Hispanic workers make job gains in spite of slump

Hispanic workers landed two out of every three new construction jobs in 2006, according to a March 7 report by the Pew Hispanic Center. They benefited from strong employment growth in the industry even as the housing market endured a year-long slump. Indeed, the construction industry continues to be a key source of jobs for Hispanics and especially for those who are foreign born and recently arrived.
Hispanic employment increased by almost one million from 2005 to 2006. Even though Latinos account for only 13.6% of total employment, they accounted for 36.7% of the increase in employment. The comparatively high share of employment reflects demographic changes in the United States. About 40% of the total increase in the working-age population (16 and older) in 2006 was Hispanic and of these 75% are foreign-born Latino workers.
Foreign-born Latinos who arrived since 2000 were responsible for about 24% of the total increase in employment in the U.S. labor market last year. Estimates by the Pew Hispanic Center suggest that in recent years about 66% of the increase in the employment of recently arrived Hispanic workers has been due to unauthorized migration.
The estimates are derived from data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau. Most of the data is from the Current Population Survey, a monthly Census Bureau survey of approximately 60,000 households. Monthly data are combined to create larger sample sizes and to conduct the analysis on either an annual or quarterly basis. The analysis is for 2004-2006.
The Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research organization, is a project of the Pew Research Center and is funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts .
Click on the headline to access the full report at the Pew Hispanic Center Web site.

For heaven's sake — sell me the hot dog

For you visual learners, let me draw this picture:

Setting — Cold, rainy, nasty winter’s day in downtown Cleveland, Ohio
Time — Noon, lunchtime
Location — Office cafeteria short walk across the street from hungry editor’s office
Editor’s expectation — Plump hot dog on bun and a handful of crispy chips in plastic take-out container
Editor’s action to acquire said hot dog — Fifth customer in line to hot-food serving area containing stainless container of hot dogs, along with trays of salmon, sweet/sour chicken and assorted sides
Wait time in line — Approximately six or seven minutes
Outcome — Young server, hot dogs and chips at hand, advise editor he is in wrong line and must re-enter adjacent grill line where mob of hungry office workers await hamburgers and grilled chicken sandwiches from overworked grill cook
Editor’s reaction — Exit cafeteria in search of easier source of hot dog and chips

Take home message: If the customer wants a hot dog and you have one handy, give it to him and take his money, for heaven’s sake. Don’t send him off to the “official” hot-dog person. Remember: The world is full of hot dogs and hot dog sellers. — Ron Hall

Health care costs — Scotts means business

I went in for a routine annual physical exam in December and it ended up costing me hundreds of dollars out of pocket, not to mention costing my insurance carrier more than $6,000. Did I use the word “routine”?
I guess to my doctor routine means a stress test, two run-throughs of a shiny new imaging machine, and a 10-minute visit to a heart specialist. The total cost of these procedures, which took a total of about 90 minutes exceeded $7,000. After it all, nobody could say with any certainty how healthy my heart is.
"Let's wait and see," is what I heard.
Strangely (and perversely), I almost felt cheated that they didn’t find something wrong with me.
My point is: The U.S. health care system is big, big business where expensive tests on incredibly expensive and sophisticated equipment are now "routine," in my mind too "routine."
My advice is: Take care of yourself unless you (including your pocketbook) wants to get a serious workout at a huge hospital. (Is the hospital in your neighborhood starting to gobble up the entire surrrounding neighborhood as mine is? Is it starting to look more and more like Las Vegas casino?)
What set me off on this kick was an article about what the Scotts Miracle Gro Co. is doing about its employees’ health. The article appeared (of all places) in the Bangor (ME) Daily News.
Scotts is serious — yes, make that SERIOUS — about its employees’ health and, of course, the company’s health care costs.
Smoking by employees? Don’t do it.
Here’s a quote from the article will give you an idea of what I’m talking about:

“An outside company Scott hired to manage its employee health promotion program asks Scott employees to fill out lengthy health status questionnaires that help identify those at greatest risk for worsening health and higher health care costs. Health coaches then push higher risk employees to improve weight, exercise more, get cholesterol and blood sugar under control, and comply with their medication plans. Employees who refuse to fill out the questionnaires or work with the coaches on their personal health plans pay up to $1,200 more annually for their health insurance.”

Click on the headline to read the entire article. — Ron Hall

Get ready to hear about H-2B

Spring is almost here, which means landscape professionals are looking to fill out their staffs with hard-working, enterprising and motivated employees. And then they won't be able to find any.
So get ready for a crop of new stories about H-2B, the guest worker program that so many in the Green Industry rely on for seasonal employees, like this one from Reuters:

As President George W. Bush's plans for a guest worker program languishes in a backlash against immigration, employers both large and small say they rely on Hispanic workers to keep the economy running.
Landscaper Fred Hollmann jumps through legal hoops every year to bring a handful of Hispanics to work in yards and gardens in southwest Ohio.
This year, he could only get six temporary work visas for non citizens. "They work hard, they show up every day," said Hollman. "I'd love to hire more."
Criticized on one hand for taking jobs from unemployed Americans or for working too cheaply, Latinos are complimented on the other for doing work others won't do -- a tightrope where stereotypes seem to work both for and against them. (Click the link up top for the complete story.)

Unfortunately, these stories are going to be even more common this spring because of problems we've been hearing about in the H-2B Visa process, and the fact that roughly half of our U.S Congressmen are too busy running for president to actually do their jobs as congressmen and come up with a comprehensive immigration reform package. — Mike Seuffert

Landscaper saves home from fire

In his previous post, Ron was complaining about the landscaping news coming in all being negative. Well, here's one landscaper who made the news in a way that he should be proud of:

Shelton, CT - A Connecticut firefighter acted well in time and managed to put out most of the flames before a firefighting crew could reach the scene of a two-family house on fire. Dave VanWart, a 25-year-old landscaper and a firefighter by profession, used snow from the lawn to put out the fire.
Vanwart was alone when the blaze began, no fire truck had arrived yet so Vanwart decided to jump into action. He grabbed a shovel from the bed of his truck and ran to the first-floor apartment.
"I took the shovel and put the snow on the fire to try and knock it down a little bit so it didn't catch the rest of the house," Vanwart told reporters.
Assistant Fire Chief Mike Ulrich praised VanWart's timely effort and said that using snow created steam which prevented fire from spreading.

Article courtesy of All Headline News (www.allheadlinenews.com)
— Mike Seuffert

It's good to be the King

For the past year or so, I've been joking to our friends at Cub Cadet that I'm waiting to see pictures of LeBron James riding in one of their lawnmowers. The reason is that Cub Cadet is the main sponsor of the Cleveland Cavaliers, who, in case you don't know, play professional basketball basically next door to Landscape Management's editorial offices.

It sounds like Cub Cadet is finally ready to take my advice. The Cleveland Plain Dealer is reporting: "LeBron James has signed another endorsement deal, this one with Cub Cadet, manufacturer of outdoor lawn equipment. Cub Cadet is one of the brands of Medina County-based MTD Products. The multiyear deal will be announced today. James will promote a new line of equipment called the Cub Cadet Time Saver Family. The advertising campaign is scheduled to begin in the spring."

