Click to see figure captions of the best UK hotels and hideaways in landscaped gardens.
Allt-y-Bela, Usk, Wales
Home of renowned garden designer Arne Maynard offers the chance to immerse yourself in the beauty and peace of the Welsh countryside. There are just two bedrooms with breakfasts served in the farmhouse kitchen, in the company of Arne's two dogs, cat and chickens（guests are welcome to bring their own pets）. The real joy is the garden with everything from native meadow planting to clipped classic English blooms.
Doubles from £200, B&B（Bed and Breakfast）; arnemaynard. com
Goldstone Hall Hotel, Shropshire
Goldstone Hall boasts five acres of lovingly designed gardens. Rooms are quiet and comfortable rather than luxurious, but many have wonderful views across the gardens, and the restaurant serves up flavoursome dishes made with the best of garden produce. This is a classic English escape.
Doubles from £170, B&B; goldstonehallhotel. co. uk
Hotel Endsleigh, Devon
A peaceful getaway near the beautiful bay of Findhorn, a stay at the Endsleigh doesn't come cheap, but the chance to explore the stunning 100-acre gardens is one of England's greatest horticultural treats. Rooms are the epitome of rustic luxury, with statement wallpapers and vibrant prints, while the restaurant offers everything from hearty breakfasts to luxurious afternoon teas.
Doubles from £240, Room-only; thepolizzicollection. com
Hever Castle, Kent
Originally laid out between 1904 and 1908, Hever's 125 acres of gardens combine ponds with 5,000 rose bushes, a rhododendron walk and an Italianate garden that boasts a collection of Italian sculptures. The best way to beat the crowds and see the gardens is to stay in one of the 27 bedrooms, housed in two wings of the castle: all individually designed, with a plush, contemporary country house feel.
Doubles from £185, B&B; hevercastle. co. uk
Christmas was approaching, but I lost my job. My paycheck was survival. I did everything I could to give my daughter, Kristil, a good life, but there were some things a single mom's love couldn't fix. Monday morning, I dropped Kristil at school and set off on my moneymaking pursuits. Looking for where to pawn stuff, I headed to a pawnshop with a garnet ring set in 14-karat gold that my mother had given me a decade earlier. "Best I can do is $70," the owner said "The stones are worthless. " I was defeated, feeling as if the world was closing in on me.
Back at home, I glanced out the window. It had been snowing all morning. I noticed a petite woman struggling to open her car door against the wind. As she got out, I realized it was my old professor, Sister Esther Heffernan. I hadn't seen her since we met for lunch three months ago. I'd first met Sister Esther 10 years earlier when I was her student at Edgewood College. Kristil was 2 at the time, and I sometimes took her to class. Sister Esther was understanding and would bring coloring books to occupy Kristil. After I graduated, Sister Esther kept in touch, meeting me for lunch every few months. I had grown to love her like family.
I rushed to the front of my building. Just being in Sister Esther's presence gave me hope that things would be all right. She handed me a Christmas card. When I opened her card, I gasped in shock. There was money inside. Tears of gratitude puddled in my eyes. Sister Esther had given me $1,000.
On Christmas morning, Kristil and I gathered around our tree, and I joyfully watched as she opened her Christmas gifts. I silently thanked Sister Esther in my heart.
It has been 14 years since that Christmas, but I've never forgotten what Sister Esther did for us. That year Santa's suit went from signature red to true blue. In 2020, at age 91, Sister Esther died, but the love she gave during her life lives on in the hearts of many. I am lucky to be one of them.
The "script murder" game is not only popular in China, but the genre is loved by many people around the world. A cast of actors plays the suspects, and the participants solve the case. In fact, murder-inspired board games, card games, interactive books and party games have been around at least since the so-called golden age of British crime fiction in the 1920s and 1930s, which saw the rise of legendary authors like Agatha Christie.
