[0:00]Well, hello and welcome to this English lesson, which I've titled In The Wild! Spring Edition. The idea for this lesson came about when I was walking around outside and I was seeing and hearing things. So it's not necessarily a lesson about spring, but it's certainly a lesson about all of the things that you see in my part of the world when it is the season of spring. It's very beautiful outside. I probably should be doing this lesson outside and walking around with you, but that would be impractical. So we'll just do it inside and I'll teach you a lot of words and phrases that we uh use in my part of North America in the spring. In the wild, animals or plants seen in their natural habitat. So I wanted to take a minute to explain why I have given this lesson the title in the wild. It's because sometimes you see things and maybe if you see an animal at a zoo, that's not the same as seeing it in its natural habitat. That's not the same as seeing it in the wild. So when I was walking outside on my property, the other day, I was noticing a lot of things out in the wild. It doesn't mean I live in the jungle or the forest. It just means outside. It's kind of a fun phrase uh to say that. But I do want to explain that we use it in a funny way as well. We use it when we are seeing a person outside of their normal environment, and it's a very informal phrase. So here's Matt Damon, someone must have seen him out in the wild and took a picture of him. Students sometimes will use this phrase. If a student sees me at the grocery store, if a student sees me at the shopping mall, they might say to a friend later, oh, I saw Bob the Canadian in the wild. I saw him at the shopping mall. He's a real person. So, anyways, there is a funny version of the phrase, but let's get to the core of this lesson. Here we go. Weeds. Jen and I are always shocked at how quickly weeds start to grow in the spring. So a weed is a plant that you don't want. When you have a garden, you plant the plants you want. You put seeds in the ground and then other plants just randomly grow and they're weeds. We don't want them. They are things that we pull out. I imagine every part of the world has slightly different kinds of weeds, but uh, yes, number one, weeds. And I do want to mention that almost all of the words this morning are plural and end in S because that's how we talk about things in general. I saw a lot of weeds outside. I saw some snails. There were puddles. There were squirrels and wheelbarrows and rakes. Sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself. So, you'll notice the singular is of course weed, there was a weed, but I'm going to be using the plural for everything because it's how we naturally talk about stuff. Worms. So I went for a walk the other day and it was raining a little bit. And when it rains, the worms come out of the ground. And uh, I noticed along the side of the road, there were a lot of worms. I am not someone who goes fishing, but if I was someone who went fishing, that would have been a good time to collect worms. Now, of course, worms are these wriggly, kind of slimy, like if you touch them, they're slimy, they're not, it's not nice to touch a worm. And they wriggle through the ground and I think they eat organic matter and they make the soil better. So worms, we also sometimes call them earthworms. Buds. So the trees have buds. Some of the trees have blossoms. So buds are kind of this little tiny green part of the tree before it opens and becomes a leaf or a blossom. So when you walk around right now, there's no shade under the trees. The sun can shine right through because there are only buds so far. There are no leaves yet on the trees. Blossoms. So I'm not sure what part of the world you live in, but there are some places where there are cherry blossoms or apricot trees that have blossoms. Blossoms are tiny, tiny flowers, usually found on a tree or bush. Although we use it for other in other ways as well, but generally, if you were to say, oh, you should go to Washington, DC, the cherry trees are blossoming. There are a lot of blossoms on the trees, and the cool thing with blossoms is it usually smells really good too when you see a lot of blossoms. It's a fun word to say, by the way, blossoms. Long grass. So I, I searched and searched for a a guy mowing his lawn where he let the lawn go for too long. I would, that's the phrase we would use. He should have mowed this long grass a couple of weeks ago or more. Now he's out there with his push mower. I hope it's going well. But when we see a lawn and we think, oh, it needs to be mowed, we often say that there's long grass. We sometimes say tall grass, you might think that would be more common, but often we will say things like, oh, your grass is getting long. Well, there's a lot of long grass in the backyard. It needs to be mowed. So one of the things you will see out in the wild at this time of year is long grass. And then of course, lawn mowers. Let's zoom in on this one. Another picture of someone mowing down some lawn long grass with a lawn mower. Those words are very similar, aren't they? Long grass, lawn mower. So hopefully you can hear the difference there. Again, we call this a push mower. I think in my professional opinion, that's the wrong mower for the job. Uh there are a lot of things I'm not good at. I'm, I have a lot of experience cutting lawn and if I was to cut this lawn, I would be trying to find a much bigger lawn mower. But there are, yes, lots of lawn mowers out there at this time of year.