OK, Cub Cadet probably didn't need my advice to know James is a bankable commodity. Going just from memory, LeBron now endorses Nike, Sprite, Microsoft, Upper Deck, Bubblicious and now Cub Cadet. Plus he plays a little basketball on the side.
— Mike Seuffert

Not all news is bad news. . .however

I spent a few days fishing with my son, Jason, cruising the mangroves in a flat-bottom boat in southwest Florida this past week. The fishing was so-so (barely enough keeper sheepsheads to make a good meal) but the company and the scenery were incredible.
Glad to report that the world kept on spinning in my absence. Sad to report that most of the news (at least the news reported in the local media across the U.S.A. wasn't so good.) Or, as we used to say at the newspaper office the painful morning after a particularly long night at the local watering hole discussing the world's misadventures — “The news never sleeps . . . and neither do we!”
Here’s what’s been happening while I was tossing shrimp into the backwaters:

— the State of Michigan is debating a 2% tax on services, including lawn care. Lawn care providers there think it’s almost a sure thing since the state budget is in bad shape. Those of us in living and working in or near Michigan know that things aren’t so happy in the Motor City, or anywhere where the Big Three have a big presence. Lawn care folks in Michigan tell us that the tax creates a problem because some of their customers have prepaid and there’s no way to recover the 2%.

— A former bookkeeper of a lawn care business in Lincoln, NE, and her son each got sentences of 2-4 years in prison for stealing nearly $200,000 from the company. The two were also ordered to repay the company more than $250,000. The bookkeeper reportedly took the money over a period of three years to finance her son’s towing business and race car, reported the Associated Press. (My sister, who runs a business in eastern Pennslyvania got ripped off by a bookkeeper in a similar scam several years ago. Owners, keep your eyes open.)

— A landscape company in Oswego, IL, mistakenly cut down 31 trees at a 7.5-acre assisted-living development last month. Ouch! Now someone has to cough up more than $27,000 to replace the trees. The excuse being used is that the landscapers “misidentified” the markings on the trees as signs that they were to be removed. For the article in the Suburban Chicago News click here.

— “Gimme Green,” focusing on America’s “obsession” with lawns, got its world premiere at Big Sky Documentary Film Festival on Sunday, Feb. 18. This is definitely something that will NOT win the Professional Landcare Network’s “Best-Film-of-the-Year” Award. Here’s how one newspaper described the 27-minute film: “Gimme Green manages to touch on the most important issues involved with America’s lawns. It uses the visual absurdity of lush yards in Southwest deserts to show how home irrigation sucks up vital aquifers and follows a chemical crew as it sprays pesticides on a patch of suburbia. But mostly the film relies on numbers to make its statement. (Children who play on chemical-sprayed lawns are 6.5 times more likely to develop Leukemia).”
Here’s a link to the article describing the movie.

— A suburban Chicago landscaper will be spending some time in federal prison after being convicted of bribing a Chicago city official to get $8 million in contractors, including work at the city’s famed Millennium Park Here’s the link to a Jan. 31 news report announcing the sentencing of Michael Lowecki, owner of James Michael Inc. Click here , the link to an earlier article describing the scam that landed the landscaper in deep trouble.

— And finally, the Virginia General Assembly is considering a bill that would prohibit commercial providers of lawn care services from broadly applying pesticides and fertilizers onto impervious surfaces such as streets and driveways. (Folks, can it be that we’ve been so sloppy with our applications that we’ve been feeding sidewalks and driveways or not cleaning them off after applications? If that’s the case, maybe we should get spanked.)

Coming to a company near you — workers bearing microchips?

Coming soon to a company near you — an immigrant worker implanted with 16-digit RFID chip.
Maybe not tomorrow.
Maybe not this year.
But. . .I’ll put a few bob on it, not that I’m happy with idea of having a tiny chip, with all kinds of my personal information, injected under my armpit. It’s beyond scary.
On January 22, Verichip Corp, which makes a human implantable microchip set its planned initial public offering at 4.3 million shares. Its parent company, Applied Digital Solutions (NASDAQ, ADSX), is expected to spin off Verichip (www.verichipcorp.com) any day now. The Verichip shares will be listed on NASDAQ under the symbol CHIP.
The Web site of Applied Digital Solutions (www.adsx.com) touts the microchip technology for infants, patient protection and wander prevention, for example for victims of Alzheimer’s disease.
How big a step is it beyond those stated uses to implement a program to implant the RFID chips into guest workers to identify and provide information, at the wave of reading device?
It's being discussed.
A Web site opposed to the use of these chips on humans makes for interesting reading. click here, or click on the headline.

Taking jobs away from the Gringos

"When I was mowing lawns, I saw myself in a truck checking on the men. When I was in the truck, I saw myself in the office. Now that I'm in the office, I see the company running itself.”
So said Nikita Floyd to a reporter for the Washington Post, in a perceptive article focusing on the issue of immigrants versus native-born minorities in the U.S. labor market. Floyd is the owner of Green Forever Landscaping, Upper Marlboro, MD, and by all accounts doing quite well. One of the reasons he gives for his company's growth is his workers, many of whom are from El Salvador.
Are immigrants taking jobs from U.S. citizens?
The article in the Washington Post, doesn’t make a definitive case for or against, but it reinforces what many service company business owners have been saying for years now: It's pretty darn hard to find U.S. workers that will show up every day, at least for $10 an hour.
The article is well worth a read,
click here, or click on the headline.

ANLA's Management Clinic great mid-winter event

Louisville, KY, in mid winter is not one of America's party cities. But it is a darn good location to hold a big educational/networking event. Most of us couldn't find much mischief to distract us from the business at hand — attending the sessions and networking. What I'm referring to is the Management Clinic sponsored by the American Nursery & Landscape Association.

I'm not sure how many years these ANLA Clinics have been going on, but I'm sorry I didn't check in years ago because this is one first-rate event. Held annually in the venerable Galt House Hotel overlooking cold, muddy Ohio River, there's not a whole lot to do in the city except dive into the many events swirling around the Clinic.

(Oh yes, there was a Clinic 5K Fun Run along the river at 6:30 a.m. on Friday. A small knot of us — maybe 12 or 15 masochistic souls — gathered in the hotel lobby and cruised east along the river, then doubled back, glad to get some hot coffee and a warm shower. But back to the Clinic.)

Two editors from our pub made the trip, one driving from Cleveland and the other from Toledo, and we split up coverage of the event. We could have easily brought three editors there was so much going on . . . but somebody has got to get the February magazine proofed and ready for the printer, right?

We were surprised by the number of landscape company owners and managers at the Clinic. We learned maybe 30% - 35% of the attendees were landscapers, the second biggest group of participants next to the nursery owners and managers. In total, I think about 1200 people attended.

The ANLA focuses on the "green" part of the landscape — the trees and plants grown in our nurseries. Many of these nurseries also have landscape divisions. But there were plenty of landscapers there just learning business and plants. There were plenty of sessions devoted to both.

Not to take away from the efforts of any other association or organization, but if you're in the landscape business and you're doing design/build, bid/build or any significant amount of installation, you definitely want to check out next year's ANLA Clinic program.

Like I said, Louisville in mid winter is hardly a garden spot. But it's a nice city, it's easy to get around, the prices are reasonable, the people friendly and you'll be spending most of your time hanging out with old friends and making new ones anyway.

A provocateur draws some heat

I looked up the word "provocateur" to write this blog. A provocateur is a person assigned to provoke unrest, volence, debate or argument. The reason? Rick Anderson, a great big guy from who runs a service called the Whispering Crane Institute gave a "provocateur's perspective" of the landscape world at the ANLA Clinic in Louisville.

And yes, after about an hour of dissin' "trends" driving landscape design/build (you know, fire pits, outdoor kitchens, etc.) , he finally manages to provoke some "unrest" with his presentation, which is entertaining and, at times it seems, intentionally confrontational. But hey, how can you be a provocateur without stepping over the line, right?

Anyhoo, when big Rick gets on the subject of the value of "blogs" (something he strongly endorses) in attracting customers' attention, and he keeps on about them maybe a tad too long, he "provokes" a female conference attendee near the front of the room to comment that she works 60 hours a week and doesn't have time to blog. (Bear in mind that Anderson has been literally begging for reactions from the 100-plus people in the audience throughout his presentation.)

