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I love indoor plants; I really do—but you would never know it by looking at my track record with them. I am always killing succulents.
I decided to consult an expert on the matter .I’ve grown tired of killing plants. It shouldn’t be rocket science, but maybe, to some, it is.
As it tums out, succulents are not as low-maintenance as they’re often marketed to seem, but they’re not impossible to care for, either. Here’s what I’ve learned after asking a garden shop staff a thousand and one questions.
HOW TO AVOID KILLING YOUR SUCCULENTS
1. Use loose “cactus（仙人掌）” soil.
Succulents need to drain well. They won’t survive in sand or rock, and some other soils hold too much moisture. You can purchase cactus potting soil from your local garden shop. Stick with that stuff.
2. Expose it to reasonable sun, shade, and temperatures
All plants need sunshine (remember photosynthesis（光合作用）, just varying levels of it. Succulents are flexible, but they won’t do well in darkness or in sweltering direct sun. Moving the succulent in and out of reasonable levels of sunlight will help it thrive.
3. Don’t over-water.
As a rookie like me, a person lacking in experience, this was definitely one of my mistakes-too much TLC (Tender Love Caring). The problem is, no one can really tell you how often to water your succulent; you have to monitor it yourself. Depending on your climate, the soil will dry out at varying speeds. Water only when the soil has completely dried from the previous watering. Succulents won’t quickly die for lack of water, but they do need it. Allowing the water to drain completely through the soil is the best way to avoid root rot. Otherwise, a misting bottle can be helpful to regulate water quantities.
4. “Plant food” is not a joke.
I used to think that “plant food” was just a marketing ploy（营销手段）. It’s not. Since these plants aren’t growing in their natural habitats, they can’t absorb the nutrients (e. g, calcium) that they naturally need. Cactus/succulent food is cheap and will last a long time; you only need one drop for every gallon of water.
5. Give them air circulation.
Contrary to popular belief, succulents won't thrive in a closed container (like a terrarium with a lid). They need air.
6. They need room to grow.
Little succulents are cute and cheap, but they’ll stay that size unless you occasionally repot them. Some succulents can grow to be over ten feet tall, while others will comfortably grow within a foot or two. Occasionally repotting them might mean re-creating a pretty arrangement, but it will help the plants live longer.
Unless the dirt is already damp, give the succulents some water before repotting. The new potting soil will be pretty dry, so the extra water will spread out.
Best of lucky, everyone! May you have a beautiful windowsill with succulents that thrive!
Title | How to Avoid Killing Your Succulents |
Introduction | 1. succulents shouldn’t be rocket science, but I 2. to kill these indoor plants. |
3. to succulent success | Succulent soil has to be able to support the plant physically, hold a little moisture yet 4. perfectly extra water. 5. to sunlight at a reasonable level, succulents grow in a better way. Rookies, who are 6., must remember: Don’t water until the soil has completely dried from the previous watering. Succulents need to be fertilized but in small 7.. That air 8. is required for indoor succulents. 9. can contribute to the healthy growth of succulents. |
May you have a beautiful windowsill decorated with succulents 10. well. |
名著翻译
1.It was Plato who said that his definition of thinking was “the soul talking to itself”.
2.Competition, if confronted enthusiastically, can be the greatest self-motivating experience in the world.
3.Helen Keller didn’t complain about not being given enough money from the government to compensate her for her disability.
4.The secret to a happy life is a sound mind in a sound body.
5.A vision should be judged by these criteria, the criteria of power and effectiveness.
Until recently, scientists and authors were in absolute disagreement over the point of crying. In King Henry VI, Shakespeare wrote,”…, to weep is to make less the depth of grief”, and the American writer Lemony Snicket said “unless you have been very, very lucky, you know that a good, long session of weeping can often make you feel better, even if your circumstances have not changed one bit”.
Charles Darwin, on the other hand, thought that shedding tears (the act of crying) was merely a useless side effect of the way that the muscles around the eye worked. For him, those muscles had to contract（收缩）from time to time so that they didn’t overflow with blood; the expulsion of tears was simply an unintended consequence of that evolved physiological（生理学的）process. He did acknowledge that crying could help young infants attract the attention of their parents, though.
