Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 1097, Landscaping a Home.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 1097.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
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On this episode we have a dialogue between Mona and Kellen about landscaping a house or making the land or area around the house nice and pretty.
Let's get started.
I want a lawn.
I've always pictured our new house with a lawn.
Lawns require a lot of water and upkeep.
I think we should use hardscape for most of the yard and plant only drought tolerant plants.
I don't want my yard to be full of gravel and rocks.
I picture a water feature in the middle with annuals and perennials planted all around it, surrounded by a big, beautiful lawn.
We can have some kind of slow-growing ground cover if you want to, but the rest isn't practical.
I don't know what you mean.
We can plant a hedge over there and install planters along the walkway.
Well, I guess I will, with your help.
Don't count on me.
My motto is no muss, no fuss.
Mona says, I want a lawn.
A lawn, L-A-W-N, is a green area around a house or a building with grass that is typically cut short so that it doesn't look too long, but it looks nice.
A lawn is almost always an area of green grass when we use the term in reference to a house or a building.
Mona wants a lawn.
She says, I've always pictured our new house with a lawn.
She means she's always imagined having a house with a lawn.
Kellen says, however, lawns require a lot of water and upkeep.
Upkeep, U-P-K-E-E-P, is another word for maintenance. for taking care of something so that it looks nice and is in good condition.
If you own a house, there is a certain amount of upkeep you have to do every year, because houses, like all of us, get older and need repairs and other changes in order to keep them in good condition.
Kellen doesn't like this idea.
He says lawns require a lot of water and upkeep.
I think we should use hardscape for most of the yard and plant only drought-tolerant plants.
Hardscape H-A-R-D-S-C-A-P-E refers to hard surfaces that are used in the outdoor areas around a house or a building that take the place of grass or plants.
Hardscape is usually something that is made of stone or brick.
So instead of having grass in front of your house or in front of your building, you might have a hardscape where the whole thing is stone or concrete or another hard surface.
Kellens suggests using hardscape for most of the yard, Y-A-R-D.
The word yard is used to refer to the space either in front of a house, called the front yard, or in back of the house, called the backyard.
So yard is a word that we would use to describe that area, that land.
If we're talking about a building, a commercial building, like an office building, we probably wouldn't use the word yard to describe the area in front and in back of the building.
We would use the term grounds, G-R-U-N-D-S.
The grounds of the building refers to the area outside of the building that's still part of the property of that building.
Kellen wants to use hardscape for most of the yard.
He also wants to plant, or put into the ground, only drought-tolerant plants.
Notice that plant, P-L-A-N-T, can be used as a verb or as a noun.
You can plant trees.
You could also say that trees are plants.
Well, Kellen wants to plant drought-tolerant plants.
Drought, D-R-O-U-G-H-T, is when there isn't enough water.
Here in California, we quite frequently have droughts.
We don't have enough water.
A drought-tolerant plant is a plant that doesn't need a lot of water, that can put up with or tolerate drought.
When you don't have a lot of rain or water.
Mona says, I don't want my yard to be full of gravel and rocks.
Gravel G-R-A-V-E-L refers to small rocks, especially ones that you would use on the road or on a sidewalk in front of a house.
Some of the older roads in rural areas, in areas outside of the main cities in the United States, still have gravel
Not that many, but if you go into an area where there aren't a lot of people, some of the roads may still be gravel roads small little rocks instead of a concrete or asphalt top.
Mona says, Mona is giving us what she wants in the yard.
She wants a water feature.
A water feature refers to something with water, such as a small pool of water, what we might call a pond P-O-N-D.
Or a water feature could be a fountain, something that sprays or shoots up water into the air.
The term annuals A-N-N-U-A-L-S refers to plants that only live for a single season or a single part of the year.
If you want that plant again next year, you have to put a new plant in the ground or new seeds in the ground.
Perennials P-E-R-E-N-N-I-A-L-S are plants that live two or more years, so you don't have to put a new plant in the ground next year.
It will keep coming up, we might say, each year.
Kellen says we can have some kind of slow-growing ground cover if you want to, but the rest isn't practical.
Kellen talks about slow-growing ground cover.
Ground cover refers to small plants that go across the ground but are not very tall.
They're short.
What Kellen is saying is that he doesn't want all these flowers and plants.