[6:58]And then puddles. Now, I noticed the other day, I was walking outside and there were puddles and I was wearing a pair of crocs. Which normally, if the water's only this deep, Crocs are fairly waterproof, but I think my Crocs have a hole in the bottom. If you don't know what Crocs are, you'll have to search that up online. It's kind of a plastic pair of shoes that you can put on quickly. I wouldn't actually call them shoes. Footwear, we'll call them footwear. Uh and I stepped in a really shallow puddle. So you can have a deep puddle or a shallow puddle and uh my foot got wet. I was surprised. I wasn't expecting that to happen. But yes, definitely outside right now, there are a lot of puddles. Snails. So, I don't really like snails. Snails are these little, oh, let me go back here for a sec. Puddles are just little um indentations in the ground or lawn that fill with water when it rains. I should actually define the word that I'm teaching, shouldn't I? I know it's pretty easy in this lesson because there's always a picture, but I should for sure explain that. Snails. So snails crawl along the ground. Snails have a little shell on their back and the same day I was walking and saw worms, there were also a lot of snails along the side of the road. I don't know why the worms and snails are close to the road. That seems dangerous to me. Probably poor parenting at some point in their lives. Sorry that was a joke. But snails, they're also slimy on the bottom. Uh they crawl very, very slowly, um, and there's just lots of them right now. It's pretty cool. Twigs and branches. So, trees are beautiful. But when it's windy, and when you have a long winter, and there's a lot of wind storms, uh and snow sometimes puts weight on the trees. Twigs and branches sometimes fall off. The difference between a twig and a branch is simply size. They're all just parts of a tree. But when I was outside the other day, I noticed that there were some branches, some pretty big branches, laying on the ground and there were some twigs. So I need to clean those up before I mow my lawn. So there are definitely twigs and branches outside.
[10:13]Rubber boots. As I mentioned, I went outside wearing my crocs. I should have worn my rubber boots, but I know my rubber boots have a hole in them several and I need a new pair of rubber boots. So, uh, this is something though you will definitely see out in the wild right now. A lot of people will wear rubber boots. Uh Jen has been wearing her rubber boots for two or three weeks as she begins working outside. So that's very, very cool.
[11:00]Wheelbarrows. So this is one of the coolest inventions ever. A wheelbarrow is a little hand cart, I guess, with one wheel on the front and two handles on the back and you can fill it with all kinds of things and then you lift the handles and you can move stuff around. You can drive the wheelbarrow. I think because there's a wheel, it actually acts as a lever. If you know how levers work, so it actually makes it easier to lift all of the stuff that's in there. But you will definitely see wheelbarrows at this time of year. Almost everywhere I walked the other day, uh I I went through a several neighborhoods. I probably saw five or six wheelbarrows. So people are cleaning up twigs and branches. People are just outside, maybe moving some soil to a new area. People are going to start planting stuff soon, so definitely there are a lot of wheelbarrows out there.
[12:28]Rakes. So another thing you can use in the fall is a rake to clean up leaves. But you don't always get it all done. So sometimes you need a rake in the spring, uh because there's just lots of stuff. Like leaves that have kind of rotted over the spring. A rake actually works really well to rake up twigs. Don't try to rake up branches. It doesn't work. That's a little bit too hard for a rake. But yes, a rake is a garden tool that you can use to kind of gather things into a pile on the ground. Very helpful for cleaning up your yard in the spring. Melting snow. So this might not be something that you see at this time of year. But we often see melting snow at this time of year. In fact, the other day, I went to the grocery store and when I went to the grocery store, it was snowing in April. This was this past weekend and when I came out, my vehicle had some snow on it and then there was a little bit of snow on the ground, but the sun came out and it immediately started melting. So you can see here, I like this picture shows it nicely. You have snow, but you have green grass. So this is definitely in my mind a picture from spring or fall, most likely spring, where the grass is starting to grow, but you still have a little bit of snow melting. We don't have any snow outside at all anymore, but like I said, it does snow occasionally and then we do get a little bit of snow on the ground. Mud. So this person was very wise and wore their rubber boots. Mud is simply dirt that has a lot of water in it and it often gets very sticky and when you step in it, you can sink. So when you step in mud, your foot goes into the mud. You sink in the mud. This person is not sinking too far, but if you look at how high the mud is on their boot, I'm sure they probably sunk in the mud earlier before this picture was taken. But mud, very, very wet soil that you find when you are outside at this time of year. Tire tracks or ruts. I think I mentioned this once in another lesson. One of the things that really bothers me is that at this time of year, you will see where um everyone has driven on the lawn. So when you drive on the lawn, you leave tire tracks, which you see here in the lawn or what we call ruts. They're the same thing. He drove on the lawn and now there's tire tracks, or he drove on the lawn and now there's ruts in the lawn. Very, very annoying.
