Fidel Castro nabbed with stolen lawn care booty in car

“It gets worse in America everyday. We can’t even deport Fidel Castro.” That’s what one reader wrote on the Naple News Web site in response to an article about Fidel Castro getting a judicial hand slap after being discovered with a load of stolen lawn care booty in his car.
OK, this is not THE Fidel Castro, and he’s not knocking on death’s door like the Cuban dictator. But this Fidel, a 23-year-old American citizen was born in Cuba, information that prompted another reader to comment: “Fidel Castro? Sounds like his mother was doing some really, REALLY good drugs when he was born and needed a name.”
The article in the Naples, FL, newspaper, said that police stopped Fidel the evening of March 21 because he was driving without his headlights on. When they looked into the car they saw a bunch of lawn care stuff that had been stolen from Wizzard Lake Nursery, Crawford Landscaping and Davey Tree.
The court cut a deal with Fidel and put him on three years probation after he claimed that he was just helping out his brother-in-law and was unaware that the equipment had been burglarized. And, also, that he would testify against his brother-in-law. (Uh oh, If he thought he had in-law problems before . . .;.)
Click on the headline to read the article in the Naples News. — Ron Hall

Tractor ejects, lands on NY grounds worker

Henry Williams, 63, died Tuesday, June 19, when the tractor he was operating fell down a 70-ft. hill and eventually landed on top of him. Williams was towing a mower behind the tractor on the grounds of Farmingdale State University when he apparently lost control of the tractor on a dirt road adjacent to a large field he was preparing to mow, reported the Wednesday edition of the Long Island (NY) Press. — Ron Hall

Here are 10 tractor safety commandments, courtesy of Kubota Tractor:

1. Know your tractor, its implements and how they work. Please read and understand the operator’s manual(s) before operating the equipment. Also, keep our equipment in good condition.
2. Use ROPS and seat belt whenever and wherever applicable. If your tractor has a foldable ROPs, fold it down only when absolutely necessary and fold it back up and lock it again as soon as possible. Do not wear the seat belt when the ROPS is folded. Most tractor fatalities are caused by overturns.
3. Be familiar with your terrain and work area. Walk the area first to be sure and drive safely. Use special caution on slopes, slow down for all t urns and stay off the highway whenever possible.
4. Never start an engine in a closed shed or garage. Exhaust gas contains carbon monoxide, which is colorless, odorless — and deadly.
5. Always keep your PTO properly shield. Make it a habit to walk about your tractor and PTO-driven implement — never over, through or between the tractor and implement, particularly if either is running. The PTO rotates with enough speed and strength to kill you.
6. Keep your hitches low and always on the drawbar. Otherwise, your tractor might flip over backwards.
7. Never get off a moving tractor or leave it with its engine running. Shut it down before leaving the seat. A runaway tractor can be extremely dangerous.
8. Never refuel while the engine is running or hot. Additionally, do not add coolant to the radiator while the engine is hot; hot coolant can erupt and scald.
9. Keep all children off and away from your tractor and its implements at all times.
10. Never be in a hurry or take chances about anything you do with your tractor. Think safety first, then take your time and do it right.

Read about Arlington National Cemetery in National Geographic

If you want to know why members of the Professional Landcare Network keep going back to Arlington National and Old Congressional cemeteries in Washington D.C. summer after summer, please read the article about Arlington National Cemetery in the June 2007 issue of the National Geographic.

This wonderfully written article by Rick Atkinson (the photography is stunning) tells it all.

PLANET's Arlington event had its genesis 11 years ago. Cleveland-area lawn care pro Phil Fogarty did most of the legwork for that first event sponsored by the then Professional Lawn Care Association of America (PLCAA). A tiny group of lawn care pros spent most of that day applying fertilizer to turfgrass at the cemetery.

The event grew, the idea fueled mostly by Fogarty's enthusiasm. By the time that PLCAA merged with the Associated Landscape Contractors of America (ALCA) several years ago to form PLANET, more than a hundred lawn care pros were participating, most of them coming back year after yea.

Now the event is under PLANET's umbrella and more landscapers, irrigation experts and tree care folks are participating. Many owners work elbow-to-elbow with their families (spouses and children) or they bring their crews to help them out. The annual REnewal and Remembrance event has gotten to be one helluva big event, too big actually for Fogarty to do on his own anymore, and some of his friends are now taking the lead now.

Many of the industry's supplier companies help out with product, too. Everything is donated — labor, materials, a desire to make a difference.

This year's Renewal and Remembrance Day is July 17. Several hundred Green Industry professionals will work from early morning into the afternoon beautifying Arlington National Cemetery and Old Congressional Cemetery.

