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."

Um, 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.

Uh, I don't actually say that; younger people might.

But, uh, 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 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...

Uh, 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, uh, 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.

Um, 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.