Friday 26 October 2012

Vegetable Gardening


 


As well as growing fruit, we love growing vegetables too.  My wife is a better vegetable gardener than I am.  These gardens are called 'raised beds'.  In winter it's very wet here.  The soil gets too damp to grow vegetables in the ground.  Raised beds are great, you can grow vegetables all year round.  Raised beds also warm up quickly in spring.  In summer they need to be watered often as they dry out quickly.




Last month we decided to make some more garden beds for summer vegetables.  In this garden we're growing zucchini, tomatoes and peppers.  We want to be healthier and I believe eating lots of vegetables is important.  We can't grow all our vegetables, on a Saturday morning I visit a vegetable market in town.  I hope we can one day grow all the vegetables we need!  I think we'll make more and more gardens in our yard. =)



Here is one of my best friends in the garden.  In spring you can hear bees buzzing everywhere.  This one is pollinating a boysenberry flower.  All our citrus trees are flowering at the moment.  The garden is full of bees and the sweet scent of citrus blossoms.


 

You can see the bees have been very busy here!  These boysenberries are beginning to swell and darken.  In about six weeks they should be ready to eat.  I will put some netting over them so the birds don't eat them before we do!


***

wish / hope

Many English learners have trouble with these little words!

'Wish' has two main uses:

1. You would like to change something that happened in the past:

- I wish I hadn't eaten all that cake!
- I wish you hadn't bought that ugly phone.

2.  You want something to happen in the future but it's unlikely:

- I wish it would stop raining! (The forecast is bad)
- I wish I could win the race tomorrow. (I'm not a good runner)

* 'wish' is also sometimes used as a polite form of 'want' *

 - I wish to leave early in the morning.
-  I wish you a Merry Christmas. (I want you to have a Merry Christmas)

'Hope' expresses a want for something to happen that is more likely. 

- I hope you enjoy your birthday party! 
- I hope I win the race tomorrow. (I'm a good runner.)

I hope you understood my explanation!



4 comments:

  1. Boysenberry, this name is first for me. It looks like a raspberry. I wonder how it tastes.
    Anyway, your explanation about "wish" and "hope" is very helpful for me. I was sometimes confused with these usage. I think I can use these terms correctly now.
    Thank you always for your lesson!

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  2. Boysenberries are delicious! Here is some information:

    http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%9C%E3%82%A4%E3%82%BB%E3%83%B3%E3%83%99%E3%83%AA%E3%83%BC

    Our favourite way to eat them is to cook them with a little sugar and put it on ice cream. Yum!!

    I am glad you found my explanation helpful. Many people know about 'wishing a Merry Christmas' so they assume it means 'hope that...' in other contexts. Thank you for your kinds comments!

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  4. I've never seen and heard boysenberry too!
    It looks yummy!
    And thanks to your tips about wish/hope, I could almost understood the different shade of meaning between wish/hope!
    Thanks, Dave-san!!

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