He just wants something very simple.
Mona says I don't know what you mean.
We can plant a hedge over there and install planters along the walkway.
A hedge, H-E-D-G-E, is a tall, thick growing plant that you cut usually in straight lines and use as a sort of border so you might have a yard in front of your house and along the edge of the yard along the border of the yard you might have a plant that goes all the way around your yard And you cut it, and that would be what we would call a hedge.
Usually hedges are somewhere between two and maybe four or five feet.
If they're much taller than that, they become more like trees and we probably wouldn't use the word hedge.
We use plants called bushes for hedges more commonly.
They're not that tall.
Mona talks about planters along the walkway.
Planters are large boxes filled with soil that have plants in them.
Instead of putting the plant in the ground, below the surface of the ground, you have a box that has dirt in it and you put the plant in there.
That's a planter.
The walkway W-A-L-K-W-A-Y just refers to the area where you walk from one place to another in front of a house or a building.
A walkway usually goes from the sidewalk or the street to the front of the house or building.
Kellen says, who will do the pruning and mulching?
To prune, P-R-U-N-E, means to cut pieces off of a plant or a tree to make it smaller.
Sometimes trees or plants get too big and you have to cut them back.
You have to prune them.
Kellen is asking who is going to do all of this work to take care of what Mona wants in the front yard.
Who is going to prune and mulch, M-U-L-C-H?
To mulch means to put certain kinds of materials on the ground in order to help keep the plants and trees healthy.
Sometimes we use the outside surface of a tree called the bark as mulch.
Sometimes we use leaves from the tree as mulch.
Notice that mulch, like plant, can be both a verb and a noun.
Kellen says, who will pull the weeds and mow the lawn?
Who will rake the leaves when the seasons change?
Weeds, W-E-E-D-S, refers to unwanted plants, plants that you don't want in your yard or garden.
To get rid of these plants, you have to pull them out of the ground.
So we have the expression pull, P-U-L-L, the weeds.
To mow, M-O-W, the lawn, is to cut the lawn or to cut the grass that is part of the lawn.
Raking R-A-K-I-N-G refers to taking what looks like a big broom and using it to gather together leaves that have fallen off the trees.
There's a verb to rake, which means to use an object called a rake to to gather together the leaves, either to get rid of them or to perhaps use them as mulch around other parts of your yard.
Mona says, well, I guess I will with your help.
Mona is saying she's going to help do all of this work.
Kellen says, don't count on me, meaning don't depend on or rely on me doing this work.
If you want all this stuff, you're going to have to do the work.
That's what Kellen seems to be saying.
Of course, no rational, sane, intelligent husband would talk to his wife this way.
But this is an imaginary dialogue.
Kellen says, my motto is no muss, no fuss.
Your motto, M-O-T-T-O, is a short expression of love.
Either your belief about something, a rule that you follow, or it's simply an expression that we associate with a certain institution or certain organization.
Models often express a certain standard or belief that you have, a rule that you live by.
The Boy Scouts have a motto, be prepared, meaning be ready for anything.
Well, Kellen's motto is, no muss, M-U-S-S, no fuss, F-U-S-S.
No muss, no fuss is a phrase meaning that you want to keep things simple.
You want to reduce the amount of work that you have.
There's also an expression with the word fuss, don't make a fuss.
Don't make a fuss means don't cause problems, don't complain, don't make more difficulties for yourself or for us than are necessary.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
I want a lawn.
I've always pictured our new house with a lawn.
Lawns require a lot of water and upkeep.
I think we should use hardscape for most of the yard and plant only drought-tolerant plants.
I don't want my yard to be full of gravel and rocks.
I picture a water feature in the middle with annuals and perennials planted all around it, surrounded by a big, beautiful lawn.
We can have some kind of slow-growing ground cover if you want to, but the rest is impractical.
I don't know what you mean.
We can plant a hedge over there and install planters along the walkway.
Who will do the pruning and mulching?
Who will pull the weeds and mow the lawn?
Who will rake the leaves when the seasons change?
Well, I guess I will, with your help.
Don't count on me.
My motto is, no muss, no fuss.
Special thanks to our wonderful script writer, Dr. Lucy Say, for her wonderful scripts.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again right here on ESL Podcasts.
English as a Second Language podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2015 by the Center for Educational Development.
