Raising silkworms for the first time in my life

One day in the spring of 2020, my daughter's good friend sent more than a dozen spring silkworms. The curious and natural daughter used her small hand in front of her father, happily playing with silkworms like noodles, watching the silkworms squirming in her hands, and her mouth kept saying, "Daddy, Daddy, silkworm baby, you see, you see!" ”。 As a father, I rushed over, hey, this silkworm baby is so cute! The soft body, white, tender, very pleasant.

Since then, I have had a small task to help the silkworm baby find mulberry trees and pick mulberry leaves.

One Wednesday at noon, I was hanging out with my colleagues. So, I talked about my daughter's silkworm breeding. A colleague from Shandong is no stranger to mulberry trees and silkworm farming. At the stall where they were chatting, suddenly the colleague pointed his right hand forward to the right and blurted out, "Look, that's mulberry tree!" ”

This mulberry tree grows inside a wall, and some of the folded leaves protrude out of the wall, which can be described as "the branches and leaves outside the trunk wall of the wall" and "a mulberry leaf comes out of the wall". Oh, so I picked some by the way and carried them in my pocket.

When I got home, I watched the silkworm babies who had been placed in a toy box by my daughter, lying quietly. In the toy box, only a few small pieces of broken pieces ate the remaining dried mulberry leaves, and the silkworm babies were too lazy to eat, perhaps they couldn't eat it. Thinking that they had been "running out of food" for two days, they hurriedly took out the mulberry leaves picked at noon from their pockets and sprinkled them evenly on the hungry silkworm babies.

After a while, the chubby body squirmed, and there was a "click, click, click" sound, as if it was really hungry. I moved a small stool and sat next to it, looking at the silkworm babies enjoying the food, listening to the thin voices, and I was somewhat relieved. It was gratifying that a few mulberry leaves that he had raised his hand could make a few hairy silkworms extremely excited and eat so sweet! Somewhat incredible.

I remember Li Shangyin's poem, "Spring silkworms to the end of the dead silk, wax torch into gray tears began to dry." "I think the spring silkworm is very great, and the dedication is commendable." When I was a child, I often heard of silkworms, but I never had the opportunity to really see spring silkworms, let alone touch them, and I had very little knowledge of spring silkworms! This time, it was the daughter who made up for the experience she had never had.

I'm going to wait for these little "guests."

So, for several days, I worked with my colleagues to find mulberry trees that were more convenient for picking mulberry leaves after lunch.

Near the unit park, in a state of undeveloped state, which is surrounded by walls, overgrown land, was once the villagers' tree garden, or village. The daughter's exhortation, "Daddy, pick more mulberry leaves for the silkworm babies", and those cute silkworm babies, stimulated their strong interest in finding mulberry trees and picking more mulberry leaves.

Together with colleagues, stepping on the lush grass, pulling aside trees that are more than one person tall, climbing over the falling walls, and appearing in front of you are one dense mulberry tree after another! The mulberry leaves are emerald green, shining in the spring sun, flashing and shining, especially dazzling. This mulberry forest not far away, I didn't expect it to be so close! I thought to myself, the silkworm babies' delicious meal finally had a place.

For several days, when I returned home, I first put the picked mulberry leaves next to the silkworm baby, and then, adding a few mulberry leaves, and then carefully observing the silkworm baby's every move, so I crouched next to it and listened carefully to the sound of "clicking and clicking", as if recalling a beautiful childhood story.

One day, as soon as I entered the door, I heard my daughter shouting in surprise, "Daddy, Daddy, come and see, the silkworm is spitting silk, and the cocoon is knotted!" Following behind her daughter, she saw a small white velvet ball, quietly snuggled in the corner of the toy box.

At this time, I instantly remembered an idiom "cocooning yourself"! It turns out that the spring silkworm ends its own life in the form of existence and completes the self-binding! Listening to my daughter, in a few days, it will bite open the silk and then turn into a butterfly, that is, "break the cocoon into a butterfly"!

Until today, I have truly seen a real process from silkworm to cocoon, which is a real event after graduating from college for nearly twenty years and working for more than ten years! It turns out that life can exist like this! From a long strip of silkworm, after nibbling on the mulberry leaves, it becomes a spindle-shaped cocoon, then a pupa, to a silkworm moth. The mystery of life is so wonderful! I was a little surprised that my original knowledge was so short.

Therefore, in the process of her daughter's study, no matter what, we must guide her to emphasize practice, and then the knowledge of the textbook. Practice produces true knowledge, otherwise, how could Li Shangyin's poems have been circulated for thousands of years?