I don't know if it's too late to register or not, but you can get the details by going to the PLANET Web site at www.landcarenetwork.org.

And please pick up a copy of the June issue of National Geographic whether you are going or not. You'll gain a deeper appreciation for Arlington National Cemetery. — Ron Hall

Who says young folks lack drive ...

Jaskaran Heir has been mowing lawns for the past six years and has done quite well at it, according to an article in the online site Indystar.com. He gets customers the old fashion way, going door to door fliers in hand — and doing what he promises to do.

This week he is receiving the 2007 Ernst & Young Youth Entrepreneur of the Year for the Lake Michigan region. In the fall he will be attending the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business. His goal is become a mutual or hedge fund manager.

He says the most important thing he's learned while running his lawn maintenance is time management.

"Mowing grass is only one aspect of my life. I need time to do schoolwork, hang out with my friends and play sports. Mowing grass has taught me how to manage my time effectively so that I can get everything done," he says.

Jaskaran, 19, graduated from high school this week. Sounds like he's already got a pretty darn good handle on what it takes to succeed in the business world.

To read the online interview at Indystar.com, just click on the headline. — Ron Hall

Right (Write) on, Mark Kramer

Mark Kramer, president of JBK Landscape in Aurora, CO, perfectly described the employment issues so many companies are having — not being able to find decent workers — in an editorial in the Rocky Mountain News:

"Thirty years ago, hippies like Jim and me wanted to get dirty in the sun, grass and weeds. Americans don't today. When JBK Landscape advertises for laborers like Ricardo, we get just a trickle of applicants. It's not the money. We pay $14 an hour for skilled foremen and $25 an hour for snow removal. But these are outdoor jobs, in the sun, snow and sleet. My college-graduate son would rather work for $7 an hour as an assistant radio and television producer in Los Angeles.

So every year, JBK Landscape hires 45 of its 100 employees through the H-2B guest worker program. Without this program, we couldn't run our $5.2 million business."

Mark is absolutely right. Comprehensive immigration reform is a national priority, but both parties would rather bicker about the issue until it dies rather than actually making some tough decisions. If only half of Congress weren’t busy running for president right now, maybe we’d be able to get something actually done.

Read the rest of Mark’s editorial here. — Mike Seuffert

Get back inside

In Landscape Management, we’ve written a lot about the trend of outdoor rooms being a huge component of landscape design/build. But according to this article from the Providence (RI) Journal, some people are finding the extra work associated with the outdoor areas not worth the effort.

“The backyard misery has been a boon for exterminators and repair shops. Fire ants nest in speakers and televisions. (They’re attracted to the hum and vibration.) Squirrels chew on the arms of teak furniture and on speaker wires. When expensive electronics come into contact with water, dust, pollen and heat, burnouts and other problems can occur.”

Worse yet, even after spending in the six digits to create an outdoor paradise, some of the areas are going unused.

“A study published in the March edition of the Journal of Family and Economic Issues suggests it isn’t uncommon for families to abandon their decked-out yards. Researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles tracked the activities of 24 middle-class L.A. households. They found that though the backyards were equipped with pools, patios, grills and, in one case, a skateboard ramp, children spent little time playing in them and adults rarely used them.” 

So are outdoor rooms dying. Hardly. But this article maybe makes me feel a little better about the fact that I couldn’t afford to even clean one of these outdoor areas, let alone build one.

— Mike Seuffert

Add-on Biz?

East Cleveland, OH Mayor Eric Brewer has asked city firefighters to start cutting grass and perform other jobs during their down time. The firefighters, naturally, are concerned about their ability to respond to emergencies if they're sitting on a mower in the middle of a field.

Brewer enacted a provision from World War II, when many of the men that did this work were busy overseas. The law gve the mayor the power to order workers to handle duties outside their regular job description. It may save the city money in the short run. We just wonder what's going to happen the first time someone is injured because it took a few extra minutes for the fire fighters to respond.

For the full story from The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer please
click here.

Good samaritans

Too often when tales of crime and landscape are put together it is the contractor who comes out smelling like fertilizer. But in this case a Kansas City, MO crew, came out looking like roses. While on their lunch break one of the crew memebers noticed a couple of teenagers running past carrying a purse.
He took off, running after the suspects and the rest of the crew quickly followed. They were able to stop the pair and detain them until police arrived. And this isn't the first time the crew stopped a crime. A few weeks earlier, they helped police stop some armed robbery suspects.
Stopping armed robbers isn't something we recommend, but it's nice to know these guys are on our side.

For the complete story, please
click here.