[16:15]Um, and I'm not going to blame delivery drivers because I appreciate them the most and I know it must be hard to figure out where the lawn is versus the driveway. But uh, if any of you are watching, if you deliver to my house, please try to stay on the driveway. Please don't go in the lawn and make ruts. Fog. Almost every morning, there's fog right now. This is probably caused by the fact that it's cold overnight and the ground is warming up or the inverse. It might be warm overnight and the ground is still cool relative to the air temperature. Either way, not a weather man. There is a lot of fog um in the morning. Uh, but it dissipates very quickly once the sun comes up. So fog, definitely something I have been seeing a lot of uh, as I get up and go out on these beautiful spring days. By the way, fog is moisture in the air. It looks a lot like that. It looks exactly like that, actually. Geese. There are too many of these geese. I think I have another picture coming up. Yes. These geese are everywhere. They honk. In Canadian parks in the city, there's even geese. I don't know if I would call that in the wild because they're in the city and sometimes geese will chase people. And geese can be very, very mean. Um, sometimes when we plant certain crops, the geese will eat the crop. And then I have to go out and uh I put up a little fence to stop the geese, but this year Jen said I can just fly my drone and scare the geese off the soybean field. We'll see. But geese, it's this is uh actually what we call a a Canada goose. Some people call them Canadian geese. We use different versions, but it's uh a pretty normal thing to see in this part of the world at this time of year. Robins. So, interestingly enough, we do see robins. A robin is a North American bird that looks like this. It kind of has an orange chest, an orange or red chest. Um and you can usually see them out getting worms. Although, I actually think they migrate through this area, but spend most of the summer's further north. Um, so we do see robins, but like, I want to say we see them in the spring and fall, but I'm not 100% sure that but we don't see them year round. That's for sure. Squirrels. We see all the time though. Whoa, squirrels. We see all the time though. A squirrel is a small, furry animal like this. It's probably a rodent. It has a bushy tail. It gathers nuts throughout the year and stores them to eat in the winter. At least that's what they taught me when I was in school. I should double check some of these things because some of the things they taught me in school aren't true anymore. So. Chirping. So this is something I hear a lot at this time of year. I hear a lot of birds chirping and it's a beautiful sound, especially first thing in the morning. If you go outside, you will hear birds chirping. Birds are in the trees, birds are flying around. So a chirp, it's like. That's not a chirp. I can't make bird sounds this morning. But a chirp is a sound that a small bird makes. And you might be wondering, do geese make a sound? Yes, geese honk. So I hear a lot of honking at this time of year. You can honk your car, but geese also honk. I'm not going to try and make the sound. It's kind of a weird sound, but when you go outside, even this morning, if I went outside, there are geese across the river. You would hear them honking. So that's definitely something you hear at this time of year. And then dripping.
[21:49]So it rains a lot in the spring. When water falls, we call that dripping. So it might be as simple as like, drip, drip, drip, like very, very slow. Or it might be like this where there's just a lot of water dripping from the eaves trough. That's what we call that. That little channel is called the eaves drop. So there's a lot of dripping and I, yeah, I don't have cups everywhere because the ceiling is dripping. But when I was a kid, in our old house, we had pans we would put out if it rained.
[22:45]I don't know if any of you have ever experienced that.
[22:54]That's uh our old house leaked when I was a kid.
