Learn the English Phrases SQUARED AWAY and READY TO ROLL

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn

the English phrase "squared away."

If I say that something is squared away in English,

it means that it's properly organized,

it means everything is in its place.

If I had something squared away,

it would mean that I'm ready for something.

I spent the last few days getting squared away

for the new school year.

I have everything squared away for the school year,

which starts two weeks from today actually.

So I'm really happy because I have everything squared away.

Notice you can use this two ways.

I can say, "I'm squared away,"

or I can say, "I have everything squared away,"

or, "Things are all squared away

for the start of the new school year."

I'm pretty happy about that.

I'm glad that I could take this little break to get ready

because being ready for the new school year

just makes me a little more relaxed.

The second phrase I wanted to teach you today

is the phrase "ready to roll."

Now, I couldn't remember

if I've already taught you this phrase,

but I am ready to roll.

In English, we use this phrase somewhat informally

to just say we're ready for something.

When it comes to the new school year, I'm ready to roll.

If my boss said to me,

"Bob, are you ready for the first day of school?"

I would say, "I'm ready to roll."

It's kind of a funny phrase.

I think it's related to, we use the word roll

when we're talking about driving.

Like when I'm driving down the road,

you could say I'm rolling down the road.

I don't actually say that, younger people might,

but when you say that you are ready to roll,

it means that you are prepared,

it means that you are all ready to do something.

So let's review.

If you have everything squared away

or if you say, "I'm squared away,"

it means that everything is in its proper place.

You are organized and ready for something.

I have everything squared away

and I'm ready for the new school year.

And when you say that you are ready to roll,

it means that you are just completely

and totally ready to do something.

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

This comment is from a Maritza and the comment is this.

"Hi, Bob.

Lisianthus are really beautiful flowers,

but I wonder if you have any fruit trees on your farm?

So far, I haven't seen any.

By the way, I'm a cheap person too.

I love to drive a hard bargain. Have a good day."

And my response was this.

"We do not have any fruit trees.

There used to be a pear tree

at the bottom of the hill behind my house,

but it died years ago.

We've thought about getting an apple tree someday."

So one of the things that's unique about fruit

and not everybody knows this is that you need a certain kind

of soil to grow certain kinds of fruit trees.

Where I live here in Ontario, Canada,

we have very hard clay soil

and so the only two types of fruit trees we can grow,

we can grow apples and we can grow pears in this soil.

I'm not sure if you can see it, but way down the hill,

there is a dead tree and that is the tree

that used to have pears on it.

When I was a kid, we would go down the hill

and we would pick pears off the ground

and we would feed them to some of our animals,

but we would also keep all the good ones

and we would put them in the fruit cellar in the basement

and then we would eat them during the winter.

They were quite yummy actually.

We've thought about getting an apple tree.

We've just never quite committed to getting one,

but that would be really fun to have an apple tree

here on the farm as well.

But hey, I wanted to talk about being ready

for the school year

and I wanted to thank you for being patient

while I took a bit of a break on this channel

and my other one.

I was able to go into work.

I was able to look over my class lists.

I was able to start to think about

how I want to organize my classroom.

I put all my desks in the spots I wanted them.

I got to see how big my classes were.

I have about 20 to 25 students in each class,

so not big, but not small either.

So anyways, thanks for being patient during the break.

I'll be back in a couple of days

with another short English lesson.

Bye.