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【完形填空】Cloze: The Orchard Keeper
Ravi was never a man of grand abstraction, but he had an entrepreneurial (1) that stayed small.
He owned a plot of land on the (2) of a growing city, and urbanization crept toward his fence each year, yet he refused to sell.
His habit was simple: he would collect fruit from apes' favorite trees and then (3) seeds from wild and domestic varieties.
He believed diversity was a kind of insurance, but his offspring laughed at the (4) of the plan.
"You cannot make a living on a hobby," his son said, but Ravi did not argue; he had a (5) with the soil, not with people.
For years, he would ingest only what he grew, and the aliment was plain, (6) his well-being improved and his mental faculty sharpened.
He liked to cruise through the rows at dawn and spit out seeds as he walked, and strangers found the (7) odd, even horrifying.
A brief appearance on a local news venue made him famous for a week, but then the attention (8).
One spring, a violent storm occurred and flattened half the orchard, which horrified him, yet the surviving trees were the ones he had (9) by hand.
He saw, in that damage, a hidden endorsement: the wild genes had mitigated the shock, so he began to seek funding, and a former classmate, now a department head at an agricultural institute, agreed to (10).
The scrutiny was intense, and they asked him to apportion blame for past failures, but he answered with data and caution.
A pilot study followed, and the results dazzled the panel: trees with his mixed stock produced a variety of fruit with far less spoilage.
The finding was not exclusive to his region; it applied to countless habitats, and one reviewer said the work could rekindle interest in old methods.
Another said it might discourage chemical use, and Ravi, briefly, felt legitimate.
The institute offered him a contract, and he accepted, but with one condition: no ulterior motive, no conquest of small farms.
He did not want to infringe on anyone's land; he wanted to enlighten, not invade.
"Utility matters," he told the board, "but so does beauty."
They inaugurated a small program that would disseminate seeds to front-line growers and embody a holistic view—soil, tree, and community as overlapping systems.
The work had momentum, and applications arrived from six countries.
On the last day of the season, Ravi stood in the orchard and could still hear his son's doubt, but doubt had not incapacitated him; it had pushed him forward.
He picked one fruit and held it up; the skin was ordinary, but the taste was not.
Choices
(1) A. slice B. streak C. spot D. stack
(2) A. limit B. border C. edge D. rim
(3) A. blend B. mix C. combine D. intermix
(4) A. clarity B. ease C. simplicity D. plainness
(5) A. agreement B. consensus C. unity D. harmony
(6) A. so B. for C. and D. but
(7) A. view B. vision C. sight D. scene
(8) A. disappeared B. vanished C. faded D. dissolved
(9) A. mixed B. bred C. combined D. crossed
(10) A. assist B. help C. aid D. support