Chapter Ten: The Flower House Becomes a Vegetable Garden

  At first glance at old Thomas, he looked all right on the surface, so he said to Billy: "I'll go and talk to him".

  Just as he was about to stand up, Billy gently pressed down on Ju An's hand and then loudly said to Thomas: "Thomas, come over here!"

  Thomas looked at Billy in surprise, put down the cards in his hand and walked to the bar.

  "Thomas, this gentleman wants to hire a cowboy from the old Flower Ranch," Billy introduced.

  "Call me An, alright? I think I'll hire an experienced cowboy. I'm planning to raise about a thousand heads of cattle first."

  Thomas hesitated for a moment "If a thousand head of cattle, two cowboys are a few less, three are a bit more".

  "Let's start with a thousand head of cattle, then I plan to buy a dozen or so horses, and get a few hundred sheep. That should keep three people busy enough." said Thomas.

  "That should be about it," Thomas said with a nod.

  Next, he discussed the treatment with Thomas and gave him $1,500 a month, plus insurance. Thomas then made another call to his son.

  Old Billie recommended another female cowboy, Nancy.

  Then let's talk to Thomas and see what else we need to add. As far as I know, there is only one car and a tractor.

  Thomas walked outside to take a look at the F-150, and came back shaking his head to Ju An, saying: "The towing force is too small, we need at least one more big one, and also a trailer for cattle."

  It wasn't until now that Ju An thought of what Pete had said when they left the garage. Then he said to Thomas, "Anyway, it's still early, let's go take a look at the garage later."

  Thomas nodded.

  Before long, Wayne, the son of Nancy and Thomas, arrived at the bar one after another. Ju An discussed the treatment with them, and they had no objection, so it was settled that they would go to work on the ranch tomorrow afternoon.

  They then found a lawyer in town and signed a contract. After finishing these things, Nancy said goodbye to everyone first and went home to prepare her belongings.

  Next, Juren and Thomas went to another car dealership, this time at Thomas's suggestion, and chose a F-450 King Ranch edition, also known as the Ranch King edition. Juren said it could tow two empty Black Hawk helicopters. Then they added a trailer that could hold over a dozen cows, plus two four-wheel motorcycles, spending nearly $90,000.

  Accompanied by Thomas, Ju An went to the supermarket to buy a week's worth of food for four people and also bought two barrels of gasoline and one barrel of diesel oil, which will be brought back to the ranch by Ju An tonight.

  F450 let Thomas drive to the ranch again tomorrow, coincidentally tomorrow to pick up Nancy together, and bid farewell to Thomas' father and son, driving alone to his new home.

  On the road, Ju An turned on the radio and changed channels, only to find that all of them were playing country music. In Ju An's understanding, country music was all about unrequited love, triangular relationships, and heartbreak.

  As Taylor's "Wildest Dreams" came on the radio, she hummed along to the music.

  Arrived at the door, the sun had not set yet. Drove the car to the entrance of the residential building and stopped. Moved all the packages into the house, then removed the covers from the sofa and bed inside.

  Took out the bedding and some supplies I bought, went upstairs to the master bedroom, changed the sheets. Yesterday's brief tour now feels different when everything belongs to me. The room is really big, my bedroom is over 40 square meters, the bathroom has more than 10 square meters, and there's also a walk-in closet of over 20 square meters.

  The entire main building has a total of 7 bedrooms, with 4 on the first floor and 3 on the second. The corridors and living room on the first floor are paved with dozens of centimeters large dark red ceramic tiles, with deep and light shades alternating to create a harmonious whole.

  The upstairs is made of ceramic tiles except for the bathroom and the rest are dark walnut wood floors. The walls have light blue wallpaper.

  Cleaned up his bedroom casually, went downstairs and drove the car into the garage.

  Into the space, three guys were released. Pidan, Huto and Suantou, the three guys came out and excitedly sniffed around everywhere, with Huto occasionally rushing to Ju'an and calling out twice.

  Letting the three guys be, letting them have fun, walking towards the house to prepare dinner. Pidan followed Ju'an all the way, while Hu Tou and Suan Tou were obviously more interested in the new place, running around everywhere, catching something without caring about anything, first coming to pee.

  Entered the kitchen, washed a few pots and bowls, took out fresh bone-in beef from the bag, estimated to be around 4-5 catties, roughly chopped into over ten pieces, threw them into the pot, added water, fortunately, had prepared for eating early, took out stored Sichuan peppercorns, dried red chili peppers, soy sauce and whatnot, a total of twenty or thirty bottles and jars.

