英语博客(A cup of English):063 Pruning time

　　Beginners.
The weather has finally changed from dull and freezing to warm and sunny. Everybody I meet when I go about my daily activities seems happy. Winter feels very, very long by the time we reach March. So, hurray for April! One of the greatest things to see at the moment is new growth. All over the garden there are signs of plants and flowers beginning to grow. Most of them are mainly underground, and just a little green is poking¹ through the earth. Daffodils and bluebells² have already flowered, of course; they are the typical early Spring flowers. Some people have loads of them all over their front yards; we don't. I'll have to buy some bulbs this Fall and get to work on that. Even the supermarkets have shelves full of different colored Spring flowers in different colored baskets and pots. The down side to this season is that there is lots of work to do in the garden. I don't mind it, though, as I am a gardener at heart. My husband does most of the hard work. This weekend, he worked like a mule³ in the garden. Because we have a lot of lawn, he had to hire a couple of machines to aerate⁴ and thatch⁵ the lawn. He then fertilized⁶ it. We have about an acre of land, so it took him most of the weekend! I just do the fun stuff, like plant flowers and vegetables, weed, and dig. Yes, I love to dig. I have inherited a love of gardening from my grandmother on my father's side. In our family, we all have strong backs and green fingers.
Grammar notes.
Useful expressions: Hurray for ......, to have green fingers, (I, you etc) don't mind, loads of .....
Exs: Hurray for Superman! He has saved us again!
I don't have green fingers at all; I only have houseplants, and I manage to kill all of them. My neighbor has really green fingers. She can grow anything and everything.
I don't mind if you finish all of the milk; just buy some more as soon as you can, please.
In the shop there were loads of bargains, and the whole shopping center was full of loads of people.
Advanced.
This lunch time when I came home from picking up my little girl from preschool, there was a loud, mechanical noise in  the neighborhood. It wasn't the usual moan of a lawn mower⁷; it was much louder. I went out into the back yard and saw that some men were up in the neighbors' high trees with chainsaws. "What are those men doing up there, Mum?" asked Domini. "They're pruning⁸, by the looks of it," I replied. "What's pruning?" my daughter asked. "They are cutting the trees." I replied. At this, Domini pulled a cross face, ran onto the lawn, and yelled, " Hey, you bad men, you stop cutting those nice trees!" "It's alright, babe," I said quickly, " I think the neighbor paid them to do it. The trees need a bit of a hair cut; some of the branches are too long." I was pleased that the noise of the chainsaws was loud enough to drown out the noise of my very loud daughter. As I looked at the men in the trees, I could just about make out that they were roped up. This enabled them to swing around from branch to branch, Tarzan style...., well, a very slow, heavy Tarzan style, and without the monkeys. They chopped and chopped, bringing down big limbs of the tree that is one of the biggest in the neighborhood. "What a shame!" I thought as a huge branch fell to the ground. But then a thought occured to me. This very old tree hangs right over my vegetable patch ; it's probably good for me that the weakest, old branches get cut off so they don't land on my head while I'm gardening!
Grammar notes.
Verbs: to prune⁹, to yell, to drown out (noise), to enable.
Exs: I get confused about the best times to prune different plants,- some plants need it in the Spring, others in the Autumn.
He was so mad that he yelled for five minutes; when he finished, he realised that nobody was listening.
The dump truck's engine drowned out the noise of the awful music, thank goodness.
Having a regular babysitter enables me to go out and to participate in interesting events.

1 poking   

n. 刺，戳，袋 vt. 拨开，刺，戳 vi. 戳，刺，捅，搜索，伸出，行动散慢

参考例句：

• He was poking at the rubbish with his stick. 他正用手杖拨动垃圾。
• He spent his weekends poking around dusty old bookshops. 他周末都泡在布满尘埃的旧书店里。

2 bluebells   

n.圆叶风铃草( bluebell的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• He pressed her down upon the grass, among the fallen bluebells. 他把她压倒在草地上，压倒在掉落满地的风信子花上。 来自英汉文学
• The bluebells had cascaded on to the ground. 风信子掉到了地上。 来自辞典例句

3 mule   

n.骡子，杂种，执拗的人

参考例句：

• A mule is a cross between a mare and a donkey.骡子是母马和公驴的杂交后代。
• He is an old mule.他是个老顽固。

4 aerate   

v.充气，让空气进入

参考例句：

• It were an aquarium,complete with an air pump to aerate the running water.但最让我难忘的礼物否则玩具，而是唯一带空气泵、能通气的鱼缸。
• Each insect contributes something just as ants aerate the soil.每一种昆虫都贡献了一些事情，就象蚂蚁松土给土壤增加空气一样。

5 thatch   

vt.用茅草覆盖…的顶部；n.茅草(屋)

参考例句：

• They lit a torch and set fire to the chapel's thatch.他们点着一支火把，放火烧了小教堂的茅草屋顶。
• They topped off the hut with a straw thatch. 他们给小屋盖上茅草屋顶。

6 Fertilized   

v.施肥( fertilize的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The study of psychology has recently been widely cross-fertilized by new discoveries in genetics. 心理学研究最近从遗传学的新发现中受益匪浅。
• Flowers are often fertilized by bees as they gather nectar. 花常在蜜蜂采蜜时受粉。

7 mower   

n.割草机

参考例句：

• We need a lawn mower to cut the grass.我们需要一台草坪修剪机来割草。
• Your big lawn mower is just the job for the high grass.割高草时正需要你的大割草机。

8 pruning   

n.修枝，剪枝，修剪v.修剪（树木等）( prune的现在分词 )；精简某事物，除去某事物多余的部分

参考例句：

• In writing an essay one must do a lot of pruning. 写文章要下一番剪裁的工夫。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• A sapling needs pruning, a child discipline. 小树要砍，小孩要管。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

9 prune   

n.酶干；vt.修剪，砍掉，削减；vi.删除

参考例句：

• Will you prune away the unnecessary adjectives in the passage?把这段文字中不必要的形容词删去好吗？
• It is our job to prune the side branches of these trees.我们的工作就是修剪这些树的侧枝。