Daily Life in the Countryside After Being Reborn
Chapter 184 - 14: Balcony Vegetable Garden

Chapter 184: Chapter 14: Balcony Vegetable Garden

Talking about planting trees, it’s actually not easy in Zhuo Feng and Feng Xing’s small apartment, which is narrow and not spacious enough. It’s already good enough that the little apartment can accommodate three adults.

Zhuo Feng has been away from home 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 apartment 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 submerged among the buildings.

Zhuo Feng’s home is on the fourth floor of the old apartment, one floor up is the balcony. In the summer, 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 summer 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 became the only place in the house where a few potted plants could be placed.

Zhuo Feng sprayed some 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 meter 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 apartment 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 time. Your uncle dislikes the hot weather. In the summer, 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 some dead leaves from the potted plants.

"We can clear out the space on the balcony, plant some fruits, vegetables, and ornamental plants on top. The plants will provide shade and make the summer 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 time 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 mentioning that the neighbors in the apartment 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 same as in the mountain village, each family looks after its own, missing some 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 came home, he only saw two women 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 some special arrangement. 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 mean 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 some seeds for fruits and vegetables along the way. These nights are cool, and you are at home, take some time, 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 environment doesn’t allow for it. He carried the groceries he bought back from the market into the kitchen, casually placing a watermelon and a bag of oranges on the coffee table.