  Added some Sichuan peppercorns, poured in some soy sauce, and then added some dried chili peppers. Then opened the gas stove to simmer it. After that, adjusted the seasoning, and put some things into the hanging cabinet.

  Left the stewed beef on the stove, went out of the house, took down the four-wheeled motorcycle from the pickup truck, couldn't move the several oil barrels on it, had to put them on the car first.

  Then he drove a four-wheeled motorcycle and circled around, and the three Pidan Tiger Heads were also attracted by the four-wheeled motorcycle and ran after it. From time to time, they barked twice.

  It was a joyful ride, similar to the go-kart rides I had in my home country. Later, we added Hu Tou and Pi Dan on the car, but it was too small to fit Su Tou, so he had to run alongside, making pitiful "woo" sounds as he ran. Hu Tou and Pi Dan sat on the car, occasionally barking at Su Tou with a smug expression. After a while, we swapped out Hu Tou for Su Tou, and later replaced Pi Dan again. The three of them took turns sitting on the car, absolutely no favoritism.

  One person and three dogs played for nearly half an hour, then stopped the motorcycle at the entrance of the residence, walked into the kitchen to taste it, and found that the beef soup was done. He put the rice bowls of the three guys in the space at the door, each with a few pieces of beef soup with bones, and then added some buckwheat bread he had bought. The three guys immediately started eating enthusiastically.

  Yu An also used a small basin to scoop up some beef and squatted at the door to eat.

  These few guys are pretty good, they basically eat very cleanly every time, and don't need to brush the dog bowl. They're typical homebody dogs, which makes Ju An very satisfied in this regard.

  After finishing dinner, I casually washed the pots and bowls. Ju An was preparing to go to the greenhouse to take a look. She didn't have much interest in raising flowers. She planned to plant some vegetables or something, and prepared to sow the seeds she had brought from her hometown. As soon as she entered the greenhouse, she felt that it was much hotter inside than outside.

  Took off the long sleeve and hung it on the door handle, settled down to take a closer look inside, the area was not small, took out seeds from the space, and poured water from the earth bucket into another bucket.

  At intervals of one step, a seed was planted, and about thirty or so were planted. Ju An felt that it should be enough. Then he scooped some water from the bucket to the place where the seeds were just buried and watered them. After watering thirty or so seeds, the seeds had already sprouted, and the seedlings grew longer and longer before his eyes. Ju An hurriedly set up a trellis in a flurry, fortunately, there were many long wooden bars in the greenhouse.

  After fetching a wooden stick, the task of fetching sticks was handed over to Pidan, Suan Tou and Hu Tou. The three guys each picked up a stick and passed it to Ju An, who squatted on the ground. Ju An first inserted the three sticks into the soil, leaning them against each other. The seedlings were growing too fast, and there was no time to tie the sticks together, so they simply leaned the sticks against each other and casually wrapped a few circles of rope around them, still sweating profusely in tension.

  The last shelf was just set up, and the seedlings had already grown above my knees. I tied them up one by one with twine, and after finishing all that, the tomatoes had already grown almost to my chest. I wiped the sweat from my face, fortunately, I hadn't planted cucumbers or calabazas that need a trellis yet.

  Having had this experience, Ju An first set up a frame in the place where he was preparing to plant cucumbers, melons and beans, then planted the seeds in the ground, watered them with the water from the surrounding ditch, and didn't need to take care of them anymore. Before long, the vines began to climb the frame.

  Then they planted calabazas and winter melons one after another, with three dogs busy chasing after their heels. After two or three hours of hard work, when they finally looked up, there was still a small half of the shed that hadn't been planted yet.

  My waist and back hurt, I really didn't have the energy to plant anymore. I casually put the white radish seeds directly in a ladle of water to soak, then scattered them on the ground, and surprisingly, the seeds sprouted.

  I found a relatively clean place to sit down. As soon as I sat down, the three tiger heads also lay down beside me, constantly sticking out their tongues and panting.

  Stroked the heads of several dogs one by one, looking at the vegetables growing continuously in the flower house, feeling extremely proud. These purely green vegetables won't need to be bought anymore. Gently patted the garlic head "From now on, the money saved from not buying vegetables will be used to give you all a big bone every day, everyone worked hard today". Not caring whether the garlic could understand or not.