Senseless Banter...

Personal experience joke:

You know you are a die hard SFG gardener when... upon learning another of your daughter's friends has a bunny... after arriving to pick-up your daughter at the friend's house, you beg for the "privilege" of cleaning the bunny's cage.

Talk about a win/win situation!

Now that's good!  Cleaning out under the rabbit cages was one of my chores when I was young.  We put the stuff under our avocado trees.

Llamamama thank you for the post, I didn't realize until today that there was one.  I put the september one in my calendar, thank you!

Windmere, you are so smart!

Tricia     
 The info is for a full lunar eclipse, there will be other partial ones as I recall

I want one, plus the tiny lawn mower that goes with it. I present "The Lawn Chair" courtesy of the Instructables website.

That is innovative.  I'm sure a pair of manicure scissors would be adequate.  I would never get the cat off of it.

A gift from the heart.

Some cats leave dead birds or headless frogs at the doorstep. Mine left me a hawk moth! She knew what would please her servant!

Sterling has left three rodents at my back door so far this month.

Good kitties!  Lilly hasn't left me a present yet...but I'm pretty sure there's not much left on my property.
 
CC

So far, nothing from Ash. No rodents, no birds, no butterflies, no wabbits. I reminded him that it is a matter of National Pride. (Tabby Nation). I would say by the subtle change in the tone of his snoring that he got the message. I expect to be up to my knees in mice and moles by the morning. if I can wake him long enough to go outside.

donnainzone10 wrote:Camprn,

May I be deputized?  I'm constantly distracted by grammar and punctuation errors, and not just on this forum.  They're everywhere!

Please don't take away my maters, cukes and wabbits. 

Kay

Kay,

To me, those are acceptable gardening terms.  

Donna, I participate on a forum where grammar and spelling rule. Mods remove posts for editing if they're not correct. Makes it very difficult for ESL posters. (English as Second Language)

Anyhow, we had a discussion recently about what article to use before a word starting with the letter 'h'. Is 'a' or 'an' the correct one?

Spoiler:

What say you?

an historic
an Hispanic

I cannot see in my Complete Word Finder (Reader's Digest) any help with that.

a horse

speaking I would use "an" for historic or Hispanic

We live in sugar cane country and when they harvest the cane the place swarms with field mice.  Thanks to our kitties shown here stretching in the morning on the patio, we havent seen mousy sign in the house since they joined us.  They have brought us mice, birds, frogs, and a lizard.  Thanks to them we are picking more grapes, figs, plums, and even pecans.  I never waS A CAT GUY BUT ALL i CAN SAY NOW IS GOOOOOOD KITTIES.

 

I hear ya, Cappy. I had an English teacher like that too. But English rules evolve and change based on common usage. (for better or worse is up for debate!)

Who knows, they might eventually change the spelling of 'ask' to 'aks' because so many people pronounce it that way!

Cajun Cappy wrote:Anyways, I was taught in elementary school that words that start with vowels get an an in front of them.  

Me too.  If the word does not start with a vowel, they get an "a" in front of the word.

Which rolls off the tongue easier?

A hour.
An hour.

A heirloom.
An heirloom.

A honest person.
An honest person.

To my surprise, some people were taught to use 'an' when a 'h' sounds like a vowel.

Oh yeah...I use an in those examples, border...also, like Donna, with historic.  Weird.  I sure don' t remember learning it that way.  Probably comes from reading too much.

It's funny how some high school stuff sticks with you.

In grade ten I had an English teacher who drilled correct English Grammar into our little heads (that were otherwise obsessing on teenage things). I have forgotten a good bit, but one thing that stuck was the convention that for the most part, numbers should be written out as words. "Two hundred and fifty-five", not 255.

Spelling on the hand, is another story...

This thread is HUGE.  I have browsed through the last couple of pages.

My 2 cents.

Language is important.  You are judged by the way you speak. 

I am from south Louisiana - Cajun Country. 

My Father did not speak English until he attended school. 

His first language was French.  

He attended a school run by Catholic Brothers.  He was whipped for speaking French.  He was held  back a year until he learned English.

The unfortunate result of his early experience with language is that he did not teach  his children to speak French.  His experience taught him that speaking French was a bad thing. 

There is a generation of Acadians -my generation - that have lost the language of our ancestors.

My parents were very strict with us -their children -when it came to language.  If we  wanted to be heard we had to speak with proper enunciation. No dees, dem dere, does.  None of the preconceived notion of "Cajun Speak". 

I thank my parents. 

I do wish my Dad had not grown up with a stigma for speaking French.  I wish he had taught his children to speak French.

  There I go again - ramble, ramble.

Sorry all.

I am passionate about language.  Language defines us.

boffer wrote:
To my surprise, some people were taught to use 'an' when a 'h' sounds like a vowel.

This is exactly what we were taught in English class all through school!  If the 'h' is silent use 'an', if the 'h' pronounced use 'a'.

Goosegirl wrote:

boffer wrote:
To my surprise, some people were taught to use 'an' when a 'h' sounds like a vowel.

This is exactly what we were taught in English class all through school!  If the 'h' is silent use 'an', if the 'h' pronounced use 'a'.

Maybe the rest of us were taught this but we are too darn old to remember the exact details.

Or didn't practice what they were taught!