Rite of Spring春之祭

Rite of Spring

Arthur Miller

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(挖掘) up a patch（小块土地）for vegetables before doing anything else. When you think how easy a nd cheap, relatively,（相对的）it is to buy a bunch（群）of carrots or beets（甜菜）, why raise them? And root crops especially are hard to tell apart,(区分，分辨) when store-bought, from our own. There is a human instinct（天性）at work here, a kind of back-breaking （使人精疲力尽的）make-believe（伪装的）that has no reality. Besides, I don't particularly like eating vegetables. I'd much rather eat something juicy and fat. Like hot dogs.

Now, if you could raise hot dogs outside your window, you'd really have something you could justify（证明）without a second's hesitation. As it is, though, I cannot deny that when April comes I find myself going out to lean（依靠）on the fence and look at that miserable（卑鄙的）plot（密谋）of land, resolving（解析，分辨）with all my rational（理性地）powers not to plant it again. But inevitably（不可避免的）a morning arrives when, just as I am awakening, a scent（气味）wafts（飘荡）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（事情）, suddenly, and has a different, deeper yellow in its beams（光线，电波）on the carpet（地毯）. The birds begin screaming hysterically（歇斯底里的）, thinking what I am thinking—the worms （蠕虫）are deliciously worming（蠕动）their way through the melting（融化的）soil.

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（行）, and it worked perfectly, keeping the soil moist（潮湿的）in dry times and weed-free.

But black plastic looks so industrial, so unromantic, that I have gradually moved over to hay（干草）mulch（覆盖物）. We cut a lot of hay and, as it rots, it does improve the soil's Composition（构成）. Besides, it looks lovely, and comes to us free.

Keeping a garden makes you aware of how delicate, bountiful（慷慨给予的，丰富的）, 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（装载）the soil with chemical fertilizer these differences would be less noticeable, but I use it sparingly（保守的，节约的）and only in rows right where seeds are planted rather than broadcast（播撒）over the whole area. I'm not sure why I do this beyond the saving in fertilizer and my unwillingness to aid the weeds（野草）.

The attractions（吸引人的事物）of gardening, I think, at least for a certain number of gardeners, are neurotic（神经过敏的）and moral（品行端正的）. Whenever