Sam Emmerson, creative director of Moonstone Murder Mysteries in London, a company that creates and runs immersive mysteries, says people like the puzzle aspect of it, and the improvised exchanges with the actors: "It's the reputation that murder mysteries have built up these days, as being a fun thing to go to. " After all, real-life violent crime is every person's worst nightmare. "If it was a real-life situation, and someone's been murdered, that's not a fun subject. You're in this sort of alternate reality where we're very casually solving the death of a human being. "
The enduring popularity of these games presents a mystery of its own: What motivates ordinary, law-abiding people to spend an evening investigating fake bloodshed, and hunting pretend murderers? One simple explanation might be curiosity. But that is not the full story. Instead, murder games follow a surprisingly complex set of psychological rules. They allow us to learn and practice important mental and emotional skills, and can even teach us not to overlook important evidence.
"The basic idea is that we are using them as a way to simulate threatening plots, and then play around with how we would respond to that," Coltan Scrivner, a behavioral scientist says. The response could be behavioral, or even just emotional, in terms of handling the fear. He calls such games "scary play", and compares them to play-fighting among animals, which prepares them for real-life fighting, but also hunting or tracking down the target.
People who work with octopuses（章鱼）or who spend a lot of time in their company describe the sense that when you look at an octopus, there is something looking back. Given this feeling as a starting point, how do you begin to explore the consciousness（意识）of an animal so unlike ourselves?
Imagining an octopus's inner life is a hard thing to do from our human standpoint. When you picture the tips of your suckered limbs moving, what do you imagine it feels like? "The octopus's arms are, in some ways, more like lips or tongues than hands," says Godfrey-Smith, a professor of history and philosophy of science. "There's a great deal of sensory information that's coming in every time the animal does anything. That's very different from our situation. "
Take a closer look at the octopus's nervous system, and things get even stranger. The octopus's arms have more autonomy than our human arms and legs do. Each has its own minibrain, giving it a degree of independence from the animal's central brain. Our own nervous system, however, is highly centralized, with the brain the center of sensory integration, emotion, movement, behavior and other actions.
The closer you look at the octopus's body and nervous system, the harder it becomes to grasp—or believe you are grasping—what it might be like to be an octopus. However hard it might be to do, it's worth trying to understand whether octopuses have consciousness, and what it's like if they do, says Godfrey-Smith. This is why the octopus is such an interesting case. Octopuses are different enough from us that a lot of our assumptions about them have to be questioned—and even our assumptions about ourselves. "By asking whether octopuses are conscious like us, we might be asking a question that doesn't make a lot of sense because we don't fully know what it's like to be conscious," says Godfrey-Smith.
Genealogy（宗谱学）is a perfect hobby for those who are interested in learning more about themselves and their families. Another factor contributing to the popularity of genealogy is the existence of the Internet which makes it easier to track long-lost relatives. However, there are several rules that a new genealogist needs to know.
New genealogists need to avoid the common mistake of focusing their search on their rich and famous relatives simply because they are easier to locate. They might have interesting tales to tell and could provide significant clues. All have family stories to share.
A budding genealogist needs to check family stories as not all of these stories are accurate. The stories must be checked with other family members. An experienced genealogist would know whether the story is a fact or fiction.
An expert in genealogy knows it is important to organize family facts properly. Information needs to be organized to enable more efficient research to bear fruitful results. There are many genealogy programs available in the market such as Genealogy J, Gramps and Family Historian which could help genealogists organize their information.
Another good practice for new genealogists is to use their living relatives. They should never underestimate the powerful memories of living relatives. These relatives could share information on deceased family members and lead to the discovery of other long-lost living relatives.
