课文原文 Unit 3 The Rite of Spring

1 2 Unit 3 The Rite of Spring Arthur Miller 1 I have never understood why we keep a garden and why over 36 years ago when I bought my first house in the country I started digging up a patch for vegetables before doing anything else When you think how easy and cheap relatively it is to buy a bunch of carrots or beets why raise them And root crops especially are hard to tell apart when store bought from our own There is a human instinct at work here a kind of back breaking make believe that has no reality Besides I don t particularly like eating vegetables I d much rather eat something juicy and fat Like hot dogs 2 Now if you could raise hot dogs outside your window you d really have something you could justify without a second s hesitation As it is though I cannot deny that when April comes I find myself going out to lean on the fence and look at that miserable plot of land resolving with all my rational powers not to plant it again But inevitably a morning arrives when just as I am awakening a scent wafts through the window something like earth as air a scent that seems to come up from the very center of this planet And the sun means business suddenly and has a different deeper yellow in its beams on the carpet The birds begin screaming hysterically thinking what I am thinking the worms are deliciously worming their way through the melting soil 3 It is not only pleasure sending me back to stare at that plot of soil it is really conflict The question is the same each year what method should we use The last few years we put 36 inch wide black plastic between the rows and it worked perfectly keeping the soil moist in dry times and weed free 4 But black plastic looks so industrial so unromantic that I have gradually moved over to hay mulch We cut a lot of hay and as it rots it does improve the soil s Composition Besides it looks lovely and comes to us free 5 Keeping a garden makes you aware of how delicate bountiful and easily ruined the surface of this little planet is In that 50 by 70 foot patch there must be a dozen different types of soil Tomato won t grow in one part but loves another and the same goes for the other crops I suppose if you loaded the soil with chemical fertilizer these differences would be less noticeable but I use it sparingly and only in rows right where seeds are planted rather than broadcast over the whole area I m not sure why I do this beyond the saving in fertilizer and my unwillingness to aid the weeds 6 The attractions of gardening I think at least for a certain number of gardeners are neurotic and moral Whenever life seems pointless and difficult to grasp you can always get out in the garden and get something done Also your paternal or maternal instincts come into play because helpless living things are depending on you require training and encouragement and protection from enemies In some cases as with beans and cucumbers your children as it were begin to turn upon you in massive numbers growing more and more each morning and threatening to follow you into the house to strangle you in their vines 7 Gardening is a moral occupation as well because you always start in spring resolved to keep 2 2 it looking neat this year just like the pictures in the catalogues But by July you once again face the chaos of unthinned carrots lettuce and beets This is when my wife becomes openly now mistress of the garden A consumer of vast quantities of vegetables she does the thinning and hand cultivating of the tiny plants Squatting she patiently moves down each row selecting which plants shall live and which she will cast aside 8 At about this time my wife s 86 year old mother a botanist makes her first visit to the garden She looks about skeptically Her favorite task is binding the tomato plants to stakes She is an outspoken truthful woman or she was until she learned better Now instead of saying You have planted the tomatoes in the damp part of the garden she waits until October when she makes her annual trip to her home in Europe then she gives me my good by kiss and says casually Tomatoes in damp soil tend more to get fungi and walks away to her plane But by October nothing in the garden matters so sure am I that I will never plant it again 9 I garden I suppose because I must It would be intolerable to have to pass an unplanted fenced garden a few times a day There are also certain compensations and these must be what annually turn my mind toward all that work There are few sights quite as beautiful as a vegetable garden glistening in the sun all dewy and glittering with a dozen shades of green at seven in the morning Far lovelier in fact than rows of hot dogs In some pocket of the mind there may even be a tendency to change this vision into a personal reassurance that all this healthy growth this orderliness and thrusting life must somehow reflect similar movements in one s own spirit Without a garden to till and plant I would not know what April was for 10 As it is April is for getting irritated all over again at this pointless time consuming hobby I do not understand people who claim to love gardening A garden is an extension of oneself or selves and so it has to be an arena where striving does not cease but continues by other means As an example you simply have to face the moment when you must admit that the lettuce was planted too deep or was not watered enough cease hoping it will show itself tomorrow and dig up the row again But you will feel better for not standing on your dignity And that s what gardening is all