Landscape Management Blog

More good deeds

2008-07-03T06:56:00.000-07:00

I don't think this industry get's enough credit for all the good work it does. Not only do landscapers and lawn care operators keep our lawns looking beautiful, but the people who make up this industry continue to be extremely generous. There's Green Care for Troops, our recent post about Hope In Bloom, and now this from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
"Scott Reinblatt, founder of Big Blue Sky Landscaping, is behind the all-day landscaping event in which his company will mow, trim, edge, and organically fertilize a lawn for $125, money that will be donated to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. Homeowners will also receive a landscape management care guide, sponsors say."
The event will take place on July 12. The goal is to raise $2,500 for breast cancer research. Think about helping out or holding a similar event in your community. Not only is it good for some PR, but it's good for the soul.
— Mike Seuffert

Hope in Bloom for cancer patients

2008-06-23T07:50:00.000-07:00

Here's an article featuring a landscape professional with a heart of gold. It appeared in the Monday, June 23, issue of the Norwood, MA, Daily News Transcript.

WALPOLE — Brenda Cooke is helping to change the landscape for local cancer patients - literally.

She is a landscaper who has donated her time to a nonprofit organization called Hope In Bloom that plants gardens in the yards of people fighting cancer.

Friday, Cooke, a Walpole resident herself, replanted gardens around the pool of breast cancer patient Lynne Bean of Ponderosa Lane in Walpole.

Cooke said the flowers serve as powerful symbolic inspiration. The perennials that are planted show cancer patients that they, like the new flowers in their yard, can bloom again. They encourage people to stick it out through difficult times, as the flowers do in winter, because spring is inevitable.

"Fresh cut flowers are an expression of love," she said. "It's a gift of life."

Bean was diagnosed with breast cancer in December of 2005. While she was being treated, a former co-worker told Hope In Bloom about Bean.

She said she is "deeply grateful for (Cooke's) willingness to donate her time."

Bean calls herself a survivor, but she said she still needs to make regular visits to the hospital for treatment. The new garden, she said, will surely help her continued recovery.

Cooke met with Bean about a month ago to discuss themes for the garden. After looking at catalogs and various sketches, Bean decided on a beach theme with a pink and lime green color scheme.

Cooke then went to work finding flowers and tall grasses to make the vision a reality.

Her work doesn't stop with planting flowers.

By weeding, clearing out space in the garden, tending to window boxes, rearranging furniture and building a lattice to hide pool equipment, Cooke worked to create a "clean, brightened space to enjoy" as well.

"Plants are very therapeutic," Cooke explained. "When the landscaping goes astray, it affects you emotionally and psychologically."

Straightening out a yard, she added, brings a patient "back into emotional balance."

A yard can fall into disorder because keeping it neat is not a priority for a patient undergoing treatment.

Survival was the top-priority when Bean was diagnosed with cancer, she said. She only attended to the "bare necessities" of life.

Along with being weak with illness, a cancer patient tends to spend time with family and devotes financial resources to children and costly treatments.

"It's a family situation," Cooke said. "It's a home situation."

As a cancer patient, you don't "have time to enjoy your landscaping, let alone make it enjoyable."

Bean is married with three children - Lauren, 9, Danny, 11, and Steven, 13.

Hope In Bloom has given her more than just a landscaper. Bean has found a confidant in Cooke.

The landscaper became involved with Hope in Bloom after losing her mother to breast cancer. Her mother, she said, taught her everything she knew about gardening. Cooke said it was an especially difficult time toward the end as the two looked out the window to a yard that had fallen into disarray since they had last devoted time together gardening it.

Cooke's father is also currently in a battle with cancer.

She also started a company, Gardens With Spirit (gardenswithspirit.com), that creates gardens with the aim of cultivating the mind and the soul.

Roberta Herson started Hope In Bloom last year when she lost her best friend, also a gardener, to breast cancer.

Three dozen gardens have been installed, but there are more than 100 requests from all over Massachusetts to attend to.

Today, Cooke and others in the organization are looking for volunteers, especially men, to help with the landscaping and for donations to purchase flowers and plants from nurseries. Donations can be made by consulting the group's Web site, hopeinbloom.org.

