years it has been piled up there," Zhuo Feng casually removed so dead leaves from the potted plants.
"We can clear out the space on the balcony, plant so fruits, vegetables, and ornantal plants on top. The plants will provide shade and make the sumr cooler," Ge Village has more land and fewer people, with many deserted fields. But in a place like Beijing, where land is scarce, such a large balcony, if filled with soil, would have at least more than two acres of idle land.
"Our Xiao Xian is really clever, why didn’t I think of this before," previously Zhuo Feng was busy with the forestry bureau’s work and had no leisure ti to tend to rooftop matters. After resigning, she was busy looking for Xiao Xian in Guizhou. Now that her niece has been found and settled into school, she hadn’t yet figured out what to do next, she couldn’t always be idle.
Zhuo Feng didn’t go downstairs to the lobby, just ntioning that the neighbors in the apartnt aren’t very familiar with each other, anyway the rooftop is just sitting empty, and dealing with the old stuff up there, might as well count it as doing a good deed.
Xiao Xian also guessed from this incident that the neighborhood relations in the city are not quite the sa as in the mountain village, each family looks after its own, missing so human warmth.
Zhuo Feng and Xiao Xian spent the entire afternoon, spending twenty yuan to find a few movers, who altogether moved down two old sofa chairs, an old bookshelf, a broken bathtub, and several cardboard boxes and broken pots. After moving them downstairs, Zhuo Feng found a lady who buys junk, haggled a bit, and sold it for fifty yuan.
After Feng Xing ca ho, he only saw two won covered in dust sitting next to the table drinking water incessantly, and after listening to their plans, he countered: "You have a spot now, but where are you going to bring in so much soil from?"
Xiao Xian found this odd, thinking that obtaining soil needed so special arrangent. She had forgotten that this is not Ge Village, where endless mountain dirt is everywhere, this is far from the suburban center of the city. Getting a few pots of soil for aloe and spider plant is easy, just dig a few pots from the flower beds downstairs in the middle of the night. But soil for two acres, wouldn’t that an digging up the entire community’s green belt?
"I have it all figured out, we’ll buy from the flower and bird market, and we will pick up so seeds for fruits and vegetables along the way. These nights are cool, and you are at ho, take so ti, and go up to the rooftop to hang a light bulb, having it bright also makes sorting easier." Zhuo Feng waved her hand grandly, settling the matter.
Feng Xing didn’t argue, he actually quite enjoys fiddling with plants but his current living environnt doesn’t allow for it. He carried the groceries he bought back from the market into the kitchen, casually placing a waterlon and a bag of oranges on the coffee table.
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