We now know that crying—at least, the sort that adults do—is a complex physiological response to some kind of emotional stimulus. The most noticeable feature is of course the shedding of tears, but it also includes changes in facial expressions and breathing patterns.
From a scientific perspective, crying is different from shedding the kind of tears like when you accidentally rub your eyes after eating spicy foods. Even the tears themselves are different. In 1981, Minnesota psychiatrist William H Frey II discovered that tears flowing due to sad movies had more protein in them than those that flowed in response to some freshly chopped onions.
If you shed tears of laughter when seeing a funny comedy show or you're moved to tears when listening to a bridegroom’s wedding vows to his bride, you may know that emotional tears aren't limited to feelings of deep sadness. While all of us are familiar with the feelings that are associated with crying, whether for joy or sorrow, we know little about why we do it as adults-but there are plenty of ideas.
One idea is that adult crying isn't actually all that different from the sort that babies do, at least when it comes to its social nature. In other words, perhaps weeping is a literal cry for attention, a means of soliciting support and help from our friends when we need it the most. It’s a way of communicating our inner emotional state at a time when we may not be able to express it clearly.
While this may explain some forms of crying, many researchers have found that adults often cry when they’re completely alone. Another possibility is that crying might serve as a means of “secondary appraisal,” helping people to realize just how upset they are, a way of just how upset they are and helping them understand their own feelings.
Another idea is that crying provides relief from stressful situations. The idea is consistent not only with the words of Shakespeare, but also with the words of Roman Poet Ovid, who wrote, “It is some relief to weep; grief is satisfied and carried off by tears.” The Greek Philosopher Aristotle also wrote that crying “cleanses the mind”. In a 1986 study of popular US magazines and newspapers, one psychologist found that 94% of articles about crying suggested that it helped to relieve psychological tension.
Indeed, a 2008 study of nearly 4,300 young adults from 30 countries found that most reported improvements in both their mental and physical well-being after a short period of crying, but not all. Some reported no change after a crying session, and some even said that they felt worse afterwards.
The difference seems to lie in the social context: if a person felt embarrassed about crying in public, for example, they might feel less resolved than if they cried alone or with a friend. The study also found that when people tried to suppress or hide their crying, they ended up feeling less relieved afterwards.
So the notion of having “a good cry” is not without merit. In the end, adults might just cry for the same reason as human infants: to seek help from their friends and family.
1.According to Darwin, shedding tears was ________.
A. the same thing as crying
B. aimed at attracting other’s attention
C. nothing but a physiological process
D. an effective way to get rid of negative emotions
2.What can we learn from the passage about crying?
A. It can benefit people’s eye muscles.
B. It is a response to the stimulus to eyes.
C. It is usually caused by painful emotions.
D. It can cause changes in people's outward features.
3.The underlined word “soliciting” in Paragraph 6 can be best replaced by “________”.
A. refusing B. seeking
C. providing D. receiving
4.Who doesn’t share the same idea with Shakespeare about crying?
A. Lemony Snicket. B. Ovid.
C. Aristotle. D. Charles Darwin.
5.What is the best title of the passage?
A. Why do people cry B. Experiments on crying
C. Different types of crying D. Is having a cry good for us
Edgar Alan Poe was and is an abnormal figure among the major American writers of his period. It seems to have been true of Poe that no one could look at him without seeing more than they would wish.
Poe published The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket in 1838,his only novel. Its importance is suggested by the fact that his major work comes after it. The Narrative’s shortcomings are sometimes considered to be the fact that it was written for money, as it surely was, and as almost everything else Poe wrote was also. This is not exceptional among writers anywhere, though in the case of Poe it is often treated as if his having done so were disgraceful. Be that as it may, the Narrative makes its way to a peak as strange and powerful as anything to be found in his greatest tales.
The word that reoccurs most importantly in Poe's fictions is horror. His stories are often shaped to bring the narrator and the reader to a place where the use of the word is reasonable, where the word and the experience it arouses are explored or by implication defined. Perhaps it is because Poe's tales test the limits of mental health and good manners that he is both popular and criticized.