Handy fuel cost guide from G.W. Bush and friends

It's a tough row to hoe, this $3.50-plus per gallon of gasoline. Don't see how people making less than $10 an hour can afford to drive to work, especially if the commute is more than, say, 20 miles or so. Hell, at $10 an hour, I can't see how they can afford to eat. But we're talking energy today.

Don't know exactly how these record-high fuel costs are going to play out for companies that have a lot of fleet vehicles on the road either — but it's a good bet these extra costs are going to be passed on to U.S. consumers. In other words . . . hello, inflation, which is a given anyway in light of the billions we're pouring into that murderous sinkhole we've created in Iraq. Those billions have to come from somewhere, right? But, back to the topic at hand, gasoline and diesel fuel.

Check out the Web site www.fueleconomy.gov. (Click on the headline.)

It gives some good tips on saving money at the pump and provides a complete list of motor vehicles (cars, SUVs, vans and trucks), their estimated mpg per transmission/engine configuration, plus annual estimated fuel costs to operate each of these vehicles.

You can download the information in a PDF. Pretty neat. — Ron Hall

Misery loves company?

KSWO Channel 7 News broadcast the plight of Kevin Williams, a landscaper in Lawton, OK. His company maintains about 85 lawns. On the broadcast he says that his average monthly bill for fuel for his truck, mowers, etc. was about $1,800. His latest bill was $3,200. He says that if the price of gasoline doesn’t come down he will have to reduce the size of his workforce and the number of lawns he can maintain. He’s caught in a squeeze because he says that about 90% of his clients signed contracts before gasoline started climbing.

Wonder how many owners of route-based service businesses are caught in similar squeezes? My guess is just about all of them.

If you want to see a video of Williams, click on the headline, which will take you to the KSWO Web page with his story. — Ron Hall

Sky's the limit — it's a gas, gas, gas

Today is gas boycott day. Since I filled up last night when the price was a mere $3.19 a gallon . . . no problemo.

Today, the price of gasoline jumped to $3.29 a gallon here in my neighborhood. It's now more expensive than it was immediately post Katrina.

OK, let's play the blame game. Pick what you think is the reason(s) for the sudden spike in gasoline prices. Then, for what it's worth, I'll tell you what I think. Pick your favorite of the following reasons:

- Basic supply & demand factors, (You know the stuff we learned in Econ 101.)
- Oil company fat cats getting all they can get while they can get it. ("Greed is good" - Gordon Gecko)
- Aging and inadequate refinery capacity in the United States. (It's been 31 years since a new refinery came on line here.)
- Strife and political tensions in oil producing nations. (When in our lifetimes wasn't there strife in the Middle East or Latin America or Russia and its satellite nations?)
- Market manipulation. (Speculators, whether it's real estate, oil or whatever, play the last-one-in-loses game. Meanwhile they make a killing.)

The oil companies (and their executives) are fattening up because a.) they can see trouble ahead in the form of dwindling supplies or alternative energy sources but, more likely, b.) they're greedy and testing the upper limit of what consumers will pay before they wise up and start driving more efficient cars or cut back on their driving. But isn't that basic supply and demand economics? Mix in some sharp wheeling and dealing in the New York Mercantile where crude oil and finished gasoline are traded and you have the recipe for sky-high prices. — Ron Hall

They're getting younger all the time

A little healthy competition can be good for business. But three Knoxville, TN, brothers that started a maintenance operation may just make their Knoxville area competitors shudder.
The Dotson boys, Jarod, 14, and twins Jacob and Jordan, 13, began three years ago by cutting the grass for a neighbor. Then they added a few lawns and then a few more. Dotson Lawn Service took most of the $6,500 they earned last year to purchase new equipment.
Now, with gross revenues measured in four digits instead of six, seven or even eight, they're not going to appear on anyone's Top Companies list, but that's not the point. Every lawn they're cutting is one less for your company. Yes, they did get a little funding help from their parents, but how is that much different than borrowing from cousins, uncles, sisters and raiding the savings account to get your own business started.
Sure, these kids can't even drive for another couple of years, so their opportunities to expand are pretty limited. But what isn't limited is the number of young, entrepreneurial kids with willingness to push a lawn mower over a neighbor's yard.
And as Jarod said, "They just think it's a better deal and our yards still look as good as the professionals do."
It should send a chill down your spine.

For more information on this story, please
click here.

Raleigh television unloads on lawn care industry

Talk about getting ripped.

Wow, did Steve Daniels, the anchor for ABC 11 in Raleigh, NC, unload on the professional lawn care community, even though TruGreen ChemLawn was the only company mentioned in his two on-air reports.