"People need to know they can make an impact," Cooke said. The impact they make is personal as well. Money isn't being given to a faceless organization. Like helping the Beans in East Walpole, she said, one would be "making a donation to your neighbor."

Congo put down after one attack too many

2008-06-20T05:56:00.000-07:00

Congo the German shepherd made one attack too many — this one injuring and sending the 75-year-old mother of its owner to a hospital.

Congo, of course, is the big dog that chewed up 42-year-old landscape worker, Giovanni Rivera, almost exactly a year ago. He and four other workers came to work on the property of Guy and Elizabeth James in Princeton Township, NJ, that morning when he was attacked by the dog and several of its offspring. Rivera required surgery to patch up his wounds and eventually ended up with a $250,000 settlement.

When the judge hearing the case against Congo last summer, ruled that the dog was a “vicious” dog and should be put down, thousands of Congo’s supporters weighed in to save his life, many claiming that the dog was just protecting its owner from a perceived threat.

Take your pick — either Congo was, in fact, a vicious dog or he perceived that the 75-year-old mother of its owner, Elizabeth James, was a threat when he attacked her.

The family had the dog and his three offspring euthanized this week. According to news reports of the dogs’ death (there were many), their owner Guy Games denied the dogs attacked his mother-in-law. He insisted that they jumped on her “in play.” — Ron Hall

A lighter look at water shortages

2008-06-16T08:46:00.000-07:00

Last week California's Governator declared the state was in an official drought and ordered water be transported to the driest areas.

This is a very serious problem and could have a major impact on landscapers and others in the Green Industry. With that in mind, my favorite fake-news source, The Onion, provided a list of ways for California to conserve water, including:

Gardeners must haul their own water from Mexico

Upon the conclusion of each Shamu Show at San Diego's SeaWorld, all persons seated in the Splash Zone must wring out their wet clothes over the lip of the orca tank

Wildfires only allowed to rage out of control on odd-numbered days

Top scientific minds will be summoned to see if they can somehow utilize the immense body of water immediately to the state's left

Click here to see the whole list.

— Mike Seuffert

J-1 visas and student workers just don't cut it

2008-06-14T09:33:00.000-07:00

I read with great interest a recent article in the Vineland (MA) Gazette that told how businesses on Martha’s Vineyard are surviving in spite of not getting all the H-2B seasonal guest workers they wanted.

The headline suggested that the businesses have been able to hire enough employees for the tourist season in spite of failure of Congress to expand the H=2B program. And in spite of a chamber of commerce official saying that local businesses were anticipating a shortage of about 1,200 workers this summer.

Martha’s Vineyard, of course, is one of America’s busiest and most popular summer resorts.

As I scanned the headline I wondered, wow, am I missing something here? Could my landscape friends be overstating their need for seasonal workers? Could it be that the H-2B program, as some its critics whine, takes jobs away from our young people and other U.S. citizens desiring employment?

Nobody wants to see that, right?

As it turns out, neither is the case. And, the H-2B critics are, in fact, just whining.

The article described how some of the island businesses acquired workers through J-1 visas that allow foreign students to work seasonally in the United States. Others hired local students (mostly high schoolers) for jobs such as bussing tables, cleaning guest rooms, etc.

We’ve talked to a lot of landscape business owners these past few years and while many are doing fine with local help, many others have had little or no success attracting reliable local workers, students or otherwise. Often, again in the face of criticism of the H-2B program, at wages considerably better than those at a fast food joint.

Let me just state — the J-1 program doesn't work for landscape production because these foreign students generally take off in September or October, just when most landscape companies have recovered their costs and are ready to burn rubber in hopes of making their profit for the season.

Local high students, you say? How many do you know that aren’t involved with summer sports, band or working in internships? Darn few are willing to work five or six long hot days in a row through the course of a season. That’s what I’m told.

The J-1 program works fine for amusement parks and tee-shirt shacks that are busy during the relatively short summer season. After Labor Day these businesses generally don’t need as much help so they don’t mind if these workers take off.