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym has the grand scale of the nineteenth-century voyage of discovery, and a different and larger scale in the suggestions that appear as the voyage goes on. The Narrative is frequently compared with Moby-Dick, published thirteen years later, after Poe’s death. Poe uses whiteness as a highly ambiguous symbol, by no means to be interpreted as purity or holiness or by association with any other positive value. There is blackness, too, in The Narrative, specifically associated with the populations that live in the regions nearest the South Pole. The native people in Tasmania, the island south of Australia, were said by explorers and settlers to be black, and were in any case, with the word “black,” swept into the large category of those related to displacement, exploitation, and worse.
Something very like the occupation of Kentucky by white settlers lies behind the events that bring Pym to the far-sighted conclusion of his narrative. In the early years of the nineteenth century the British began what made the native people of Tasmania die out, who had tried to resist white invasion of their island. Such occupations were, of course, a major business of Europeans, or whites, almost everywhere in the world at the time Poe wrote. They, were boasted of as progress. It would have required unusual sensibility in Poe to have taken a different, very dark view of the phenomenon. But he was an unusual man. And the horror that fascinated him and gave such dreadful unity to his tales is often the unavoidable, conflict of the self by a perfect justice, the exposure of a guilty act in a form that makes its reveal a falling back of the mind against itself.
Young Pym is simply telling a story of a kind popular at the time, a voyage adventure lived out beyond the farthest reaches of exploration. The story is disturbed by its own deeper tendencies, the rising through this surface of the kind of recognition that must find expression in another form of literature. As his ship approaches the region of the South Pole, Pym notes the mildness of the climate, coolly listing the resources of the islands, which were assumed by such voyagers to be there for the taking.
If The Narrative were a conventional story, the immense roar and the towering flames might attract the notice of a passing sail—and there would be no need for a note explaining its lacking an ending. But the force of the narrative carries it beyond the fate of individuals, toward an engagement with a reality beyond any temporary human drama.
1.What does the underlined part in Paragraph 1 mean?
A. Allan Poe was a famous America writer of his period.
B. People expect too much of the American writer—Alan Poe.
C. Unlike other writers, Allan Poe is a unique and unusual writer.
D. People think Poe is a popular novelist like other famous writers.
2.Where is the novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym probably set?
A. In the South Pacific. B. In Australia.
C. At the South Pole. D. In Kentucky.
3.Which of the following can describe the characteristic of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym?
A. Poverty is the main theme of the novel.
B. The novel is full of justice elements.
C. Blackness can possibly be felt in the novel.
D. Whiteness is the obvious symbol of the novel.
4.Which of the following might be taken from the novel The Narrative?
A. “One of these adventures was related by way of introduction to a longer narrative.”
B. “Gordon Pym’s father was a respectable trader at Nantucket, where Pym was born.”
C. “The wind, as I before said, blew freshly from the southwest. The night was very cold.”
D. “Pym at length hit upon the idea of working on the terrors and guilty conscience of the mate.”
5.Which of the following statements is True according to the passage?
A. The Narrative is an adventurous story written in a conventional way.
B. The Narrative is considered one of Alan Poe's famous novels.
C. Allan Poe was misunderstood to write The Narrative for money.
D. Readers might not understand why The Narrative ended so abruptly.
Culture can affect not just language and customs, but also how people experience the world on surprisingly basic levels.
Researchers, with the help of brain scans, have uncovered shocking differences in perception（感知）between Westerners and Asians, what they see when they look at a city street, for example, or even how they perceive a simple line in a square, according to findings published in a leading science journal.
In western countries, culture makes people think of themselves as highly independent individuals. When looking at scenes, Westerners tend to focus more on central objects than on their surroundings. East Asian cultures, however, emphasize inter-dependence. When Easterners look at a scene, they tend to focus on surroundings as well as the object.
Using an experiment involving two tasks, Dr Hedden asked subjects to look at a line simply to estimate its length, a task that is played to American strengths. In another, they estimated the line’s length relative to the size of a square, an easier task for the Asians.