Anderson quickly responds to the lady: "You have time to write three sentences, don't you?" Or something very close to that.

A smallish lady, and as Anderson finds out, one with more than a little pluck, she stands straight out of her seat and tells him in no uncertain terms that she lives in the country, doesn't have access to broadband or hi-speed internet connections and, to this point anyway, is no great fan of blogging. It's pretty obvious she isn't about to have somebody talk down to her, which, to my mind anyway, is pretty darn neat. Like I said, she's a small woman but I don't think anybody in the room would have wanted to tangle with her for a minute or two.

AT this point Anderson backs off a bit and tones down his message a click or two.

As the presentation ends 10 minutes later or so, she and big Rick come to a friendlier meeting of the minds, not that they hug or anything. But, like I said, they're friendly and chatting.

In any event, Anderson's presentation was kind of on the edge but a lot of fun, and I've got to hand it to the little lady that he briefly riled; she's one tough cookie.

We don't recommend you try this

Granted the Internal Revenue Service tax code is long, complicated and best left to those green-shaded, pasty accountant types. But that's not to say we don't apreciate the, shall we say, "creative" deductions some business owners attempt.

Jay MacDonald of Bankrate.com reported this among his list of the nine oddest write-offs:

"A landscaper who was under audit with the IRS had deducted the expense of their dog because he would pull the wagon on landscaping jobs. They felt he was out there helping. He may have been listed as an independent contractor."

For the complete list of unconventional deductions click here.

ServiceMaster's pricey new digs

Fox News in Memphis is reporting that ServiceMaster, parent company of TruGreen ChemLawn, Terminix and Merry Maids is building a new $122 million headquarters two miles from the FedEx World Headquarters in Memphis. The company announced this past fall that it was moving its headquarters from Downers Grove, IL, (Chicago), to Memphis, which has been the site of its residential services business for several decades. Fox News says the move will bring about 500 new jobs to Memphis.

Big government strikes again

In it's never ending struggle to make the world a safer place it seems the Environmental Protection Agency delivered a dumbfounding ruling, one which might have saved billions of dollars of damage to citrus plants following the recent freeze in California.

It seems, at least according to the former head of the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Biotechnology Henry I. Miller, that a simple gene alteration in a naturally occurring bacterium already in the fruit might limit the damage from a freeze. Because the bacterium contain a protein that promotes frost damage, removing the gene might, thus limiting or prevent frost damage, could result. But scientists were never allowed to test for it. They considered the original bacterium a pest so the altered bacterium became a pesticide.

For more information on the ice-minus issue, please click here.

An easy target?

Sometimes, when we've come across a news story about a landscaper being robbed or worse, most of the time it's a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now, it looks like landscape companies may have to be wary of even the people who hire them. According to this article from the Atlanta Journal Constitution, "A landscaper in Clayton County was shot six times Sunday when he showed up for what he thought was a grass-cutting job, police said. When Pho Le, 60, owner of Le’s Landscaping, arrived at the Owens Trail house, he was shot in the abdomen and five times in the right leg by two men who hired him to cut grass, police said."
The thieves' motive was robbery. They had met Pho Le previously and paid him in advance to show up to do the landscaping. When he showed up, they tried to steal his truck, but dropped the keys as he escaped, according to the story. No arrests have been made.
— Mike Seuffert

Lock it and secure it or lose it

Contractors are so busy thinking about the next sale or the next day's operations they too often neglect to protect what they've got. If you haven't been hit by a professional thief, consider yourself very lucky — to this point, at least. Equipment and tools taken from shop areas and construction sites is a multi-billion dollar business. Common thieves (if there is such a thing), meth or crack addicts, or pros that know what they're doing? Bad guys come in many flavors.

Police are looking for whoever it was that ripped off Stone Ferris Lawn Care, Cape Coral, FL, earlier this month. Owner Robert Ferris told authorities somebody hauled off about $42,000 of his lawn maintenance equipment. He figures thieves have stolen $200,000 of his equipment over the years.

He wants the city council to give him a variance to put up a fence. But many landscapers have discovered that even fences can't keep out some thieves. A favorite target these days is compact equipment. Where it goes and who ends up with is anybody's guess. Most of it is never recovered, we're told.

An "add-on" service opportunity to avoid

"The best thing that could be for this man is that he gets locked up because if I ever run into him he's going to wish he was locked up." So said a burglary victim at the sentencing of the thief who broke into his home.

A landscaper on Oahu (Hawaii), who cased out homes to burglarize while he was on the job, got 10 years in the slammer. Not enough claimed victims. Already charged with three break-ins and out on bail, he struck again. And was caught again, reported television station KHNL.

Revenge of the mole

Moles can be a serious and frustrating problem, but some things are just better left to the professionals. In a scenario reminiscent of Bill Murray in Caddyshack, man in Germany annoyed with his lack of success in getting rid of the invaders, escalated his attack. It cost him his life.

For more on the story, click here.

Stuck between a rock and a hard place

Sometimes, and I only mean sometimes - when I'm feeling particularly generous - I feel sorry for the EPA. At least, as sorry as you can feel for a massive government bureaucracy. The EPA is constantly being attacked on all sides — by environmentalists who don't think the agency is doing enough, and by chemical manufacturers who think there is too much government intrusion into their work and products. And I think most of us can relate to the feeling of being pulled in two directions at once. Anyway, here are a couple recent news articles concerning the EPA and the use of pesticides that could impact how lawn care operators do business.

EPA facing new lawsuits over pesticide use
EUGENE, Ore. – The Environmental Protection Agency is facing an onslaught of lawsuits from both the pesticide industry and environmental activists, over a new rule on pesticide use in or near water. Lawsuits have been filed in 11 of the nation's 13 circuit courts, including the 9th Circuit, which serves Oregon. Environmentalists say the EPA has knowingly violated a court decision in an Oregon case that would have meant fewer pesticides flowing into Oregon rivers. Pesticide manufacturers counter the new rule doesn't do enough to protect them from unnecessary and costly government regulation.
Read the complete story from the Seattle Times here.

EPA asked to crack down on natural pesticides
Currently, the EPA does not regulate "minimum-risk" pesticides produced from natural products such as peppermint oil, licorice, garlic, lemon grass and thyme that are "generally recognized as safe." As long as labels do not make a specific health claim or list a specific disease that a targeted bug or other pest may carry, the EPA doesn't require marketers to prove that the substances work. The Consumer Specialty Products Association, whose members include manufacturers of conventional chemical pesticides, sent the EPA a petition in March arguing that a product that claims to kill or repel a pest known to carry a disease is making a health claim, even if its label does not specifically refer to the disease.
Read the complete story from the Palm Beach Post here.

Oregon's pesticide reporting system takes root
In the first week of the state's new program to collect pesticide-use information, almost 20 people filed reports. The Pesticide Use Reporting System, established in 1999 but funded for the first time in 2005, aims to provide information about what pesticides are being used in Oregon, in what quantities, and generally where they are being applied. The state estimated that the system will track about 8 million reports of pesticide applications per year from 123,000 pesticide users across the state. "Having access to information about environmental hazards, in this case where pesticides are applied, we are hoping we might see use patterns to help us inform our health surveillance," said Lori Barck of the environmental and occupational epidemiology program at Oregon's Public Health Division.
Read the complete story from the Statesman Journal here.