The landscape business is a longer, harder pull. It takes a tougher worker, and a worker that shows up long before the summer tourists arrive and is still producing through most of the fall.

The H-2B seasonal guest worker program remains one of the few programs instituted and administered by our federal government that actually works just as intended. Too bad it isn’t being expanded. — Ron Hall

Sticking to his guns on an unpopular issue

2008-06-09T07:39:00.000-07:00

Dan Gardner is a columnist for the Ottawa Citizen newspaper. To my knowledge Dan’s salary is not tied in any way to the agrichemical industry, and I suspect that the newspaper he works for is not dependent upon that same industry for advertising revenue. I can’t say that’s the case categorically since I don’t read the Ottawa Citizen.

Several weeks ago Gardner wrote a column essentially saying that he was satisfied with the findings of a Health Canada review finding that “ there is reasonable certainty that no harm to human health, future generations or the environment will result from use of exposure” to 2,4-D. That herbicide, of course, has been subjected to more studies than just about any other chemical product you can think of the past 60 years or so since it’s discovery.

Gardner’s column apparently prompted a “deluge” of emails, from people opposed to the use of pesticides, including herbicide 2,4-D. Rather than retreat from his stance in the face of so negative response, he came back with a second column on the subject Saturday, June 7. The column offers a reasoned explanation of why he feels the way he does about this particular issue.

My hat is off to Dan Gardner, not as much for his defense of a particular product or class of products but for being honest with himself and his readers. He didn’t let the unfavorable response to what he wrote change what he feels to be true.

Click on the headline if you want to read what Dan Gardner wrote on June 6.

City's refusal to ban pesticides just delays the inevitable

2008-06-06T14:03:00.001-07:00

In the category of man bites dog in light of the near hysteria over lawn pesticide use that’s infected Canada, the council of Parry Sound, Ontario, turned down a proposal to ban the use of pesticides. The Parry Sound mayor cast the deciding vote.

It seems that skunks and other critters have been tearing up the city’s cemetery looking for grubs, and the city director of operations wants to knock out the grubs with an insecticide. To appease one particularly persistent pesticide critic, who was quoted in the local Beacon Star News as saying, “:I guess we have to control every aspect of our environment and make it as pristine as possible,” (Hey amigo, it’s a cemetery, so lighten up), the city apparently has agreed to try nematodes to control grubs at the town beach.

I don’t know what the rush is to enact a pesticide ban in Parry Sound or any other city or village in Ontario anyway. What’s the point? It's all but certain that the entire province, including Parry Sound, will have a ban on the so-called “cosmetic use” of pesticides on lawns in 2009.

As a point of reference, Parry Sound is a delightful city of about 15,000 people on beautiful Georgian Bay a 2-hour drive north of Toronto, Ontario.

Clean Air Lawn Care getting killer press

2008-06-05T09:29:00.000-07:00

Clean Air Lawn Care looks like it might take off. The lawn service company, which is based in Fort Collins, CO, uses electric and biodiesel-fueled equipment to run its equipment. Its maintenance equipment is charged during the day by solar panels mounted on its trucks and at night with conventional energy.

The company has been getting great press wherever it appears and it's starting to appear outside outside of its home base in Colorado. The company began offering franchises just last year.

If you're looking for a way to break into the maintenance market and you need a positive marketing hook, you may have found it, assuming you live in a place that gets a fair amount of sunshine. Or you keep some incredibly long extension cords in your service vehicle. (OK, I'm kidding about the cords.)

While I love the concept, I found the company's Web site, www.cleanairlawncare.com tough to navigate, but you may think it's neat. You can click on the headline to check out the Web site yourself. Go to the news section at the top of the site and see the kind of press it's getting. You might want to see if a franchise has made an appearance in your region yet, too. - Ron Hall

Better dead than in the red

2008-06-05T09:00:00.000-07:00

Residents of Corona, CA are asking their city leaders to raise landscaping fees. In fact they're trying to force the city into action. Apparently aan earlier effort to raise the fees was voted down. Instead of paying for extra maintenance, the city chose to let grass discolor and die.

