Several times my daughter had telephoned to say, “Mum, you must come and see the daffodils(水仙花)before they are over.” I wanted to go, but it was a two-hour drive from Lake Arrowhead. "I will go next Tuesday," I promised, a little unwillingly, on her third call.

    The next Tuesday dawned cold and rainy. Still, I had promised, and so I drove there. When I finally walked into Carolyn's house and hugged and greeted my grandchildren, I said, "Forget the daffodils, Carolyn! The road is invisible (看不见的) in the cloud and fog, and there is nothing in the world except you and these children that I want to see!"

    My daughter smiled calmly and said, "We drive in this weather all the time, Mum. You will never forgive yourself if you miss this experience."

    After about twenty minutes, we turned onto a small road and I saw a small church. On the far side of the church, I saw a hand-lettered sign that read "Daffodil Garden."

    We got out of the car and each took a child's hand, and I followed Carolyn down the path. Then, we turned a corner of the path, and I looked up amazed. Before me lay the most beautiful sight. Flows of flowers of different colors seemed poured down the peak and slopes. There were five acres of flowers! A sea of daffodil! It was like a fairyland all beyond description.

    "But who has done this?" I asked Carolyn. "It's just one woman." Carolyn answered. "That's her home." Carolyn pointed to a well-kept A-frame house that looked small and modest in the midst of all that glory. We walked up to the house. On the patio (露台), we saw a poster." Answers to the Questions I Know You Are Asking" was the headline.

    The first answer was a simple one. "50,000 bulbs (鳞茎)" it read. The second answer was, "One at a time, by one woman." The third answer was, "Began in 1958."

    I thought of this woman whom I had never met, who, more than fifty years before, had begun one bulb at a time to bring the beauty and joy to the mountain top. Just planting one bulb at a time, year after year, had changed the world where she lived and created something of magnificence, beauty, and inspiration.

    When we multiply tiny pieces of time with small amounts of daily effort, we too can accomplish great things. Everyone can do something to change the world.

    A great French writer says that we should help everyone as much as possible because we often need help ourselves. The small even can help the great. Then he tells a simple story. An ant is drinking at a small stream and falls in. She tries to reach the side but makes no progress at all. The poor ant, almost exhausted, is still doing her best when a bird sees her. Moved with pity the bird throws a blade of grass into the water. It supports(支撑) the ant like a boat, and the ant reaches the bank. When she is having a rest in the grass, she sees a man walking along barefooted and carrying a gun in his hand. He wants to kill the bird nearby. When he raises his gun to fire, the ant bites him in the foot. So he stops to look down and the bird flies away quickly. It is an animal much weaker and smaller than herself that has saved her life.

    For the past 15years, factory owner Kamal Parmar has been running an after-school program for slum kids in Ahmedabad, India, helping them with basic skills like reading and writing and even preparing for their school tests.

    Parmar's story began one afternoon 15 years ago. He stopped a few kids returning home from the local school and took their exam paper and asked them a few questions. Shockingly, he made a shocking discovery--the students, even the older ones, knew nothing about reading except the alphabet. And that left him thinking that something should be done for these children.

    So he invited the kids to visit his workshop every evening, where he set up a temporary classroom with metal desks. The shabby school started off with 10 students. Today, the Footpath School has a total of 155 students and many of the kids that Parmar has taught in the past 15yearshav e gone to attend college and build successful careers.

    Despite having studied only till the seventh grade, he has been able to teach the kids by inventing creative techniques. He asks them to read first and then to form questions on their own and read them out. In this way, many kids learn all seven subjects in six months.

    Parmar's family are very supportive of his project and are proud to see how much of an impact he has had on the kids. His students love him. Ten of his ex-students are currently serving as teachers at the school and he doesn't have to employ any teachers.

    For those who are inspired by his story, but can't actually volunteer at school, Parmar has a simple piece of ads ice: “Try to educate just one child a year, and see the difference it makes to the society.”

    I've recently published a book of letters from 32 amazing Australian women about their experiences of new motherhood. Perhaps the most common question I've been asked since publication is why more of the mothers didn't ask for help. If those early months were so hard and so exhausting as they were described, then why didn't more of these women simply ask for help?