— Mike Seuffert

School of hard knocks a great teacher

Check out this “school” if you're short of help and looking for an employee with some Green Industry knowledge - the school of hard knocks.
The Associated Press, reporting in the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper, reported on a program at the Southeastern Correctional Institute in Lancaster, OH, that trains inmates for careers in the Green Industry. (When they get out, of course.)
One former student got a job as a golf course superintendent, another was recently promoted to landscape designer and two others started their own contracting businesses, according to the article. It went on to describe how one “graduate”, in prison four times, got two job offers within days of being released.
Our hat is off to retired horticulture instructor Tom Ramsey, who leads the program and says some of his pupils keep in contact with him to let him know how they're doing.

Festivus Celebration

Kevin Campanella, a landscaper from Rhode Island, was featured in an article celebrating the holiday of Festivus, an anti-Christmas holiday created on Seinfeld. If you want to read about Kevin's Festivus celebration, click here.

I loved this episode, and may have to buy one of these Festivus poles.

And just in case you really want to get into the Seinfeld holiday spirit, you can make a donation in your friends' names to a real-life Human Fund. Based out of Cleveland (where Landscape Management is also based), "The Human Fund effectively supports arts education programs for under-served children," according to its Web site. Visit it here.

Happy holidays everyone.
— Mike Seuffert

Another great snow job

Give Snow King John Allin credit. The former Erie, PA-landscape company owner and one of the forces in the formative years of the Snow & Ice Management Association doesn’t let any slush form under his feet. After founding, running (and piling up a lot of debt in the process) and unloading the national Snow Management Group, he’s become an international traveler as president of Snow Dragon, a division of huge Park Ohio Holdings, based in Cleveland, OH. We recently got a news release about Allin in Salzburg, Austria. It looks like he’s helping pull together another snow association, this one in Europe. You can bet he’ll be pushing and selling his company’s large snow-melting equipment. He knows the business and the melters fill a big hole in the industry. Beyond that, Allin is a pretty good darn salesman; he proves it again and again.

Free isn't always good

Countrywide Lawn Doctor, a UK-based landscaper is offering free franchises. It's a brilliant marketing scheme, but will it hurt the industry? The company is getting interest from numerous people, many of whom have never been in the industry. Sure it's only in the UK right now, but you be be sure if the concept takes off, it will show up in the States.

It takes more than a little business savvy to be succesful. While it's easier to win business when you're better than the competition, truly bad providers can sour people on an industry.

The franchisee does need to pony up the money for equipment, so new owners will certainly have an investment they'll want to protect. Let's hope that Countrywide supports that in every way possible.

For more about the free franchise click here.

Light up your customers like Lampoon's Griswolds

Jim and Lea Sharp, Sharp Lawns, Mooresville, IN, say the holiday decorating season keeps getting longer and longer, with some customers wanting their home decorations in place soon after Halloween.
Challenges to home decorating include high winds and homeowners that want their homes to look like the Griswolds in the movie, “National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.”
You can read about the Sharps in a nicely written article (click on headline) that appeared in a recent issue of the Martinsville, IN, “Reporter-Times” newspaper. — Ron Hall

Don't take shortcuts

Nothing could be more tragic than the loss of the child. Being responsible for that death and having to live with that knowledge for the rest of your life has got to a nearly unbearable experience. The driver of a landscaping truck ran down a 10-year-old girl was an off-duty police officer working for his family's landscaping company. What's worse, he didn't have the proper license to drive the vehicle.

For the full story click here:
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/city_region/breaking_news/2006/12/driver_in_fatal_1.html

Some good news

It's sometimes amazing the stories you'll see come across when you "Google" the word "landscaper." A lot of the time, the news involves the police blotter. (Like the landscaper who nearly drowned in a client's pool with his backpack blower on.) But for once, the news was good. Congratulations to Feliciano Aragon, a Melbourne, FL, landscaper from Costa Rica who just won the $9 million Florida Lotto jackpot. Check out the rest of the story here.

— Mike Seuffert

GreenCare for Troops a huge success

Reporter Tarron Lively wrote an excellent piece about Project Evergreen's GreenCare for Troops program. The article appeared on Thanksgiving day in the Washington Times newspaper.

The GreenCare for Troops program solicits landscape and lawn care companies to provide basic lawn care services to families that have loved ones in the military serving in the Middle East. Several hundred Green Industry companies have signed up and are providing free services to these families.

The article in the Times quotes Brickman spokesperson Debra Holder, the former leader of the Professional Landcare Network, and Den Gardner, who directs Project Evergreen.

Click on the headline and see the complete article. — Ron Hall

Mowers on highways — a very bad idea

The Tampa Tribune newspaper on Friday, Nov. 17, reported that a man operating a tractor mowing unit on I-75 about 9 p.m. was the cause of a horrific accident. The paper resports he was driving the unit in the left lane of the 4-lane highway at about 25 mph (the minimum speed limit is 50 mph) causing a couple of vehicles, traveling at highway speed, to slam on their brakes to avoid striking him.

In the mayhem, a pickup truck rear-ended a car and apparently sent it careening into the path of a fuel tanker carrying about 8,000 gallons of fuel.

The tanker exploded, killing the driver of the car. The truck driver escaped his cab before his truck blew up. The explosion, fire and cleanup closed busy I-75 for four hours, reported the newspaper.

The operator of the mowing unit, apparently unhurt, was identified as an employee of a local lawn care company that had a contract to mow the grass in the median strip. He said he was looking for a turn-around so that he could continue mowing the grass in the median. At 9 p.m. in the dark?

An official for the highway department said mowing is typically done between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m.

Click on the headline above for the article in the Tampa Tribune newspaper. — Ron Hall

Equity hawks circling ServiceMaster?

Interesting piece in "Heard on the Street" column in the Wall Street Journal. There's speculation that investor groups are looking at the parent company of the TruGreen Companies and Terminix as a plum just ready for picking.

If you haven't heard, ServiceMaster said a couple of weeks ago that it's moving its corporate headquarters from Downers Grove, IL, (just outside of Chicago) to Memphis were all of its consumer services businesses are headquartered.

There's been a lot going on at this company that has always made a point of emphasizing its strong Christian values. That said, not even The Higher Power Above has seen fit to move its stock price to the satisfaction of investors, so there's talk of big-money snapping it up.

Hey, that reminds me of a joke (hee, hee) about the guy that month after month, year after year, whined to God about why he never wins the lottery . . . . and, of course, the answer in a thunderous voice from on high — "You gotta buy a ticket first, moron!"

Ok, so it wasn't such a hot joke.

Click on the headline for the Wall Street Journal article. Actually, I accessed it through the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. — Ron Hall

The more you stir the xxx, the worse it stinks

I can't recall my dad, Cliff, ever saying a bad word about anybody — ever. He wasn't the most ambitious guy, that's for sure. He was content to go to work everyday and work on his little farm when he could. He passed in 1997 but he's still alive in my mind, and one of his favorite sayings came to mind as I read (for the umpteenth time) the saga of the Houston landscape couple that refused to do work for a gay man.

Yes, weeks after they informed the gay man they wouldn't do work for him because it was against their Christian principles, the story gets revived by some overly ambitious Associated Press reporter. And off it goes again, being printed and reprinted in newspapers across the country. And the phone calls and hate mail start pouring in again.

Folks, get over it. It's old news. Actually, it's hardly news at all. So, the gay guy was offended; that's regretable. But there must be thousands of landscape companies in Houston eager to take his money.