The level of brain activity, by tracking blood flow, was then measured by Brain Scanners. The experiment found that although there was no difference in performance, and the tasks were very easy, the levels of activity in the subjects’ brains were different. For the Americans, areas linked to attention lit up more, when they worked on the task they tended to find more difficult—estimating the line’s size relative to the square. For the Asians, the attention areas lit up more during the harder task also—estimating the line’s length without comparing it to the square. The findings are a reflection of more than ten years of previous experimental research into East-West differences.
In one study, for instance, researchers offered people a choice among five pens; four red and one green, Easterners were more likely to choose a red pen while Westerners were more likely to choose the green one.
Culture is not affecting how you see the world, but how you choose to understand and internalize（使内化）it.
But such habits can be changed. Some psychological studies suggest that when an Easterner goes to the West or vice versa, habits of thought and perception also begin to change. Such research gives us clues on how our brain works and is hopeful for us to develop programs to improve our memory, memory techniques and enhance and accelerate our learning skills.
1.According to the passage, Chinese people are most likely to ________.
A. more emphasize independent thinking
B. always focus more on their surroundings
C. focus on the context as well as the object
D. think of Westerners as highly independent units
2.We know from the passage that people’s brains will be more active when ________.
A. the task is much easier B. the blood flow is tracked
C. people begin to choose colors D. the task is more difficult
3.What does Dr Hedden’s experiment in Paragraph 4-5 indicate?
A. Culture has a great impact on the way people talk and behave.
B. Easterners and Westerners perceive the world differently.
C. People’s perception of the world can be changed.
D. Americans are better at calculating than the Asians.
Every Sunday morning I take a light walking around a park near my home. There’s a lake ________ in one corner of the park. Each time I ________ by this lake, I see the same elderly woman sitting at the water’s ________ with a small metal cage sitting beside her.
This past Sunday my ________ got the best of me, so l stopped jogging and walked ________ to her. ________ I got closer, I realized that the metal cage was ________ a small trap. There were three turtles, unharmed, slowly walking around the base of the trap. She had a fourth turtle in her lap ________ she was ________ scrubbing with a spongy brush.
“Hello,” I said. “If you don’t mind my ________, I’d love to know what you’re doing with these turtles.”
She smiled. “I’m cleaning off their shells,” she replied. “________ on a turtle’s shell, like algae or scum, ________ the turtle’s ability to absorb heat and impedes its ability to swim. It can also ________ and weaken the shell over time.”
She went on: “I spend a couple of hours each Sunday morning ,relaxing by this lake and helping these little guys out. It’s my own ________ way of making a difference.”
“But don’t most freshwater turtles live their whole lives with algae and scum ________ from their shells?” I asked.
“Yep, ________, they do,” she replied.
“Well then, don’t you think your time could be better spent? And 99% of these turtles don't have kind people like you to help them clean off their shells. So, no ________...but how exactly are your localized ________ here truly making a difference?”
The woman giggled aloud.
She then ________ at the turtle in her lap, scrubbed off the last piece of algae from its shell, and said, “Sweetie, if this little guy ________ talk, he’d tell you I just made all the difference in the world.
1.A. being located B. locating C. located D. having located
2.A. reach B. hike C. wander D. jog
3.A. surface B. bottom C. position D. edge
4.A. curiosity B. passion C. enthusiasm D. caution
5.A. down B. over C. up D. around
6.A. Until B. As C. While D. After
7.A. in particular B. in return C. in chaos D. in effect
8.A. that B. where C. which D. what
9.A. attentively B. gradually C. directly D. alternatively
10.A. request B. permission C. doubt D. nosiness
11.A. Something B. Anything C. Nothing D. Everything
12.A. broadens B. strengthens C. lowers D. enlarges
13.A. weather B. address C. choke D. split
14.A. common B. unique C. explicit D. potential
15.A. attached B. tied C. hanging D. potential
16.A. fortunately B. basically C. sadly D. absolutely
17.A. wonder B. problem C. offense D. excuse
18.A. contributions B. efforts C. sacrifices D. arrangements
19.A. looked down B. drove away C. tore up D. thought back
20.A. would B. might C. shall D. should