Some residents weren't happy with that solution so they began collecting signatures to force a revote.

According to the article on The Press-Enterprise Web site, "Corona will begin phasing in more drought tolerant plants and installing more efficient irrigation systems to keep costs down if the voters approve the rate hike. If the voters reject the increase, then the city will begin reducing its level of landscape maintained to close the funding gap."

For the complete story click here.

Landscape thieves nab shrubs, gas

2008-06-05T08:45:00.001-07:00

Several homes in Mukwonago, WI, have been targeted by thieves who are making away with trees, flowers and shrubs.

According to Newsradio 620 in Wisconsin: Elsie Roth had her newly planted tress, shrubs and flowers dug up and stolen. 25 holes were found all around Roth's condo complex.

"Just a little bit surprised," Roth said. "This is something unusual. I don't know of any other time someone has taken landscaping out of the ground right after it's been planted."

If that’s not enough, we have a report from Vancouver, WA, where a fuel tank at a landscaping company was targeted. Thieves got away with nearly $3,000 worth of gas.

— Mike Seuffert

Wow, this industry has lots of wage-hour violations

2008-05-08T08:48:00.000-07:00

DES MOINES, IA — The feds are finding lots of wage violations among landscape/lawn service companies, says Percella Maupins, the wage hour district director for the U.S. Labor Department. In Iowa, 56% of the companies that have been checked have been in violation of wage-hour regulations. These include failure to comply with federal minimum wage and overtime pay regulations, reported Matt Kelley of Iowa Radio on May 7. (Click on headline for full article.)

She reminds employers that they're required to pay time-and-a-half the employee’s regular rate of pay for all hours worked over 40 hours per week. And, don't just hand employees cash for the extra work. That’s a big no no.

Another thing to be aware of — children under the age of 16 are forbidden from using motorized equipment, including lawn mowers and trimmers.

If you’re not certain what is and what isn’t allowed in terms of wage-hour regulations, visit the Web site www.wsagehour.dol.gov and find out. — Ron Hall

Tiny gas protest..hey, at least they made an effort

2008-05-07T07:17:00.000-07:00

As protests go, this one is strictly small time. But it reflects what anybody who runs a route service business is feeling right now.

Earl Humphreys who runs a small lawn care company called Lawn Boyz in eastern Tennessee organized a gas protest on May 5. He and a handful of owners and workers at other lawn care companies held up signs along several highways in the Tri-Cities. The signs urged passing motorists to "hold leaders accountable."

Humphreys told a reporter for News Channel 11 he's spending more than $100 a day in fuel to run his company's mowers and other equipment. And that's just for 46 accounts, according to the news account. He says if fuel goes to $4 a gallon he's thinking about getting out of the business.

I applaud Humphreys and his colleagues for making their feelings known, but it's going to take something a whole lot bigger to stop these runaway fuel prices. Maybe something like the trucker's strike in 1974 or so on the Ohio Turnpike.

I was a newspaper photographer at the time and was sent scurrying on one fine summer morning to photograph the huge stoppage of traffic on the always-busy Ohio Turnpike. Truckers, disgusted with fuel shortages and high fuel prices caused by OPEC's oil embargo, had parked their trucks on the turnpike and blocked traffic for hours and hours. Ribbons of trucks and cars backed up for miles and miles and miles. Nobody could budge. By mid-afternoon a large swath of the turnpike had turned one of the world's largest parking lots. That got everybody's attention.

Strangely these days everybody, including truckers, seem to be meekly accepting the escalating fuel prices (Humphreys and his colleagues the exception). Unless we start using energy wiser and collectively decrease demand for gasoline and diesel, prices will keep going up, up, up. — Ron Hall

Click on the headline for the short article about Earl and his colleagues. It appeared on the TriCities.com.

Manatees should be rescued, never eaten

2008-04-17T06:56:00.000-07:00

Bert’s Bar & Grill in Matlacha, FL, is the kind of joint you would hope to stumble onto assuming you were lucky enough to stumble onto a real, old-time, authentic Florida fishing village. No high-rise condos. No gated, palm-lined communities with names like “Waiting for Heaven” or “Sunstroke Paradise.” No incredibly manicured golf course with greens fees approaching an editor’s weekly take-home.

