Notes:
trim 刈り込んで整える、手入れする;
sap (植物の)樹液
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If you live in an area where there is no snow, you can see gardeners outside trimming trees. This is a busy time of year for them. Why do they choose the winter to do their work? There are two reasons. One reason is that many trees lose their leaves, so it is easier for gardeners to see which branches they should cut and which ones they should leave. Another reason is that the tree doesn’t lose a lot of sap . The tree is sleeping, so it doesn’t go into shock when it is cut. When spring comes, the sap comes back up, and the tree starts to grow again. (by Prof. Douglas Jarrell)
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At the party I attended the other night, three out of the five people were smokers. One of the topics was why they had started smoking. One person said that he went to a barber shop run by a man in his 50s when he was growing up. The barber offered cigarettes to customers older than 20. As soon as he finished high school, the barber asked if he was going to college and offered him a cigarette. Another person said that he was working part-time at a construction site when he was in college. The people around him were regular construction workers, and they forced him to smoke.

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