The well is a symbol of agricultural society.

In my hometown, the wells change color and form throughout the year.

Everything in my hometown is beautiful, even the wells in my hometown in autumn are particularly beautiful and have a unique charm.

In autumn, the wells in the south of the Yangtze River are full of autumn water, deep and quiet. This is the most beautiful time for the wells in my hometown.

In autumn in my hometown, the sky is high and vast.

The wells in my hometown in autumn are also deep and quiet under the sun.

Looking down, I saw a pool of autumn water. Although it was far away, it was like a bright mirror, so translucent and clear.

Just like the autumn in my hometown, it is the harvest season. All things are nurtured and grown, and they have become fruit at this time. The well water in my hometown, after being washed by spring water and settling in midsummer, is the most sweet and refreshing in autumn. , is the most delicious time of the year.

In this season, the smell of hometown will also float in the well.

In the busy autumn days, after the late rice harvest, the harvested rice is piled everywhere on the drying ground. The well in the village is actually next to the village drying ground. In the surrounding open space, there are piles of unthreshed rice. The rice is the straw that has been threshed.

The wells in my hometown have no covers. During the threshing process, the dust from the grass clippings flew into the air, and some fine grass clippings always fell into the well.

When fetching water, you need to go around the piles of rice waiting to be threshed in the drying field, and remove the piles of rice and the finished straw. It is like walking through the Minos maze, which is more interesting than usual. It takes a lot of effort to fetch water straight away. Whether one person carries it home or two brothers carry it home, one must be careful to avoid spilling the water on the drying ground, which will get you scolded. But carrying water in other seasons, But it's not that complicated.

Carrying water is troublesome, and fetching water is actually troublesome. The water drawn in the bucket often has grass clippings floating on the surface, just like in my grandmother's story, the little daughter-in-law sprinkled chaff into the well water for travelers in the summer. Sometimes we fetch water and pour it into the bucket, and then we use our hands to pick up the grass clippings floating on the water. Sometimes we go home and pour the water into the water tank and fish out the grass clippings after the water calms down. We always use our hands. I didn't feel that dirty. However, children don’t find it troublesome to fish out grass clippings from the water when fetching water. We always happily fish out the grass clippings from the bucket and water tank, just like fishing for fish. After I finished fishing, I laid my head down and drank until I was full. I never felt tired, bothered, or dirty.

Perhaps, at that time, words like trouble and dirty had not yet taken root in the dictionary of our lives.

Men may find it troublesome when they encounter such a situation when fetching water. Their time is valuable, unlike us who have the leisure time of playing games. They always hurriedly sweep away the larger grass clippings on the surface with their hands. As for the fine ones, it seems as if they don't exist in the eyes of adults. Even the women don't care about these tiny grass clippings.

So what if there are grass clippings in the water? I remember that in autumn, when I scooped water from the water tank for cooking, there would always be a few grass clippings floating in the rice pot. I would use a copper spoon to skim the grass clippings away and then add clean water. This was a common thing. As for when eating fish in autumn, one or two straw shavings are often found in the dish, but no one takes it seriously.

Perhaps, in everyone's mind, this kind of well water and this kind of situation are more or less the taste of a good harvest.

This kind of situation is only common in autumn.

After the autumn harvest, the temperature begins to slowly drop, and the leaves of the surrounding trees begin to turn yellow or fall. The leaves of the jujube tree fall first. When the autumn wind passes, the leaves drift in the wind, and some fall into the wells. Leaves falling into the well are not the same as grass clippings. The leaves rot quickly and are large. After fetching water, fishing them out is simple and decisive, and there is no situation like appeasing grass clippings. Looking back now, it's really a strange choice.

Although in the wells in autumn, there are harvested grass clippings first, then withered leaves, and there seems to be endless debris falling into the wells, but these have never affected the well water in autumn. This characteristic is the clearest and sweetest among the four seasons of the year. After all, at that time, there was almost no industrial pollution.

The wonders of nature can also be seen in the changes in the well water in my hometown.