A. Ordinary relatives should not be underestimated.
B. It is a dangerous practice to accept all stories as truths.
C. It is necessary to organize files on individuals, families and events.
D. But now the genealogists prefer to organize the events by the Internet.
E. It is also good to bring along a camera or a recorder to record interviews.
F. People like to find some famous people in history to work as their ancestors.
G. People learn more about their family history and themselves by tracking down family roots.
It was a story about broccoli soup that really brought home to Shirley Zhu the value of the work she was doing. She and her twin sister Annie, who are 18, were 1 boxes of food to people struggling to get 2 , nutritious food in their home city of Houston. One woman, who Shirley was visiting for the second time, was 3 to tell Shirley that she had made broccoli soup for her young daughter with the 4 food package.
Shirley and Annie were 15 years old when they began 5 unsold food from grocery stores and 6 in Houston and distributing it to 7 living in "food deserts" — areas which don't have good 8 to fresh, affordable food. Together with an initial team of 10 classmates at their high school, they 9 Fresh Hub. With the help of a smartphone app and automated messaging service, they were able to 10 residents when fresh food was available.
After failing to build something from the ground up, they decided to 11 forces with an organization already doing this work. Second Servings, a Houston-based non-profit, already had the vans, the equipment, and the 12 in rescuing food, which it donates to homeless shelters and other places of need. What it didn't do was hold 13 .
"We were used to seeing other adults being the 14 and didn't consider ourselves as capable of making change," Shirley says. She now believes that 15 someone's age or resources, it's always possible to do something.
The closure of Chinese museums accelerated a digital process that was already underway to better engage Millennials and GenZers. Take, for example, the （count）institutions that uploaded virtual tours, or Lhasa's Potala Palace live streaming, or Beijing's UCCA, reimagining its programming to deliver film and workshopping on popular （platform）.
A further example came from the Terracotta Warriors, Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum, gave life to the creations of China's first emperor with WeChat Mini Program. From the cartoon-inspired beauty to the interactive manner in which bite-sized information （present）, it spoke of an initiative designed to engage younger audiences.
Attracting young audiences （be）not only a question for Chinese museums, but moreover a （press）question that concerns a range of industries from traditional companies and brands, to entertainment and technology companies. Young audiences represent change, fashion and the future market, and focusing on young people has the power （attract）other generations.
Museums have to be very clear about their core values. they are storage areas of art and history, they still have to become creative in using their resources to inspire young people. The first objective of museums is never to make money, but rather, to provide understanding of cultural identity by creating content that inspires genuine connections young people.
The woods surrounding the Audubon Society were November dark with its sky overcast with gloomy clouds. The branches shut out the day light and the wind howled horribly around the woods.
Ruby sighed and packed up his bag on the shoulders. "Least it has stopped raining. It won't take long," Ruby comforted his brother Henry. "Dad said he'd pick us at the gift shop. "
Henry ignored him with a frown and stomped（踩踏）up the path, his shoes slipping on the wet rocks. He was annoyed that their dad had practically forced them to go on a hike in the bird habitat outside town. "It will be good for you both," Dad had encouraged, handing them his binoculars. "You'll get some fresh air and maybe see some cool birds. "
As the boys climbed, the trees grew closer together. The only sounds were the dripping of rain from the trees and the rustle（沙沙声）of small birds among the forest. At the top of the slope, they stopped to catch their breath. A single black feather floated down onto the path. Rubylooked up. On a nearby branch, a black crow（乌鸦）stared down at them.
"Shoo!" shouted Ruby, waving his arms, frightened by the bird's black eyes. It opened its sharp beak（鸟喙）and let out a loud and horrible squawk. "It's watching us as if we were worms or something. " Ruby pushed his brother along the path. "Just a stupid crow. " But as he walked, Ruby couldn't shake the feeling that they were being watched.
"Ruby? " called Henry, panic shaking his voice. To their horror, on the path, a line of more crows blocked their way and the branches on both sides were filled with numerous birds, their evil eyes glancing at them. They fluttered their wings frantically, ready to attack the boys.
注意：
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The boys froze, frightened by the hundreds of greedy eyes.
At that urgent moment, a familiar car pulled into the path.
