1 . Growing plants at home is a fun and enjoyable activity to do and can be developed as a new hobby.
Gardening reduces stress. Gardening is one of the most effective, and fun ways to free yourself from the physical, mental, and emotional stress you have been carrying since the beginning of the week. If you are overworking yourself during the weekdays or seeing yourself drowning in stressful thoughts, try to spend your weekends gardening at home.
Gardening is good for your heart. Gardening requires our body to move around by doing simple tasks such as digging the ground, planting seeds, pulling out weeds, and carrying a water container’s load.
By spending our free time gardening and monitoring our plants’ growth, we are also taking care of ourselves as we gain lots of health and emotional benefits. It is a worthwhile activity because we get to see the results of our hard work when our plants start growing fonder and healthier. The way we take care of our plants reflects the way we take care of ourselves.
| A．Gardening is an act of self-love. |
| B．Gardening is good for your bones. |
| C．Gardening helps your body against diseases. |
| D．You will see a significant change in your mind. |
| E．These simple gardening tasks can be considered a low-level exercise. |
| F．It also has several positive health and emotional benefits that you can enjoy. |
| G．Returning home to a place full of beautiful plants helps us enjoy the freshness of the air. |
2 . Recent research confirms what our farming ancestors have known for centuries about hedges (树篱). They conserve precious soil by acting as windbreaks and absorbing rainwater that would otherwise wash it from the fields. And hedges store carbon, putting them in the front line of our bi d to tackle the climate crisis.
However, hedges have had a tough time in the poor countryside, with farmers encouraged to tear them down in pursuit of maximum production and larger field s to accommodate ever-larger machinery. What’s more, some hedges have been ignored. If left to their own devices, they’ll eventually become a line of trees. Some hedges each year lose their structures and fail to fulfil the primary duty as a barrier. Around a half of the nation’s hedges have disappeared in the past century.
There are signs that “the tide is turning”. The search for net zero has aroused many organizations’ interest in the humble hedge’s role as a carbon sink. The Climate Change Committee is recommending a 40 percent increase in hedges: an additional 200,000 km. Such recommendations are starting to drive policy. Cash-pressed farmers will be encouraged to create new hedges and improve their management of existing ones under the new Environmental Land Management Schemes, which will replace many of the existing agricultural support payments in coming years. Meanwhile, initiatives such as Close the Gap, led by the Tree Council, is providing funding and support to plug the gaps in existing hedges with new planting. There’s even an app to help time-pressed farmers do a quick survey to spot where their hedges need some help.
This is a good time for hedges. Take some of the most pressing challenges facing the countryside, and indeed, the world as a whole — the climate crisis, soil erosion (侵蚀), insect attack and wider biodiversity loss — and hedges are part of the solution.
1. What does recent research show about hedges?| A．They are unique landscapes in the rain. |
| B．They act as dividing lines between fields. |
| C．They have long been helpful to agriculture. |
| D．They are frequently washed away from the fields. |
| A．Their suffering. | B．Their production. |
| C．Their duties. | D．Their structures. |
| A．Puzzled. | B．Concerned. | C．Humble. | D．Indifferent. |
| A．Hedges: Ancient Resources |
| B．Hedges: Official Recommendations |
| C．Restoring Hedges: Bringing Benefits to the Environment |
| D．Researching Hedges: Originating from Farmers’ Request |
3 . When micro-plastics end up in farm fields, the pollution can damage plant growth. But two young researchers now report that combining fungi (真菌) with certain farm wastes can partly overcome that problem.
May Shin, 20, and Jiwon Choi, 18, met in a research design class at the Fryeburg Academy, a high school in Maine. May had desired to explore how micro-plastics might affect the ecosystem. Jiwon was crazy about plants and fungi. The young scientists cooperated to test how long-lived plastics might affect farm crops.
Scientists have shown certain fungi can aid root growth and a plant’s nutrient uptake. Those organisms are named arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF). Certain farm wastes, like straw, can provide nutrients to plants and help stabilize their roots. Such wastes are also known as mushroom substrate (基质) and people often grow mushrooms in them.
May and Jiwon planted over 2,000 scallion (大葱) seeds in pots of soil. Half the seeds got soil polluted with micro-plastics. The rest grew in plastic-free soil. The plants then were further divided into four groups. The young scientists added AMF to the soil in one group. Another group had a top layer of mushroom substrate. A third group got both treatments. The last group got none. For three weeks, the pair tracked how many scallions sprouted (发芽) in each group and measured the plants’ height once each week.
About twice as many scallions sprouted in clean soil compared to that containing plastic bits. But among plants surviving in the polluted soil, a combination of AMF and mushroom substrate helped them out. Those getting both treatments grew 5.4 centimeters per week. That was faster than either of the treatments alone or those getting none.
Jiwon and May then looked at the plant roots with a microscope. Where AMF had been added, it grew into those roots. That increased the scallion roots’ surface area, May said, which should promote their uptake of nutrients. So “I see this project as coming up with a sustainable solution for plant growth in polluted soils,” said May.