I was in luck this week as, driving with my son and his wife to a popular seafood restaurant on Pine Islan, in Lee County in SW Florida, we passed Bert’s and seeing cars lined up and town the main village street, figured this must be the place to stop after dinner.Turns out it was.

The place, built sometime in the 1930s as a "sweet shoppe", when the tiny village of Matlacha (prounounced ˆmat-la-shay) was little more than a row or two of shanties and small houses (which is still is with little more than 700 residents), is wonderfully time-beaten and, on most nights, beerily cheerful. This particular evening a 3-piece combo called the Yard Dogs was thumping and plucking away, much to the noisy delight of a the Baby Boomer crowd, the first wave of the Baby Boomer crowd and feeling particularly frisky on a cooler-than-usual April evening.

OK, here’s the hook, as tenuous as it is to the landscape business, which is what this blog is kinda about, right?

On the wall behind the busy pool table at Bert’s is a sign announcing the annual “Manatee Roast.” And, keeping with the theme, you can pick up a Bert’s tee-shirt that reads “I love Manatees . . .They taste like chicken.” (Darn, meant to get one on the way out, but forgot.)

As any Floridian or visitor to the state knows, manatees — those huge, doppy, lovable sea cows — are a protected species. They’re a relatively common sight in the rivers and canals in Florida, but prone to get run over and chewed up by speeding power boats, which is not a good thing, especially for the manatees. Obviously, there is no such thing as a Manatee Roast and it’s not likely they taste like chicken anyway, which brings me to lanscaper Kevin McKeever.

Earlier in April while McKeever was checking out a small drainage ditch near Naples, about an hour and a half drive south of tiny Matlacha, he spotted a baby manatee having a hard time of it. The little fella (165 lbs. and about 5-ft. long) was on his own, and in fact, at a year old, was still nursing. McKeever, realizing the baby was a goner if it didn't get some TLC, called for help.

Wildlife experts arrived and they finally captured the baby, determined it was badly underweight and needed medical attention and trucked it to the Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa, where it will likely spend a year or so getting nursed back to health before being returned to the wild.

Mr, McKeever, on my next visit to Bert’s (It's now on my short-list of favorite joints, I’m going to tip a glass to you, for sure. — Ron Hall
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He turned in $140,000 in found money . . . and he's still smiling

2008-04-12T17:47:00.001-07:00

Eli Estrada, the 40-year-old landscaper who found $140,000 in unmarked $20s and turned it into police, is somewhat of a celebrity in Southern California. When the word got out about what he'd done, apparently he picked up some new accounts from people impressed with his honesty.

It turns out the the dough was left on the bumper of a Brinks truck March 11 after a stop at a Bank of America branch in Cerritos. (IHmm, I wonder how the job market is for a couple of ex-Brinks truck guys in Southern California?)

Estrada found the money on the street and admits to wresting over what to do with it before turning it in. I get a picture of a little white angel with wings on one of Eli's shoulder and a little red devil with pitchfork on the other, both of them taking turns on his head before the angel pulls out a huge wooden mallet and bonks the devil over the head.

Click on the headline and you can see Eli's smiling face. He and his partner run a company called Turf Turf in Orange County. At least that's what his shirt says.

Eli you're going to have to do a lot of landscaping to clear $140,000 in tax free profit . . . but you did the right thing!

Town says "no" to landscaper's short green skirt

2008-04-11T12:59:00.000-07:00

The United Press International reports that Jay Herrod, the professional landscaper that wears a short green skirt when he's mowing, is going to have put on some pants. Officials in Clinton, LA, on Thursday, April 10, denied his request to wear the skirt while he's working . . . oh, that awful nasty heat rash! — Ron Hall

Woolly lawnmowers

2008-04-11T08:01:00.000-07:00

The Guardian reports: In a bid to keep its municipal lawns trim while saving money, the city of Turin has done away with lawn mowers and brought in 700 sheep to graze in two parks.

