Growing Roots
英汉对照
When I was growing up, I had an old neighbor named Dr. Gibbs. He didn’t look like any doctor I’d ever known. He never yelled at us for playing in his yard. I remember him as someone who was a lot nicer than 1)circumstances warranted.
When Dr. Gibbs wasn’t saving lives, he was planting trees. His house sat on ten acres, and his life’s goal was to make it a forest.
The good doctor had some interesting theories concerning plant 2)husbandry. He came from the “No pain, no gain” school of 3)horticulture. He never watered his new trees, which flew in the face of conventional wisdom. Once I asked why. He said that watering plants spoiled them, and that if you water them, each successive tree generation will grow weaker and weaker. So you have to make things rough for them and 4)weed out the 5)weenie trees early on.
He talked about how watering trees made for shallow roots, and how trees that weren’t watered had to grow deep roots in search of 6)moisture. I took him to mean that deep roots were to be treasured.