Isn't it about time we quit stirring this little pile of doggie doo? It's starting to stink real bad. — Ron Hall

Organics win by a hair — recount certain

A vote can't get much closer than the one in Brunswick, ME, mandating the use of organic practices on all city-owned properties. The initial tally after Tuesday's election had the measure failing by two votes, The count was later amended with the ordinance passing by five votes - 3,906 to 3,901.
Opponents of the measure say they will seek a recount.
The ordinance is modeled after one passed by Marblehead, MA, several years ago that prohibits synthetic pesticides and biosolids processed from treated sewer sludge from being used on city parks, sports fields and gardens.
Brunswick, pop. 14,800, is home to a naval air station and Bowdoin College and is located about 25 miles northeast of Portland, Maine's largest city. — Ron Hall

Sod for the lawnless

A big attaboy to Kurt Steinke, a professor of turfgrass ecology at Texas A&M University. When it came time to dispose of a large section of Bermudagrass sod he got an "ah-haa" moment — why not donate it to Habitat for Humanity to use at some of the homes that volunteers were helping to build in the Bryan-College Station region.

As a result, 11 homes in the newly developed Angel's Gate "Habitat" development have new lawns, saving homeowners there $800 to $1,000 per lawn.

A tip of our hat to William Gravanovic of Horizon Turf for helping out too.

Click on the headline if you want to read more in the Bryan-College Station newspaper. — Ron Hall

Vicious kangeroo or cuddly wallaby, who's right?

OK, what's the real story here?

A landscaper in Davie, FL, says while he was working in a client's back yard a big, nasty kangeroo grabbed him in a bear hug, clawed him and gave him a bite for good measure.

The "pet owner" says, hogwash! That wasn't a kangeroo at all; it was a wallaby; it's half as big as the landscaper claims it is and it had never attacked anybody before.

Click on the headline to the link to South Florida's NBC6 and read about yet another landscaping hazard — bad-tempered marsupials. — Ron Hall

A fire storm in the gay community

Death threats. Hundreds of emails. A flood of nasty calls. An email to a man seeking a quote for a landscape project has caused an enormous backlash against a Texas landscape company.

Todd and Sabrina Farber, owners of the Houston landscape company, The Garden Guy, Inc., touched off the avalanche of vituperation when Sabrina emailed a man seeking some landscaping and told him their company couldn't do work for him because it disapproves of the gay lifestyle.

Here, reportedly, is the email she sent following an inquiry from Michael Lord about a quote to do landscaping work. It read in part: "Dear Mr. Lord, I am appreciative of your time on the phone today and glad you contacted us. I need to tell you that we cannot meet with you because we choose not to work for homosexuals. Best of luck in finding someone else to fill your landscaping needs. All my best, Sabrina."

The email, forwarded and reforwarded, ignited a flood of angry responses from people, and especially the gay community, across the country.

The Farbers have had to unlist their phone number and turn off their office phone due to the number of calls they were receiving.

Even though the couple issued an apology, they're still getting bombarded with condemnation.

Here is their apology, posted this past Friday on the company website:

"We did not refuse service with malicious intent. We do not hate homosexuals and we are sorry that we hurt [ the gay couple ]. We meant to uphold our right as a small business owner to choose who our clients are. We are humbly sorry for the hurt that it has caused." — Ron Hall

H2B for athletes too?

The poor, poor Mudbugs. They lost their first hockey game of the year because their 11 H2B players hadn't gotten their visas yet.

Did I read that right? Mudbugs? Hockey player?. H2B visas?

You bet, it says so right on the sports page of Oct. 21 issue of The Oklahoman newspaper.

It says that the Bossier-Shreveport Mudbugs were whipped by the Oklahoma team 5-3 because the Blazers managed to get visas for their five H2B players and the Mudbugs were without the services of their 11 H2B players.

As almost all of you know, the H2B is a federal program that allows U.S. business owners to employ seasonal immigrant labor when no domestic workers are available.

What? There's a shortage of hockey players in the United States?

Well, I guess now we know. — Ron Hall

A better way to say "no"

KPRC Channel 2 on its website reported Friday that the Garden Guy, Inc., a Houston-area landscape company emailed a Mr. Lord and told him they couldn't do work for him because he is gay. The owners of the company have some really strong feelings on the subject.

In light of the resulting controversy you can bet they'd wished they'd turned down Mr. Lord's request, which is their right, without getting into the gay thing?

The email has stirred up a lot of controversy with some folks calling for a boycott of the business.

Click on the headline above to see how NOT to respond to a request for service. — Ron Hall

Alas, poor Yorick!

Maybe it's because Halloween is coming. In the past week, a couple of different landscapers have found themselves in the news for grisly discoveries.

In Bethlaham, Pa., a landscaper dug up a skull while working in a garden area. According to the local Morning Call newspaper, "Police said an employee of Tall Timbers Nursery in South Whitehall Township was working in the garden on Monday when he found the skull. He thought the mud-caked item was the remains of an animal and set it aside. On Tuesday, a nursery employee took a closer look at the item and thought it was a human skull and called police, said Trex Satkowski, one of the owners of Tall Timbers Nursery.

''Never, in my 20 years of landscaping, had I ever seen a human skull,'' Satkowski said. ''It was pretty freaky.'''

In that case, police believe there was no foul play involved.

That wasn't the case in Montville, N.J. According to a story in The Record, "A landscaper discovered the decomposed body on Thursday morning while dumping leaves behind an industrial building off Chapin Road in the Pine Brook section of the township. The body was clothed and wrapped in plastic sheeting."

If this is going to keep happening, landscapers may start being cross-trained as crime scene investigators.
— Mike Seuffert

Right number, wrong street

I'll bet this happens more often than anybody cares to admit — a lawn technician servicing the wrong property. It can be an expensive mistake, but in the following case the homeowner got a kick out of it.

Dolly Curtis, who lives in Easton, CT, got $538 worth of free lawn service this past week when a technician mistakenly aerated the lawn around her house.

"It looked like a bunch of moles had a fraternity party on my lawn," she told the Connecticut Post newspaper.

The lawn service was meant for a home with the same street number but on Flat Rock Drive, which is just around the block from Dolly's house on Flat Rock Road. Who is the wise guy who why gave two streets in the same neighborhood almost identical names? — Ron Hall

The Noodle Incident

Sometimes, things are funnier or more interesting when left to the imagination. Bill Watterson used this idea frequently in my all time favorite comic strip Calvin and Hobbes. Every once in a while, one of the characters, most likely Hobbes, would refer to "The Noodle Incident," involving Calvin. Watterson never explained what the incident was, but left it to the reader's mind to fill in the blank.

That came to mind this week when I read about a California landscaper who, as a protest against the local government, posted a giant sign on the walls of his greenhouse insulting a local councilwoman "in words not fit to print," according to the San Diego Union Tribune.

You can check the story out here. Now if you happen to live in the area, or know what the sign says, please don't tell me. I prefer to leave it to my imagination.

Outsourcing is for big fat sissies

Rave ***** (f5-stars)

Unless you live and love the Great Lakes region of the the United States like I do you can't appreciate what I learned this past week. I learned that the Ariens Company, rather than outsourcing to China for a lot of the hard goods it uses to build its lawn and garden products, including its commercial mowers, relies on local domestic suppliers. It can do this, in part, because it's becoming more and more efficient. The company credits its all-out war on waste — time, effort, materials, whatever. Lean is the word at Ariens.

For the past seven years, management of the privately-owned company, under the leadership of Dan Ariens, has been systematically scrutinizing every system and process within the company, squeezing out waste wherever it finds it. The company's waste search-and-eliminate mentality allows it to maintain mutally beneficial relationships with ldomestic suppler/partners —companies that can stamp on their products "Made in the U.S.A."

Certainly, quality control and Ariens' sense of loyalty to the tiny community of Brillion, WI, (The company's been a part of the community for almost a century and Dan Ariens went to high school there) figure into the relationship Ariens keeps with surrounding suppliers.

As I walk the streets of my pleasant city on Lake Erie in northern Ohio and see all empty downtown store windows, I think about the hundreds of jobs that have left our community (about the same size as Brillion, WI) in the past 20 years, and what it means to the local school, merchants, everybody, in fact . . . and I wish we had someone like Ariens with the business acumen and guts to go "lean" and keep our jobs. (A big thank you to JP Horizons) — Ron Hall

Back off moron, you're risking my life!