Turin police blocked roads last Thursday as the first flock moved in to tackle the Meisino park, part of a two-month stint which city officials say will save €30,000 (£24,000) on gardeners' fees.

Shepherds brought up the herd, carrying 16 newly born lambs belonging to the flock, which will now be left to graze at the park on the city's outskirts until the grass is cricket-pitch smooth.

The scheme was tested last year with cows and sheep, but the cows were not invited back after leaving behind too much dung.

Click here for the complete article.

— Mike Seuffert

News of the sublime . . .and the utterly ridiculous

2008-04-10T09:35:00.000-07:00

This from the April 9, 2008, San Francisco Chronicle:

It was a tempting sight for struggling landscaper Eli Estrada: a bag filled with $140,000 on a Cerritos street.
There was his credit card debt, upcoming wedding and making ends meet with his artificial grass and landscaping business.
But turning it over to Long Beach police last month was the right thing to do, he said.
The 40-year-old Estrada admits that some days "I think I was nuts," but he adds, "I know in my gut that to keep that money would be wrong."
The Bank of America money bag was lost March 11 by Brinks Armored truck drivers. The unmarked $20 bills were bundled into wads of $20,000 and bound for ATMs.
Long Beach police Sgt. Dina Zapalski says Estrada handed over the money bag to an officer who took a report at one of the landscaper's job sites.
Brinks later gave him a $2,000 reward.

And this from ShortNews.com. (Click on the headline for the link if you don’t believe me.)

Jay Herrod of Clinton, Louisiana is just your typical landscaper who mows other people's yards for a living. However, the manner of dress has some people complaining. That's because Herrod wears a skirt while mowing lawns.
Herrod says the reasoning for wearing the skirt is because he gets heat rash and that "it allow that area to breathe, and uh, wearing a skirt on the mower allows the sweat to evaporate".
While customers aren't complaining about his skirt-wearing, the town alderman is, citing Harrod for indecency, under the recent "no sagging pants" ordinance. Harrod says he has a doctor's note about his condition, and that the law shouldn't apply.

Congo cheats the executioner

2008-04-04T04:52:00.000-07:00

Congo (aka “The Mauler”) will live. His life has been spared.

Congo, as you may recall from previous blogs, is the German shepherd that chewed up a landscape worker that arrived in the early morning hours of June 5, 2007, to work on the 10-acre property in Princeton Township, NJ.
The attack resulted in the Hispanic worker, who apparently spoke little or no English, suffering some horrendous injuries that required hospitalization and lots of stitches and patching.

Several weeks after the attack, a municipal court judge ruled that Congo was a vicious dog and it looked like Congo was going to be dispatched to that big dogbone in the sky. The dog’s owners mounted a legal campaign to save Congo’s life and dog lovers across the state protested the injustice of dispatching Congo to "a better place," just because he ripped apart an "illegal" worker, in their eyes apparently, little more than a dog chew.

The court finally ruled that Congo will not be euthanized but that its owners pay $50 fines for Congo and each of the then 3-month-old German shepherd pups that joined in the attack. Also, the dog’s owners are to keep Congo and the other dogs behind a fence on their property, and that the property will be posted with warning signs.

And so ends the saga of Congo , a case that ignited the passions of dog lovers throughout the state of New Jersey.

Click on the headline to access the article in April 3 issue of The Times of Trenton. – Ron Hall

Grounds guy wins $1 mil but stays on the job

2008-03-29T05:41:00.000-07:00

Donald Nicholas, a seasonal grounds worker at a Staten Island cemetery, won $1 million in the New York Lottery this week. He will be paid $32,251 a year for the next 20 years. Nicholas moved to Staten Island from Harlem three years ago. He says he loves his job and has no plans to quit. Good call. It's probably pretty difficult to live in the NY Metro area on $32,251 a year. Ron Hall

President Bush visiting Marty Grunder home

2008-03-24T07:45:00.000-07:00

In his last year in office, President George W. Bush seems to have taken a big interest in the landscape industry. First, he visits Wright Manufacturing Inc. in Maryland where he does a nifty turn on a Wright Stander professional mower (“Fire this sucker up,” he’s reported as exclaiming.). And now he’s visiting the home of Marty and Lisa Grunder near Dayton. Marty, of course, is the owner and founder of Grunder Landscape and a well-known speaker and consultant to the Green Industry.

