Heavy snow swirled outside, while indoors it was as warm as spring.
There were fewer than five days left to deliver twenty thousand large reed bundles, but Li Long was in no hurry at all.
He sat with Li Jianguo and Li Qingxia on chairs beside the heated wall, holding a wedge of watermelon and eating it slowly.
"Mom, have some too." Li Long invited Du Chunfang to eat some watermelon, but she shook her head and said with a smile:
"Heh, these melons really do keep well. We can still eat them in the dead of winter. It's just not as carefree as eating them in summer."
"Of course. In summer, you smash a watermelon open with a punch, eat it if it looks good, and toss it aside if it doesn't. In winter, we'll eat them whether they're good or not." Li Jianguo spoke as he ate a wedge too.
This watermelon was pretty good, with sweet yellow flesh, unlike some green-fleshed ones that had a rich, greasy taste.
After Chen Lirong and her daughters moved out, the spare room at Li Long's Big Courtyard had stood empty. Li Long simply left it without a stove and put over a hundred seed watermelons inside, intending to eat them slowly.
Ordinary watermelons did not keep. Before November, almost all of them had gone bad, turning into bags of water inside.
Seed watermelons were different. Their thick rinds made them good for storage, and eating them in cold weather had a flavor all its own.
"Cotton coats at dawn, gauze at noon, and watermelon around the stove." Li Jianguo spat the watermelon seeds into his hand, put them in the bowl beside him, and said with a smile:
"I never imagined we'd actually get to live out that saying we