The affiliate's “Toxic Green Part 1” and “Toxic Green Part 2” segments quoted industry critics that accused professional lawn care of, in effect, spewing products harmful to people’s health onto lawns in pursuit of greener grass and bigger profits. The segments aired on consecutive days in late March.

“Eyewitness News is taking you beyond the green and exposing you (to) what the lawn service industry may not want you to know,” beat the promo drum to the “investigative” report.

Daniels, from his bio on the station's Web site, is apparently one hotshot reporter. The ABC 11 Web site, lists his impressive array of television news jobs — everything from being a correspondent for “Dateline NBC” to being the weekday anchor for WTVJ in Miami, and mentions that he has won seven Emmys for investigative reporting.

Bet he doesn't win an eighth with this turkey of a hack job. (If he does, I vow never to name a daughter or ever associate anybody with the name Emmy or Emma or Emily or Enema . . .you get the point.)

In his two reports — at least the two that appear on the television station’s Web site — there isn't a single comment from a single person from the lawn care industry. The "Toxic" reports did draw a response from TruGreen ChemLawn, which issued a surprisingly mild rebuttal to the reports.

Click on the headline for TruGreen’s response and links to the two Daniels reports.

Today's tip — do not pick up hand grenades

NANTUCKET, MA — Today’s question: Assume during the course of your workday as a landscaper you rake up a hand grenade, what should you do?
1. Gasp and exclaim “Oh, S*#! as you hi-tail it outta there?
2. Prod it with the business end of your rake to see if it’s still functional?
3. Leave it where you found it and call somebody who knows a lot more about hand grenades than you do? (i. e. law enforcement)
4. Pick it up and take it to a police station?
If you answered #4, WRONG!
But that’s what a landscaper did a couple of days ago.
“We prefer that people just leave those things where they are and we’ll come and look at them,” said Nantucket Police Lt. Jerry Adams, as quoted in the April 27 issue of the Cape Cod Times.
It is believed the World War II-era was a leftover from when the U.S. Navy operated a firing range on the island.

No word yet as whether the hand grenade was “live” or not. — Ron Hall

Today is Earth Day. Did you remember?

Responding to growing concerns about the environment, then-U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson, (D-WI), called for an Environmental Teach-in or Earth Day to be held on April 22, 1970. More than 20 million people took part.

More than 500 million people in 175 countries now observe Earth Day each year.

Nelson modeled Earth Day on the increasingly effective Vietnam War protests of the time. The first Earth Day had participants in 2,000 colleges and universities; in 10,000 elementary, junior high and high schools and in hundreds of communities

The first Earth Day led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species acts.

- Source: earthday.org

Kiss your grass g'bye

I have headline envy after reading this article in the New York Post. It reports that the New York City Parks Department has installed 74 artificial turf sports fields and is planning to spend $150 million more to build another 100 fields over the next five years. Synthetic turf is one of the hottest businesses going right now. And not just for sports turf. It's going to be bigger in the landscape industry too. My prediction.

By the way, many of New York's synthetic fields will be used for youth soccer. How about this headline for that: "Not Exactly a Kick in the Grass." — Ron Hall

Laws easier to make than enforce

Making a law seems to be easier than enforcing it. Case in point the pesticide neighbor notification law that New York State legislators allow counties to pass. A handful of counties have.
The law requires people (including lawn pros) who apply liquid pesticides to properties to give abutting property owners and residents 24-hour notice prior to the application. In theory, the notification is intended to protect people’s health.
The reality is that the law is apparently difficult to enforce, at least in Monroe County where neighbor notification went into effect last year. Television station WHAM 13 on its web site reported this week that the county issued just 10 warnings this past year and five went to homeowners.
The station reports that health officials there say they’ll get tougher this season.
Click on the headline for the article and to see a video of the actual broadcast.

Copy and click on this link to see the notification signs the county says should be posted:

http://www.monroecounty.gov/p/health-NNSigns.pdf

— Ron Hall

Reports of the death of Canadian lawn care are greatly exaggerated

You may not agree with the source, but a recent column from the Western Catholic Reporter cited some interesting statistics about the lawn care industry in Toronto, and how it has overcome bans on pesticide use to grow 30% since 2001.

"Despite the growing trend away from chemically based lawn care, Toronto lawn companies are showing substantial growth. A recently released report by the City of Toronto's health department cites data from Statistics Canada showing a 30 per cent increase in the lawn care and landscaping sector since 2001.

It should be noted at the same time, pesticide use has decreased significantly. According to the interim evaluation of Toronto's pesticide bylaw, 'From 2003 to 2005 the proportion of Toronto residents who report any pesticide use on their lawns has decreased by 35 per cent.'"

