People who love gardening often spend all winter planning what they'll grow in the spring. They pore over seed catalogs and websites, plot out their flower or vegetable beds on paper, and put aside money for new plants, mulch, and all the other necessary materials to make their garden beautiful and prosperous.

Have you ever thought about tending to your speech the way you'd tend to a garden?

Well, I'm issuing you a challenge!

For Better Hearing and Speech month, we're talking about how your communication takes care... the kind of care that would go into the planning and maintenance of a lush and healthy garden.

What does it look like to “grow a speech garden” with care?

Any gardener knows that weeds will take over your garden in no time if left to grow! They become harder to uproot as they get bigger. The same is true for your speech: an unhelpful sound left unchecked will make you harder to understand,...

Tell me: What involves an ostrich, a myth, and a closed mind?

Give up?

Another American idiom!

A couple of weeks ago, I used a beach-themed tongue-twister to highlight the difference between the “S” and “SH” sounds in American English pronunciation. Since we're still in the heat of summer, this week I'm highlighting another “beachy” phrase that you may hear around your workplace.

The origin of the idiom “bury your head in the sand” is not really based on fact... but Americans still use this phrase as a way to show their displeasure with someone who is not listening to the facts.

Learn more about it, and how to use it, in my video.

Once again, Americans love the beach as much as anyone, and we have a myriad of idioms to prove it. Here are some other “beachy” phrases... do you know what they mean? If not, take a moment to look them up!