Rant *** (three stars)

I've gotten fond of living. Living is a good thing. You know flowers, sunshine, friends, family . . . all that stuff.

Getting squashed on the the grill of some big truck, like the white Ford 250 pulling a trailer of landscape gear that was riding the bumper of my puny Eagle Summit on I-90 tonight. — that's a bad thing.

Hey moron it wasn't enough that you were bump drafting me at 65 mph in the curb lane, but you were yakkin' on a cell phone to boot.

You know who you are. Cut it out!!! — Ron Hall

120 bans in place — but who's counting, huh?

Check off picturesque Comox, British Columbia, as the latest Canadian community to ban the use of synthetic pesticides for lawn care, the 120th community in Canada to do so. As usual, opponents of commercial lawn care pounded on the alleged risk associated with using special chemicals for purely aesthetic reasons. Comox is a seaside city of about 12,000 people on the east coast of Vancouver Island. Anti-lawn care forces are now aiming at other small communities in the beautiful Comox Valley. Look for the councillors in the nearby towns of Courtenay and Cumberland to feel the heat from the vocal anti-pesticide coalition — Chances are they will become numbers 121 and 122. — Ron Hall

Anti-Lawncare D Day approaches

November is the projected kickoff launch of "The Year of the Safe Lawn" aimed at alerting the American public to the potential environmental harmn caused by tradtional lawn care products. The campaign is being spearheaded by HGTV host Paul Tukey and is planning to address the issues of pesticides, water and fossil fuel use on turfgrass.

The effort is being undertaken by a coalitiion of for-profit businesses and non-profit organizations, which have begun raining money for a big promotional campaign during 2007. Although I couldn't find it on the web site (www.SafeLawns.org), a "Safe Lawns" Conference is reportedly being planned for March 2007. And you know what the group will be looking for — lots and lots of press. — Ron Hall

Take your office on the road

In the landscaping business, you spend most of your day away from the office, either on the job or on the road. With that in mind, Ford is making it easier to do office duties right from your truck.

Check out this article from the Detroit Free Press on a new portable computer system that links into your F-Series trucks, allowing you to "place online orders, calculate and print bids and modify blueprints from the cab of their pickups."

It sounded pretty useful to me. Then again, Ford is also laying off about 1/3 of its workforce, so it is hard ot say anything nice about them at this moment. What do think?

— Mike Seuffert

Time to reduce the number of huge flying rats

Beautiful to see in the sky, unwanted destructive guests that don't know when to leave on our grounds.

Take heart fellow grounds pros; a new rule issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services this past August, and that subsequently has become law, takes aim at the exploding populations of “resident” Canada geese.

The law allows states to let:

- Senior communities plagued with resident geese destroy nests and eggs without federal permits,
- Private and public airports to take birds without federal permits for safety issues,
- County and local governments in coordination with state officials, take birds that are a public health threat to reservoirs, athletic fields, parks and public beaches,
- States eases existing hunting restrictins in the Atlantic Flyway region (includes entire area edast of Mississippi River), including allowing a summer season in August.
The plan is to reduce the existing population estimated at 1.3 million birds to 650,000.
“This day has been a long time in coming,” said U.S. Rep. Jim Saxton (R-NJ), vice chairman of the Fisheries Conservation and Wildlife Subcommittee.

We say Amen to that. — LM Staff

Did you start out like this?

A big rave for this young man.

Josh Boersma really knows how to "run" a business. When the 18-year-old seniort at Ankeny High School near Des Moines, IA, leaves school at noon he puts on his business owner hat (Boersma Lawn Care) and spends several hours mowing or fertilizing several of his 13 accounts.

Then it's off to cross country practice, which typically lasts until the sun sets.

Josh figures he works 18-25 hours weekly at his lawn care business. He says he's undecided about making lawn care a career, not just yet anyway. More likely, he'll study business or accounting at a university, he says.

By the way, Josh is the best cross country runner at this school and working hard to compete at the state meet.

Click on the headline for a nice article about Josh in the Des Moines Register newspaper. — Ron Hall

Reflections on 9/11

I think we will always remember where we were on Sept. 11, 2001. On this five-year anniversary of the attacks, let's take a few moments to remember all the heroes — from the NYPD and FD, to the passengers aboard United 93 — who gave their lives that day.

Here's a column I wrote for Landscape Management on how I remember that fateful day. — Mike Seuffert

Chainsaw murderer spooks landscapers?

People referred to him as "Crazy Chris," and if what he's accused of doing is true, crazy falls just a click or two short of describing this whacko.

Christian C. Nielsen, 31, (aka Crazy Chris), a cook at an inn near Newry, ME, is accused of killing and dismembering, with a chain saw, three people and killing and burning another at the Black Bear Bed & Breakfast. The killings are believed to have taken place over several days.

Two young landscapers — Ryan Wheeler, 22, and his half brother Ian, 18— are believed to be the last people to have seen some of the victims alive and also to have an encounter with Crazy Chris before his arrest. Dead are the 64-year-old innkeeper, her daughter, 35, and two guests, a female, 43, and a male, 50. It was Maine's worst homicide in 14 years, said police

 “I was weed-whacking right next to the house and he (Crazy Chris) was coming in and out and walking all around. All of the sudden, I happened to look up and he jumped me right there,” Ryan Wheeler was quoted in the Boston Herald newspaper. “He was less than three feet from me. I jumped and I was like, ‘Whoa. You jumped me.’ And he said, ‘What? When I was looking at you from the window?’

For all the grizzly details, click on the headline and follow up with these links:

http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=156391

http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=156122

http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=156044

Elvis has left the house, but ServiceMaster is moving in

ServiceMaster, parent company of TruGreen ChemLawn, TruGreen Landscare and Terminix, is moving the 120 managers and executives remaining in its longtime headquarters in Downers Grove, IL, (a Chicago suburb) to Memphis.

And why not? It's principle operating divisions, including about 2,000 employees, are already based there. Did we mention ServiceMaster's new chairman and CEO, J. Patrick Spainhour, recently purchased a home in the Memphis area? It's expected to make the announcement of the move in October. — Ron Hall

Knotty knotweed dilemma

Council members on Bainbridge Island, WA, said that chemical pest controls were verbotin on public properties . . .That was until a week or so ago.

Because the island was being swallowed by knotweed, they softened their stance somewhat and approved the use of the herbicide glyphosate (Roundup). Knotweed is a nasty non-native invasive weed that is so aggressive that it's even crowding out other nasty non-native invasive weeds on the island, which is located in the Puget Sound near Seattle.

The lawmakers directed that the herbicide be injected into the stems of individual knotweed plants, and are seeking volunteers to help with the project.“It'll take a lot of work,” commented one city official. I guess you could call that an understatement considering that knotweed (several varieties) is growing just about everywhere on the island. The weed is in the buckwheat family and looks an awful lot like bamboo. - Ron Hall

What the hell is RSS?

When readers visit LM's Web page they can submit a question via e-mail and those questions are routed to me. The other day I got a good one: "I see a line on your page that tells me to click on it for an RSS link. What the hell is RSS?"

RSS, a digital-universe term for Really Simple Syndication, is a cool, painless way for you to get news headlines from just about any news source your heart desires (we hope of course that your heart really desires Landscape Management). It's a direct pipeline -- We post news on the Web site and those headlines get automatically refreshed on your Google or Yahoo Web page. They don't come to your e-mail inbox, you don't need to enter a password. It's all there. Seamless.

