Oral Practice Based on Listening [antikvár]

Lesson One A LIVING FLAME by Evgeny Nosov When Auntie Olga glanced into my room she found me at the desk again. "Enough writing", she said, raising her voice in a tone of command. 44A little pottering in the garden will do you good." She went to the pantry and took out a small box made of birch bark. While I gave my muscles some pleasant exercise, levelling the damp earth with a rake, she sat down on the bench beside the house and sorted little packets and paper twists of flower seeds in her lap. "I see you're not putting in any poppies, Auntie Olga. Why is that?" "Poppies? That's not a flower", she replied with conviction. "It's a vegetable. We grow poppies in the vegetable plots, together with onions and cucumbers." I laughed. "Well, you're mistaken. Remember the words of that old song? As white as marble was her brow. But her cheeks like poppies flamed." v^ "It flowers only two days - and what good is that for a garden? Here today and gone tomorrow. The noggins spoil the looks of the flowerbed all the rest of the summer." But when Auntie Olga wasn't looking I dropped a pinch of poppy seeds in the very middle of the flowerbed. A few days later the green sprouts pushed up out of the earth. Auntie Olga confronted me. "Did you put in all those pop - pies? That's really naughty of you! Well, I left three sprouts for your sake. I weeded out the others." I had to leave unexpectedly on a business trip and did not return until two weeks later. It was a pleasure to step into Auntie Olga's quiet little cottage after the hot, tiring journey.