After a year's growth, the willows, shrubs, and other trees with long, slender branches in Small White Poplar Gully, which the villagers had nearly stripped bare, were lush again, even more vigorous than before.
So when the Jeep stopped and Li Jianguo and Lu Yingming climbed out, they smiled at the branches around them.
They unloaded their things beside their old earth cellar, then began clearing it out.
The two of them would stay in their old earth cellar again. The branches covering it had collapsed, and the layer of soil spread over them had fallen inside along with them. They had to clear all of that out first.
It wasn't particularly heavy work, and both men were old hands. They pulled out the branches first, then climbed down with iron spades and shoveled the soil up and out.
Li Long didn't help. He gathered an armful of dry branches and set them down where Lao Huang had built his cooking hearth, then rebuilt the stone hearth, which someone had scattered.
It was a clear, sunny day. He found some dry grass, snapped the branches he had gathered, and lit a fire between the stones.
Once the fire was burning, Li Long found some short, thick logs and laid them over the branches. The flames immediately shrank, licking the wood before soon setting it alight.
Li Long fetched a pot from the Jeep's trunk and set it on the stone hearth, then took a bucket to the nearby stream, drew some water, and poured it into the pot.
With the water heating, there was nothing else Li Long needed to do.
"Xiao Long, go take care of your own work," Li Jianguo said. He had already shoveled the soil out of the earth cellar and was getting ready to gather