Here's how it works: Editors at LM update articles on our Web page every day. Most of the time here, it's our trusty Associate Editor and Web Guru Mike Seuffert who toils online.

You set up an RSS link once that links our articles to your personal Web page on Google or Yahoo (more on this in a second). Then, every time you jump on the Internet and this page opens, the latest, greatest LM headlines are right there. You didn't have to open an e-mail, you didn't have to lift a finger or even hit "refresh." Genius.

To get started: Go to Yahoo or Google and follow links from their home pages to create a personalized page. Block out about 20 minutes to get this done. When you're finished, set this new My Yahoo! or personalized Google page as your home page. That way it'll be right there every time you log on.

The browser will direct you through the process of creating your page. You'll get to pick from some basic news sources that all work on the RSS feed method, like CNN, USA Today, Sports Illustrated, Reuters Business, you name it. When you're done you will have a personal Web page that automatically gives you the latest headlines from whatever news sources you picked (you can fit as many as you want on there), plus any other custom element you might like, such as a weather report, blogs or daily comics.

Then come on back to www.landscapemanagement.net and click that RSS link. It'll walk you through adding our headlines to your new, personalized Web page. Do this for any other news source you want that supports the RSS technology. The result: All the news headlines on the topics you want from the sources you like are in one place.
— Stephanie Ricca

ServiceMaster hdqtrs relocating to Memphis?

Could ServiceMaster (NYSE-SVM) be moving its headquarters from its longtime location in Downers Grove, IL, to this vibrant mid-South city? That's more than a possibility, reports the Memphis Commercial Appea, quoting a city councilman there.

ServiceMaster is the parent company of TruGreen ChemLawn, TruGreen Landcare, Terminix, American Home Shield among others. It employs 170 in its Chicago-area headquarters, while its Memphis location already numbers more than 2,000 employs.

ServiceMaster is staying mum on the matter.

Click the headline to be directed to reporter Amos Makiís article in the Commercial Appeal. — Ron Hall

Hazardous-duty pay warranted

The biggest hazard to a landscape worker on the job?

1. Big machinery with whirring blades?
2. Relentless exposure to the sun and heat?
3. Robbers, lunatics and morons?

If you answered #3 you're right.

This past week alone landscape worker Tereso Vasquex Gonzalez was shot in the back and killed as he tried to walk away from a robbery attempt near Charleston, SC, Juan Patino was mowing a property in Richardson, TX, when somebody stopped their SUV and fired a shot that struck him in the arm and then sped off, and (this guy definitely needs some serious anger management or jail time, preferably the later) a 26-year-old man attacked Eric Torres, 23, with a baseball bat because he didn't like the way Torres was cutting the grass on a Jacksonville, FL, property. He hit the landscaper several times in the back, the head and the arm with the bat before another landscape worker, hammer in hand, intervened. — Ron Hall

Would you turn these morons in?

A good friend, the owner of a nice lawn care company in Texas, called me the other day with a lot of bad news. In addition to telling me about a mutual friend being diagnosed with a serious ailment, he said one of his techs was treating a lawn and looked over to an adjacent property and saw a black lab that had apparently died of the heat and lack of water. The unfortunate animal had wrapped it's chain around a pole where it expired.

In a separate incident recently a Philadelphia landscaper made a surprising discovery, a row of flower pots on Germantown Avenue, each containing a nice healthy marijuana plant.

In both instances authorities were notified? Would you have reacted similarly? — Ron Hall

The real champion please speak up

The 2-year extension of the H2B seasonal immigrant guest worker program expires Sept. 30. And everybody - I mean everybody - is strangely quiet about getting a new extension signed into law.

Ok, so I'll give it a shot. I'm saying 50-50 that a new 2- or 3-year extension of the so-called Save Our Small and Seasonal Business Act will be passed. If so, it will almost certainly ride on the back of an appropriations bill. . .

The Act widens the pool of seasonal immigrant workers for U.S. employers by allowing workers who have received H2B visas any of the previous three years to get them again, which is a good thing for the landscape industry, which employs lots of cheap labor.

This past spring it seemed that anybody with a connection to the Act that Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D - MD) brought before Congress was chirping like crazy, either seeking industry support for the measure or, more accurately, positioning themselves (or their organization) as the Act's true champions.

Three groups are working for passage of the Act, but how cooperatively is anybody's guess in light of the ongoing silence - the Washington D.C.-area-based Don Mooers/Hank Lavery faction, the Federation of Employers and Workers of America (a non-profit that has as its president one of the biggest and most assuredly for-profit H2B labor processors in the business) and the Professional Landcare Network.

Assuming the Act finally passes, who will send out the news release claiming to be the industry's champion in assuring a continuing stream of guest workers? — Ron Hall

Lawn care's founder a woman?

Elizabeth Senske, 87, died last week. Who's Elizabeth Senske you ask? She, along with Bill her husband of 65 years, founded what may have been the first professional lawn spray company in the United States. In 1947, shortly afer moving to Spokane, WA, the couple began Senske Lawn & Tree Company.

In the 1950s she and Bill took the state pesticide licensing test and she became the first woman in the state to become a licensed applicator although, as it turned out, she never had the pleasure of treating a property. Bill handled those chores while she handled the shop — keeping the books, answering customers questions and staying in touch with Washington State University on technical matters and updates.

Several decades ago the couple sold the business to Chris, one of their five children. Chris Senske was an active board member of Professional Lawn Care Association of America (PLCAA) in the 1990s.

Hopefully the link for the informative article about Elizabeth Senske that appeared in the Spokane Review newspaper is still alive. Click on the headline for the article. — Ron Hall

It's time to cut the crap

Dog poop. I hate dog poop. I hate walking a dog - in this case my son's 14-year-old beagle, Sparky - and having to pick up its poop. My son Jason, who wouldn't part with Sparky for a new GMC pickup, is living in an apartrment while he works in our area this sxummer. The landlord doesn't allow pets in his apartment, so we agreed to board the dog until Jason and Sparky return to their Florida home in October.
Hurray up October!
It's not that the wife, Vicky, and I don't like Sparky, we do. He's a good dog, although outrageously lazy, sometimes grumpy and, given the opportunity, will do those gross things that dogs do. But we dread the walks with Sparky who, instead of doing his business, in an alley or at a vacant lot, can always be counted on to squat on a pristine lawn, either on a busy street corner or, worse yet, while the homeowners are dining or relaxing on their front porch.
Then it's time to whip out the BP, the term the wife now uses, thinking it sounds a lot nicer than poopy bag.
After much experimentation with different pickup techniques, I realized that simple is best when performing this task. So I use Kroger shopping bags for PBs, the plastic variety of course. They're small enough to stick in your pocket when you leave the house, and you can easily tie a knot in them once you've picked up the prize.
Well, not only do I hate picking the stuff up, I hate it when other people don't, which leads me the American Pet Products Association's claim that 40% of all dog owners do not pick up after them. And since there are 74 million dogs in the United States, that's a lot of crap, which is kind of scary. For example, the City of Austin Watershed Protection and Development Review says that about 1,327 lbs. of dog waste end up in its Town Lake watershed area every day.
OK, so where am I going with all of this?
Now, you can fight back and have some fun too. Check out the Web site www.CutTheCrap.com by clicking on the headline of this article and you'll see something that might make a great giveaway to those special customers whose properties get bombarded (you know what I mean) from time to time.

Turn down the flame . . . please

It's official. The average temperature for the continental United States from January through June 2006 was the warmest first half of any year since records betan in 1895, say scientists at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, NC. June was the second warmest on record.

The average Jun.-June temperature for the contilguuous United States was 51.8 F. or 3.4 F above the 20th century average. Five states (Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and Missoouri) experienced record warmth for the period. No state was near, or cooler, than average.

