题型:阅读理解 题类:常考题 难易度:普通
2016届四川成都七中、嘉祥外国语学校高三模拟2英语卷
On the eve of our daughters' weddings, I gave both of them what Iconsidered to be excellent marital advice: never leave your husband unsupervised(无人监督的) with pruning shears (修枝剪).
If only I had taken my own advice. I recently let my guard down. Thirty-some years of marriage can do that toa woman. Give a man pruning shears and electric trimmers (电动修剪器) and he will givenew meaning to “armed and dangerous.”
One day earlier this year, my husband saidthat the crab apple tree was dead.
“Why do you think it is dead?” I asked.
“Look at it. There's not a leaf on it.”
“There's not a leaf on anything. It'sMarch,” I said.
“It looked sick last fall and with thisbitter winter we had, I'm convinced it's dead.”
The truth is he's never liked thecrabapple. Sure, it has beautiful blooms in the spring, but then it gets adisease, the leaves curl, and it drops those little apples that sit on thedriveway.
Each passing week he pronounced the treedead. Eventually I began to believe him. Though he agreed it would be aregrettable loss, there was a twinkle in his eye. He armed himself a couple ofweeks ago and began trimming. A branch here, a branch there, a small limb, thena large limb. I watched and then decided to check the wood on some of thebranches closer to the trunk. I broke one off and saw green.
The crabapple was not dead. It just hadn'thad time to leaf out. The tree was now falling to one side, but it was notdead. I would have told him so, but he had moved on to a maple. Once the manstarts, he can't stop. One trim leads to another.
“Please, stop!” I called.
He smiled and nodded, but he couldn't hearbecause he had started the hedge (树篱) trimmers and was getting ready to fix a line of hedges.
Zip (飕飕声), zip, zip.
“What do you think?” he shouted.
“It's supposed to be a privacy hedge; nowall that will be private are our ankles.”
He started the trimmers again.
“Stop!” I called, “Come back!”
“Why?” he shouted.
“You're in the neighbor's yard.”
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