1. Why did May and Jiwon work together?| A．To see the effects of long-lived plastics on farm crops. |
| B．To find the relationship between plants and fungi. |
| C．To design a research on the growth of plants. |
| D．To explore the way that the ecosystem works. |
| A．To prove the existence of micro-plastics. | B．To compare fungi with farm wastes. |
| C．To tell the advantages of farm wastes. | D．To provide some related information. |
| A．Its purpose. | B．Its design. | C．Its findings. | D．Its reasons. |
| A．By keeping the plants more resistant to pollution. | B．By allowing the plants’ deep area more freedom. |
| C．By making nutrients more available to the plants. | D．By exposing the roots to a larger surface area. |
4 . While the idea of warmer, shorter winters might sound appealing to farmers eager to tap into longer growing seasons those engaged in Georgia’s massive peach industry are finding the trend alarming. Since 1960, the average winter temperature in Georgia, has risen by 5°F. For farmers who depend on cold weather to help peaches grow, the state’s diminishing winters are a warning to adapt or else.
One of the keys to growing the perfect Georgia peach is something called “chill (寒冷的) hours.” Nut and fruit trees require a certain number of chill hours below 45°F to regulate their growth. Without the needed amount, flower buds may be delayed or unpredictable in spring and fruit set and fruit quality will be poor. In Georgia, home to nearly 12,000 acres of peaches, the average peach tree requires anywhere from 650 to 850 chill hours each season.
The impact from a loss of chill hours was felt most recently in 2017, when farms across the state averaged less than 400 hours and 85% of the peach crop was lost. “It was so bad that we didn’t care about the blooms anymore.” Chavez said, “We wondered if the plants would survive.”
While planting new varieties of peaches that require fewer chill hours is part of the solution, it’s not the only characteristic that’s necessary. Despite warmer, shorter winters, Georgia still experiences a consistent frost in early March. Peach varieties with fewer chill hours often bloom earlier, making them easy victims to this freezing spring temperatures.
In response, the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) is experimenting with hybrid varieties that achieve that delicate balance. The days of planting 1,000+ chill hour varieties in Georgia may be gone, but the hope is that continued research into global warming-tolerant varieties may keep the state’s official fruit firmly in the sweet spot of American produce.
“We’ve got to keep changing as the environment changes,” Georgia farmer Lawton Pearson said. “But it’s not something that scares us in the slightest about the future of growing peaches. It’s just something you’ve got to deal with.”
1. What does the underlined word “diminishing” in Paragraph 1 mean?| A．Shortened. | B．Freezing. |
| C．Disappearing. | D．Delayed. |
| A．To explain reasons for chill-hours loss. |
| B．To prove 2017 is the worst year in history. |
| C．To confirm peach farmers suffered the most. |
| D．To show the serious consequence of chill-hours loss. |
| A．Improvement of sweetness of peaches. |
| B．Achievement of the shortest chill hours. |
| C．Avoidance of peaches’ much delayed flowering, |
| D．Balance between low chill and normal flowering. |
| A．Curious. | B．Skeptical. |
| C．Positive. | D．Ambiguous. |
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Yunnan has diverse resources of tea trees. The regulation also advocates proper research and
6 . In 2010, Barack Obama was to pay a visit to Mumbai’s Gandhi Museum, where palm(棕榈)trees full of me dotted the grounds. The president knew me well-coconuts (椰子)are a part of life in Indonesia, where he spent his boyhood. Before his visit, Indian authorities, however, removed every last sign of me around the museum. They were afraid the president of the United States would be taken out by one of me falling on his head.
Let’s get this out of the way: My reputation as the “killer fruit” of countless innocents was then and still is a misbelief. A repeatedly misinterpreted 1984 study overstated the number of deaths I caused by hitting people on the head, and the word spread. Today, the only things about me “to die for” are the sometimes too-delicious foods you humans make with me, such as cookies and pies. A decade ago, health experts briefly gave me a halo because some of my fats may raise beneficial cholesterol (胆固醇). But ask a heart doctor today and they’ll tell you that coconut oil will raise your bad cholesterol as much. Death by coconut, indeed!
People have other wrong ideas about me. But allow me to leave you with a sweet presidential tale. A World War II boat commanded by one John F.Kennedy was destroyed in 1943 by a Japanese warship. Kennedy and his surviving crew were stuck on an island. They were suffering from hunger, thirst and injuries when they met two friendly native coast-watchers. Kennedy scratched a message into a coconut shell: “NAURO ISL...COMMANDER...11 ALIVE...NEED SMALL BOAT...KENNEDY.”
The coast-watchers delivered this successfully and all the crew were saved. Years later, the coconut shell was given to the newly elected president. It sat on his office desk throughout his presidency and now is a center-piece of the John F.Kennedy Library in Boston-as the proof that we coconuts don’t take lives, we save them.
1. Why did Indian officials get rid of “me”?| A．To reduce Obama’s fear. | B．To avoid unexpected injuries. |
| C．To show their welcome tradition. | D．To follow the request from the US. |
| A．thought little of me | B．did great damage to me |
| C．made me well-known | D．brought me a good name |
| A．Amusing. | B．Anxious. |
| C．Concerned. | D．Romantic. |
| A．To show a new discovery. | B．To correct people’s misbelief. |
| C．To tell the history of coconuts. | D．To describe a successful rescue. |
