Pruning and Weeding My Stress Away! Verbs are your friends!

One of my favorite hobbies, which I will add is a fairly recently acquired one, is gardening. This past spring for Mother's day I received potted roses. Beautiful, healthy, bring pink roses that were meant to be planted in the front of my home. I took that simple idea even further and tore all the bushes down that lined the front of my home and replaced them with plants I have always admired from afar, but never dared to grow on my own. I had a lot of help from my own mother, who is a great landscaper and flower bed designer, a skill she obtained over the years from gardening in her own backyard and caring for the most delicate flowers I have ever seen on Long Island. She helped me choose flowers that complemented each other in color and form. But most importantly she taught me how to care for my new delicate friends. She explained the importance of pruning regularly and the ever dreadful chore of weeding. At first it seemed like an overwhelming new hobby to maintain, but as the spring weeks turned into summer months, my garden started to really blossom. My roses bloomed, my stargazer lilies popped up from the ground, my bleeding heart bushes gave me the most beautiful little pink dangling flowers, and my faithful hostas began to sprout new bright green leaves. Among all my flowers, my favorite one is the Cana Lily. It's an eye catching tropical plant that can grow up to 6 feet tall in length. When I first bought them, they didn't seem like much, and really I only bought them because I needed to fill up some space along the front porch. But as the weeks got hotter and more humid, the Cana Lily became the star of the show. The bright lime green leaves are over a foot long and almost 8 inches wide, and the flower that blossoms is a vibrant orange hue that attracts what seems to be all the bumblebees in the neighborhood. I have realized over the course of these past months that gardening is second nature to me. It's about nurturing, commitment, patience and hard work, concepts that I am very familiar with being a mother to 3 children. It's my way to unwind after a long day at school and zone out to music with a water hose in hand. And even though summer isn't quite over yet, I am already envisioning how my garden will look next summer with new additions to care for.

Cana Lily plants and few of my pink roses and hostas

For more information on gardening and various plants suitable for your home visit www.gardens.org

VOCABULARY
Acquired: verb: To get, to obtain
Received: verb: To get, to obtain
Replaced:verb:  To put something instead of .....
Complemented: verb: Goes well with something else
Maintain: verb:  Keep up with something
Realized: verb: Understand clearly
Nurturing: verb: Caring
Envisioning: verb: seeing and/or planning something for the future

Skill: noun: Something you are good at
Commitment: noun: Dedicated
Addition(s): noun: Something that goes with something else, added

Overwhelm(ing): adjective: Very large, very strong
Vibrant: adjective: Bright, colorful, full of energy
Familiar: adjective: something well known

VOCABULARY EXERCISE
Answer the question with the correct word from the vocabulary list above

1) If a young man/woman plays a sport very well, they have great ____________.
2) When a mother hugs and kisses her baby, she is being __________________.
3) When you have a big exam the next morning, you may have an ____________ feeling of fear.
4) If you exercise regularly and eat good food, you can ___________ a healthy lifestyle.
5) After a rainstorm, sometimes you can see a rainbow with __________ colors.
6) When you learn a new language, you have _________ a new way to communicate.
7) In __________ learning to read, you should also learn to write correctly.
8) When you play an instrument you become very __________ with musical language.

GRAMMAR POINT

Verbs can express actions; mental actions, physical actions and/or a state of being. 
1) Write a short paragraph (5-7 sentences) about a hobby or sport that you enjoy doing. Make sure to underline all verbs (whether past, present or future-tense). 2) For all the verbs underlined in your paragraph, write the past, present and future tense of the word. 

Ex: I play basketball for a league......

      Played, play/playing, will play