Marty’s also a stanch Republican and a frequent contributor to Republican candidates. According to Federal Election Commission records, he’s given more than $10,000 in campaign contributions to Republican candidates in the past seven years.

The President’s visit on Thursday, March 27, is a fundraiser, costing $1,000 to attend the luncheon reception. For $10,000 an invitee gets a private reception with a photo opportunity with the President, according to reports.

Marty, contacted late last week, said that the invitees include “leaders in southern Ohio.” Some landscape company owners will reportedly be in attendance, as well.

Other supporters of Victory 2008, the Ohio GOP’s account for supporting Republican candidates in the upcoming elections — those that can’t attend the fundraiser at the Grunder’s home — are urged to contribute to the cause nonetheless, according to the invitations..

According to leftyblogs.com, the event co-chairs are listed as: Jim and Janet Dicke, Marty and Lisa Grunder, Bill and Sandy Gunlock and Jane Portman and Rayj and Inu Soin. — Ron Hall

Says Brandy: "The check is in the mail"

2008-03-22T09:01:00.001-07:00

I’ don’t who the singer Brandy is or why she is famous. Anyway, I thought some recent publicity involving Brandy was kind of funny, at least the responses to the story about her and a landscaper appearing on a Web site.

A couple of days ago it was reported that Raymond Soriano Landscape filed a claim in court alleging that Brandy (the singer) owed him $3,567 for work it had done on her California property eight or nine months or so.

Apparently CelebTV got a hold of the claim and publicized it. Then it was picked up by oh-so-calculatedly hip TMZ, resulting in another media blip.

Amusing? Not the story so much as the postings about the story on the TMZ Web site. Click on the headline above. At least they amused me...kinduv. Ron Hall

It's a gas, gas, gas

2008-03-19T17:37:00.000-07:00

We're finally reaching that tipping point when it comes to fuel prices, that point where we finally change our driving and vehicle-buying habits.

I'm seeing it at the park & ride where I catch the express bus into downtown Cleveland. There used to lots of extra parking spaces at the Westlake Park & Ride, even for the 8:30 a.m. bus, the last bus to make the run. Now unless you get to the parking lot by 8:00 a.m. you stand a chance of not getting s spot. More people are bussing it.

If gasoline goes to $3.50 a gallon (which it already has in California and Hawaii)O here's what it costa to fill up a:

Cadillac Escalade — $108.50.
Hummer H2 — $112.00
Ford Expedition — $117.25
Dodge Ram — $122.50
Ford F250 pickup — $133

My guess is gas will go to $4.00 by early summer. But I hope not. — Ron Hall

King of the backhoe operators

2008-03-13T11:33:00.000-07:00

I’ve always been in awe of these guys who can operate big, powerful construction equipment likes it’s easiest thing in the world. It could be a big Cat’ dozer or crane or bucket loader, but they jockey these big, powerful units like nothing could be simpler. And for them (wind- and sun-creased, hardhard at a jaunty angle) maybe nothing is.

But for guys like me that have trouble backing a small boat trailer. . .well.

That said,, I tip my hat to Nick Market of Windsor, Ontario. The folks at Case presented Nick a 50th anniversary limited-edition Case 580 Super M Series 2 loader/backhoe, valued at nearly $120,000 yesterday.