Embedded (把……牢牢地嵌入) deep in this enquiry is the assumption that if you ask, you shall receive—and that you shall receive without judgment. And if there is any experience of new motherhood in the 21^st century it is the inescapability of judgment. By asking for help new mothers open themselves up to a wave of quiet—and not-so-quiet—disapproval of why on earth they need it.

    The earliest moments of motherhood are synonymous with sacrifice(等同于牺牲). A mother sacrifices her body for not nine but almost ten long months, sharing her shell with a new being. A mother sacrifices her control, and often her mental and physical health, during the painful process of childbirth. A mother, in the weeks and months that follow, puts the needs of another before her own, sacrificing her sense of self, her ambition and all too often, her happiness.

    We don't normally use the word sacrifice to describe the newborn period. It's supposed to be sweet and milky and warm but a sacrifice is exactly what it is. And when we sacrifice we should be entitled (使享有权利) to mourn—a privilege new mothers are expressly prevented from.

    We have reached the point where being a mother who admits she needs help is like saying your child isn't worth the sacrifice. The suffering has become a badge(徽章) of honor, worn in service to your family.

    The role of mothering is not an easy one, nor will it ever be. But it could be made more manageable if we were all to offer help or support.

Are we alone in the universe? A team of scientists announced on January 6, 2015 that they had identified eight planets beyond our solar system, three or four of which orbit in their stars' "Goldilocks Zone" — the region where temperatures are not too hot or too cold for water, which is a necessary ingredient for life as we know it, to exist liquid form. This may be good news for people hoping that Earth is not the only inhabited world in the universe.

    The scientists, led by Dr. Guilermo Torres of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, made the discoveries using data collected by the planet-seeking Kepler telescope.

    NASA launched Kepler in 2009. Since then, the telescope has identified more than 1,000 planets outside of our solar system. Torres and his team analyzed the data about the eight newly discovered world to determine which ones are most likely to be similar to our Earth.

    Among the new discoveries, the scientists say the planets called Kepler438b and 442b are the closest to Earth. Kepler 438b is just about 10% larger than our planet, and gets 40% more of its energy from its star than Earth receives from the Sun. Temperatures there would be about 140 degrees. Kepler 442b is about 33% larger than Earth, but receives 30% less energy from its star. That would make it a potentially chillier world than our own. Torres says it is possible for life to exist and survive in either of those temperatures, but for that to happen, these planets would need to have another key ingredient for life: a heat-trapping atmosphere like Earth's.

    While these findings add to the possibility that life exists beyond Earth, Torres cautions against drawing conclusions, “We are not claiming they are inhabited,” he says. In fact, these planets are so far away that the scientists cannot observe them directly, which can be explanation for why for now it remains unknown whether these planets contain life. But the discovery of planets in their stars' habitable zones suggests that somewhere out there, some form of alien life may have taken hold.

    Breakfast is not only the most important meal of the day, but also the most neglected. Common reasons for not eating breakfast include lack of time, not feeling hungry, traditional dislike for breakfast, and dieting.

    Breakfast simply means "break the fast". Your body spends at least 6 to 12 hours each night in a fasting state. In the morning your body needs energy for the day's work ahead.

    A good breakfast should provide up to 1/3 of your total calories needs for the day. On average(平均)we eat 400 less calories for breakfast than for dinner. If breakfast doesn't attract you in the morning, try eating a lighter for the breakfast in the morning.

    If you aren't hungry in the morning, start with something small like juice or toast or have a nutritious mid-morning snack alter when you are hungry.

    So, you say you're on a diet. Some people fear eating breakfast will make them hungrier during the day and they will eat more. It is true that eating breakfast is likely to make you eat more. That's because your body is working all day long, in fact, you are probably not.

    Not eating breakfast can also cause you to overeat, since a fall in blood sugar often makes you feel very hungry later. To make matters worse, since your body is in a slowed state it will not be able to burn those extra calories very quickly. If you feed your body healthy snacks and meals through the day, you are less likely to become hungry and fill yourself as soon as you begin to eat. Since breakfast is the first and most important meal of the day, choosing the right fuel is important. The best breakfast foods are fruits, juice, lean meat, and grain products such as bread, rice, noodles and cereals(谷物).