Learn the English Phrases "to thin out" and "to spread yourself too thin"

In this English lesson, I wanted to help

you learn the English phrase to thin out.

Now, this has two meanings or two

ways that you can use this.

One is kind of when you see something thin

out and then you can actually thin something out.

Let me explain.

If you were to go up a mountain, at the

bottom of the mountain, there might be trees, but as

you go up the mountain, the trees will thin out.

There will be less trees as you go up.

For every hundred meters you go vertically, there will probably

be less trees and they'll get smaller as well.

So the trees will start to thin out. Out

in the flower field, sometimes we grow flowers

and there's too many in one spot.

So Jen will take out every other flower.

She'll actually snip them with the pruners.

She will thin out the flowerbed so that the

flowers have a better chance to grow and thrive.

Because if there's too many, they

kind of compete for nutrients.

So when you go up a mountain, trees can thin out,

and you can use this for other things as well.

But if you have something like flowers, you might

thin out the patch so that there are less.

So the ones that remain can do well.

And the second phrase I wanted to teach

you today is to spread yourself too thin.

So if you are really busy, if you agree

to do too many things, we sometimes say that

you are going to spread yourself too thin.

Sometimes in the fall, I spread myself too thin.

I'm back at work.

I'm doing YouTube videos.

I'm helping Jen on the flower farm.

I'm bringing my kids back and forth to work.

Oh, but I don't have to do that

as much because they have their license now.

But I'm too busy.

I have spread myself too thin.

Just like when you spread butter or peanut butter

on bread, sometimes you spread it too thin.

You can also spread yourself too thin.

So to review to thin out means

to see less and less of something.

Maybe when you're walking in a field of

plants, there's a spot where they didn't grow

well and it will thin out.

And then sometimes you will thin something out.

Some people, I think people

thin out their hair sometimes.

When I was a kid, I had lots of hair and the

barber would use like a special scissors to thin out my hair.

And then to spread yourself too thin means simply to

be too busy to agree to do too many things.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video.

This comment is from Mohd Ags.

Oh, yeah, those cargo shorts with more pockets that

I care to count and infinite storage space are

an essential part of the dad look.

That's how someone like me looks.

Also, nice illustration of all

the growth stages of sunflowers.

I'm this close to taking an

interest in farming, thanks to you. And my response?

It's called succession planting.

I'm not sure I mentioned that it's

the secret to having sunflowers every week.

I knew nothing about this until Jen

explained it to me years ago.

So yeah, in the last video.

Thanks for the comment Mohd.

In the last video, I showed you the sunflowers

and how Jen actually plants sunflowers each week.

And that way you have

sunflowers throughout the growing season.

So early on, they're kind of little.

They don't grow that well because it's not warm enough.

But we start with sunflowers a few weeks

ago, and because we've planted them every week,

we then have sunflowers to harvest every week.

It doesn't always work perfectly.

Sometimes there's a little bit of a

dip and we don't have lots of

sunflowers, but generally it works pretty good.

So anyways, I'm out here just taking a little walk.

I'm really happy that Jen and I

planted all of these trees years ago.

We planted all of those trees.

We planted all the trees that you see.

There's two close to the house that my

parents actually planted when they were here.

But pretty much every tree that you see on this

properly property, not properly property Jen and I planted years

ago, back when we were young and energetic and had

no children and had lots of time.

Not like now.

We're basically the same now.

We never have enough time.

But anyways, we actually took the time

to order trees and to plant them.

And so I'm just really, really happy that we

did that because if we hadn't, this place certainly

wouldn't be as shady as it is.

Anyways, I think I went overtime

on this video, but that's okay. Thanks for watching.

I'll see you in a couple of days with another one. Bye.