And even though the column comes from outside the industry, her advice is pretty good.

"Non-chemical lawn care is much more labour intensive, and hence more costly than chemical lawn maintenance. In non-chemical lawn care, the standard of bi-annual spraying that most chemical companies employ is replaced by such maintenance functions as fertilizing, aerating, hand-weeding, de-thatching and over seeding. Since many of these activities are done on an as needed basis, that bi-annual visit can translate into monthly (or more) check ups.

Given the huge amount of public support behinds these bylaws, it's likely that provincial governments will respond with province-wide legislation, much like they did in the case of regional and municipal smoking bans. When that happens, smart lawn care companies will be ready." — Mike Seuffert

School science project fallout continues

Wow, the science project involving pesticides that two high school students at Pedro Menendez High School conducted several weeks ago continues to make news near St. Augustine, FL. (See blog "Not your father'
s science project.")
Briefly, the students, apparently using protocols established by an organization known as the Pesticide Action Network of North America (PANNA) sampled the air for traces of pesticides near South Woods Elementary School. When their project turned up evidence of dianzinon, endsulfan and triflualin the media picked up on the story, and concern about possible exposures to school children grew. The pesticides are reportedly used in nearby cabbage fields.
Soon thereafter, the St. Johns School District hired a company known as MACTEC, Jacksonville, FL, to test the air at the school grounds. After it said it had collected six samples on three different days, it reported that levels of diazinon and endosulfan were well below standards set by OSHA. And it had found no trifluralin. The principal at the elementary school said the testing confirmed that the health of the students there is not being compromised by pesticide drift.
But that hasn’t quieted the controversy. No by a long shot.
PANNA claims that the MACTEC testing and its results are based on levels of concern set for adults who work directly with pesticides, while PANNA’s critics claim that it is basing its findings based exposures to a 1-year-old child.
The Florida Department of Agriculture is reportedly looking at the results of both sets of tests, how the data was gathered at and what it means.
An article in the Sunday, April 8, St. Augustine newspaper, gives a good wrapup of what the two high school students hath wrought with their science project. Click on the headline for the article.

Canada craziness finally infects Guelph

Guelph, with more than 100,000 residents and home to one of the top research universities in North America, is not what you would call a hick town. But, you’ve got to wonder about the leadership in this vibrant Canadian city, located about 65 miles west of Toronto. In fact, you have to wonder about the leadership in towns and cities across Canada.

OK, let me say upfront that this is about lawn care products, the kind that anybody can buy at any garden center, big box or hardware store. If you're not interested in the ongoing controversy involving the use of these products by professionals in Canada, tune out now. If you’re in the turf services business and, in particular, you're a local politico, you’ll find what I have to say interesting, whether you agree or not.

As a former (and longtime) city hall reporter I thought I had heard and reported on just about every cockamaymee new piece of legislation that the fertile minds of local lawmakers could float.

Hmm, let’s see. There was the proposal to control wild rabbits in one city because a particularly vocal councilman complained that the critters were damaging the vegetable and flower gardens of his neighbors. That effort failed, as did a similar recommendation in another community to license pet cats in the city, with one ward councillor even proposing they be subject to the same leash law as dogs. (On reflection, maybe that wasn't such a bad idea.)

It’s almost impossible to add up the hours I sat witnessing misguided attempts by local legislators to protect citizens from this hazard or that, most of them being of the annoyance variety and practically all of the them overstated and sometimes comically over-dramatized.

I’m not saying that hold local lawmakers to be dishonest, mean spirited or even that they put their own interests ahead of their constituents — well, perhaps occassionally. Indeed, I’ve sat elbow to elbow with dozens of council members, commissioners, zoning board appointees, etc. at local pubs or coffee shops, and we've engaged in friendly conversations on a range of issues. And sometimes we've even agreed on a point or three. Most of these local representatives were intelligent, honest, civic minded . . . and sometimes woefully ignorant of a particular issue or, giving them the benefit of the doubt, closed minded to opposing viewpoints, even when they the viewpoints are supported by evidence or facts
.
Is this the case in Guelph and elsewhere in much of Canada where local lawmakers have either passed or are in the process of passing laws restricting the use of pesticides by professional lawn applicators?

These laws target lawn care companies almost exclusivey.

The question is: Why are just professional lawn care companies being singled out when homeowners can continue to buy and use exactly the same products?

The bigger question is: Why are local lawmakers even involved in this issue?

This is senseless, and especially in Guelph, home to the Guelph Turfgrass Institute, the premiere turf research and educational facility in the entire country. — Ron Hall