英语博客：Ghosts in the orchard.
时间：2019-02-17 作者：英语课 分类：英语博客 A cup of English
I was pulling out of the parking lot of a country bakery today, when the orchard 1 opposite caught my eye. All the bare trees were a bright white color, from the bottom of the trunks to the tips of the top branches. It was quite a sight, and contrasted beautifully with the dark hills in the background. The reason that the trees were so ghostly white is that they had been sprayed with diatomaceous earth, which is like a clay powder that stops the eggs of insects developing .Maintaining an orchard is a full-time 2 job, as the orchardists around here know. When you have an orchard, there is a list of jobs which start, of course, with planting the young apple trees. In this area they are irrigated 3 because Wenatchee only gets about 9 inches of rainfall each year. Putting in the irrigation pipes, and maintaining them is a job in itself. Like any plant, apple trees can get infested 4 with harmful insects, so certain pesticides 5 have to be used, in accordance with the state laws. Fertilizers are also used at certain times of the year. Then comes the pruning 6 in the winter which is especially necessary if you want a big crop. Not many people know that the orchards 7 are sprayed with calcium 8. This mineral helps replace the calcium that is lost when a tree goes through very cold or hot weather. A tree will remove calcium from the fruit to protect itself, leaving a poor quality fruit behind. Applying calcium can stop up to a 50% loss of some varieties of apple. It sounds like science, doesn't it? Well, it is. Researchers and orchardists have worked in this area for over a hundred years, trying to find the best ways to care for the trees, in order to produce the best fruit. That is why half of all the apples sold in the U.S. come from here.
Grammar notes.
Common expressions and orchard vocabulary: to catch one's eye, a crop, fertilizer, irrigation, to prune 9, a variety.
1. The red hat in the shop window caught my eye; I had to buy it.
2. Wheat is a crop that is grown in the flat lands near us.
3. My roses need fertilizer; they produced very few flowers last year.
4. In very dry areas, one must have irrigation if plants are to be grown.
5. The team of workers pruned 10 all of the fruit trees, which will produce bigger and better quality fruit.
6. The Red Delicious, the Granny Smith, and the Pacific Rose are three varieties of apple sold in supermarkets.
- My orchard is bearing well this year.今年我的果园果实累累。
- Each bamboo house was surrounded by a thriving orchard.每座竹楼周围都是茂密的果园。
- A full-time job may be too much for her.全天工作她恐怕吃不消。
- I don't know how she copes with looking after her family and doing a full-time job.既要照顾家庭又要全天工作，我不知道她是如何对付的。
- They irrigated their crops with water from this river. 他们用这条小河里的水浇庄稼。
- A crop can be sown, weeded, irrigated, and fertilized uniformly. 一种作物可以均匀一致地进行播种，除草，灌溉和施肥。
- The kitchen was infested with ants. 厨房里到处是蚂蚁。
- The apartments were infested with rats and roaches. 公寓里面到处都是老鼠和蟑螂。
- vegetables grown without the use of pesticides 未用杀虫剂种植的蔬菜
- There is a lot of concern over the amount of herbicides and pesticides used in farming. 人们对农业上灭草剂和杀虫剂的用量非常担忧。 来自《简明英汉词典》
- 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》
- They turned the hills into orchards and plains into granaries. 他们把山坡变成了果园，把平地变成了粮仓。
- Some of the new planted apple orchards have also begun to bear. 有些新开的苹果园也开始结苹果了。
- We need calcium to make bones.我们需要钙来壮骨。
- Calcium is found most abundantly in milk.奶含钙最丰富。
- 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。