Nick won the Case North America Rodeo Series Championship event in Las Vegas where the huge ConExpo equipment trade show is taking place. Nick, who has been at the controls of backhoe/loaders for more than 30 years, beat out more than 4200 other operators in the competition that unfolded over the past year. — Ron

Ahhh, spring...when lawn care rules

2008-03-11T07:18:00.000-07:00

Grasscycling “new” again

What is old is suddenly new again. Remember the “Grasscycling” push put on by the Professional Lawn Care Association of America (PLCAA) in the late 1980s and early 1990s? The point of the initiative was to convince homeowners and lawn maintenance pros not to bag their grassclippings and not to truck the lawn waste to landfills. As we all know this is incredibly more costly now because of higher fuel prices and almost universal landfill tipping fees. Grasscycling was one of PLCAA's biggest successes because the message did eventually filter through the media to the public. friend and former technical editor of Landscape Management, Bill Knoop, Ph.D., Texas A&M extension, initiated a similar “Don't Bag It” campaign, with essentially he same message. Grasscycling, a term rarely heard for more than a decade or more, is starting to resonate again, this time in the “green” arena. It has been proven again and again that when clippings are returned to the lawn, some of the nutrients, in particular nitrogen, return to the soil, meaning less fertilizer is needed to keep the grass green and growing.

Florida county gets tough on ferts

And finally, I ran across the new law for fertilizing lawn s in Sarasota County in Florida. These types of local laws aimed at lawn fertilizers seem to be cropping up in many parts of the country. These came from a recent article in the Herald Tribune:
Sarasota County's fertilizer law aims to cut down on the amount of pollution getting into area waterways. Here is a look at what it calls for:
- It prohibits residents from applying fertilizers that contain nitrogen or phosphorus between June 1 and Sept. 30.
- It sets maximum levels for the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus that legal fertilizers can contain.
- It sets a fertilizer-free zone within 10 feet of any body of water and creates a voluntary "low maintenance zone" within 6 feet of water bodies.
- It recommends use of "slow-release fertilizers."
- It requires fertilizer application companies to create a training course.
- It sets penalties for violators that start with a warning and rise to $500.

ServiceMaster spends big bucks

Business Week recently reported that lawn care and pest-control provider ServiceMaster Co. spent $2.2 million last year to lobby the federal government. The company was acquired in 2007 by private-equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice.
ServiceMaster, which owns TruGreen lawn care and Terminix pest control, spent $1 million in the second half of 2007 to lobby Congress and the Environmental Protection Agency, said the magazine.
ServiceMaster lobbied on parts of the federal farm bill that apply to insecticides and fungicides and on a bill signed by President Bush in October that extended funding for pesticide oversight office.

Ontario pesticide ban — look out, here it comes!

The Province of Ontario will almost certainly implement a new provincial pesticide law this year. The Province's environment minister in an interview with the Kingston Whig-Standard newspapers said: “The bottom line is this - we're going to ban the use and sale of cosmetic pesticides. It's going to supercede any municipal bylaw. It's going to ban the sale of, not just the use of, cosmetic pesticides by the general public, which is what the municipal bylaws speak to.” — Ron Hall
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One tough "Mole"

2008-03-04T19:17:00.001-08:00

I don’t often write about products in this blog. In fact, I don’t think I ever have — until now. What I want to tell you about is a product so simple (and potentially so useful) that it blew me away at the recent California Landscape Contractors Association Trade Show and Conference in LA.

The name of the product is the Bullet Mole. My first thought on hearing the name was that the product is something to kill moles. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Actually the Bullet Mole is an incredibly simple tool. That’s what I love about it; that and it gets the job done without a lot of expense and fuss.

The tool itself looks like a tiny warhead at the end of a metal shaft. This warhead doesn’t explode or anything like that, though, even though it can penetrate and shatter the hardest rock. Made of super tough metal, it makes neat, round openings for installing irrigation pipe and/or wires under sidewalks or driveways. No fuss. No muss.

Quite simply, you dig a small hole at one end of the sidewalk or driveway insert the Bullet Mole, pointy side in the direction of the sidewalk or driveway, than you whack the butt end of the metal shaft with a sledge hammer and it drives the “Mole” (irrigation pipe surrounding the shaft behind it) under the sidewalk or driveway. The force of the falling sledge hammer is enough to drive the “Mole” through clay, rock, just about any material.

Check out the “Mole” at http://bulletmole.com.

(For the record, this product mention was not solicited and was not the result of any freebies or promises by the “Mole” makers and marketers. I just thought it was cool.) — Ron Hall