NOAA also reports that in June, 45% of the contiguuous U.S. was in moderate-to-extreme drought.

For the record — today in Cleveland, OH, (where I am writing this) the temperature is expected to top 95 F., tomorrow 97 F. I can hardly wait to climb into my car this afternoon after it's been sitting on a bubbling blacktop driveway all day. — Ron Hall

The most dangerous thing of all

More than 40,000 people in the U.S. die annually as the result of automobile accidents, yet many us accept bad and aggressive driving like it's a God-given right to endanger not only ourselves but anybody unlikely enough to get in our way.

Traveling our highways is dangerous business for sure, but who would think that you could get run over while operating a riding mower?

Leonardo Torres, 37, a crew leader for EnviroScapes in Nashville, TN, was struck and killed while mowing the grounds at an apartment complex recently. The operator of the car, a 53-year-old female, suffered minor injuries and is suspected of driving while on medication, according to news reports.

Torres worked for the Nashville company for five years. He leaves behind a wife and four children. — Ron Hall

Hazards of landscaping — grenades, lightning

Along with the usual hazards of the job (heat, working with whirring blades and big equipment, low-hanging branches) comes the hazard of digging up a live gernade with the pin pulled. A 23-year-old landscaper, digging outside a building housing an architecture firm in Elm Grove, WI, turned up the gernade, which was buried under about three inches of dirt.

A munitions expert says the gernade was one made after the Vietnam War. A bomb squad took the gernade to a safe place and detonated it, according to reports.

And while we're on the subject of hazards, the Times Ledger newspaper in Queens, NY, reports that a 36-year-old landscaper was struck by lightning in Glen Oaks, NY, July 20 as he was getting off of his mower. Å witness said he was thrown three or four feet from the mower. The landscaper, badly injured and missing several fingers in the mishap, was rushed to a local hospital, the newspaper reports. — Ron Hall

Time to clone Fogarty?

This year's Renewal and Remembrance service project was huge, almost 300 volunteers working in Arlington National and Congressional Cemeteries in Washington D.C. Workers flooded in from just about every Green Industry service sector — landscapers, lawn care folks, irrigation pros, arborists., and lots of their family members, too. Every year more wives and sons and daughters show up to help out.

This was the 10th year for the event, sponsored by the Professional Landcare Network. The first year there were barely enough volunteers to make a softball team, but Phil Fogarty, the energetic lawn care company owner from Cleveland, OH, has never slowed down in his commitment to the one day event. I believe he's served as chairman/organizer of the event from the beginning.

This year the volunteers caught a break. The temperatures "only" climbed to the high 80s although there was plenty of humidity for everyone.

Apart from the usual equipment breakdowns (nothing major) and misplaced pallets of material, the work went smoothly.

Every year the volunteers take on more and more work at the cemeteries. This year, in addition to their usual tasks of liming and fertilizing the turfgrass, crews also braced and cabled some of the larger trees in the cemeteries and others planted what appeared to be 40 or 50 new trees donated by various suppliers and nurseries.

If the event gets any bigger, PLANET will have to clone Fogarty. It's going to take at least two of him to manage the big production.

One last comment, the presentation by ANLA's Bob Dolibois to get the workers in the right frame of mind before embarking on the day was pretty darn special. If I can get a copy from him I will post it here.  — Ron Hall

They want their MTV . . .erhh, make that pesticides

Now that Canada's Quebec Province has all but made the possession and use of lawn chemicals a capital offense (ok, so I'm exaggerating a bit), homeowners there have been heading to nearby Ontario Province to stock up on bug and weed killers. Government officials say there's no way to combat this heinous activity, and they're worried that stockpiles of what Quebec as has branded as lawn WMDs will fall into the hands of the wrong people — people that like attractive lawns and gardens. Now this is news —law-breaking lawn lovers are making desperate shopping forays into Ontario lawn & garden stores. — Ron Hall

Seed prices going up

If buy perennial ryegrass or turf-type tall fescue seed, expect to pay more this year, as much as 20% more for perennial rye and the price of tall fescue is expected to be about 15% higher. Demand for seed was high this past spring and this year's crops are average, reports TMI Times, the weekly newsletter coming from Turf Merchants in the heart if Oregon's seed production region in the Willamette Valley. — Ron Hall

Time to shrink your routes?

Bombs. Rockets. Air strikes. There's nothing more predictable than people killing each other in the Middle East. With the price of a barrel of crude oil topping $78 in reaction to the escalating violence, who isn't expecting the price of gasoline and diesel to break the $3-per-gallon barrier.

If you would have asked me a couple of years ago how Joe Citizen would react to $3 a gallon gasoline, I would have bet the farm they would have kicked up quite a huge fuss. . .then cut back on driving.

Wrong.

And wrong.

Even so, higher fuel costs are squeezing everybody, and the smart folks with lawn care and landscape maintenance businesses are weeding out unprofitable clients, including those that require too much drive time to service.

Brian Leu, who runs Perfection Lawn Management, near Wichita, KS, says it costs him $115 every two days to fuel his truck and mower. He has 30 clients but says he's shrinking his routes to stay profitable.

Read more about Brian by clicking on the headline above. -- Ron Hall

The LM 100 — Tell us what you really think

We get so many phone calls and e-mails about our annual LM 100 list. Some are good, some are bad and some are downright ugly. Seems there are some sharp opinions out there about the benchmarks that make a company a "good" company. We're not taking sides. Trust us, we know first hand that revenue is not the only indicator of a good company, and that plenty of giant companies aren't great, while plenty of smaller companies could use a boost.

But our list is popular. We get more positive comments than negative ones, which is a good message to us that the list needs to be here. But smaller companies, keep an eye on LM's pages: We've got lots of special articles planned just for you.

In the meantime, check out this year's list at www.landscapemanagement.net and let us know your side of the matter by posting a comment here on our blog.
--Stephanie Ricca

Landscaper says "yabba dabba do"

Carey Dix, owner of Dix Landscaping, Jupiter, FL, was reunited with his 10-foot statue of Yogi Bear this past week. It seems that someone "borrowed" Yogi for a beer party on a nearby sandbar over the July 4th holiday weekend. Yogi, who had standing outside Dix's business with a "Welcome to Jupiter" sign in one hand and an American flag in the other, mysteriously turned up at a local marina a week after he disappeared.

The returning Yogi sported a couple of new holes and contained six empty beer bottles., reported a local newspaper. — Ron Hall

Some good press for David J. Frank

David J. Frank jumped into the Green Industry as a 10-year-old with a gardening service on the east side of Milwaukee. In 1973 he moved his operation a short drive west to Germantown where property was less expensive. Good move David Frank. Thirty three years later he's running a $25 million landscape company and developing a 140-acre parcel of land in Washington County, WI. A plant nursery takes up 110 acres, and he's also putting up a new 12,000 sq. ft. storage facility and a 2,000 sq. ft. carpentry shop.

Frank says he's been successful because of the great people that stayed with his operation.

Greater Milwaukee Today picked up a nice article about Frank that appeared in the West Bend Daily newspaper on July 6. Click on the headline to read the article or you cut and paste the following Web site for the same article. Whichever is easier for you. http://www.gmtoday.com/news/local_stories/2006/July_06/07062006_12.asp. — Ron Hall

Post 4th exciting news

The fireworks are over, the barbeque grill is getting a much needed rest and the recycle container is filled with beer bottles (empty of course).

Here's some news that will keep the July 4th weekend excitement going.

(OK, maybe that's a bit over the top. But maybe you can use this next bit of information to win a bar bet, assuming the guy on the stool next to yours doesn't punch you in the eye for being a wise guy or something.)

Did you know that Minnesota is the fourth leading producer of turfgrass seed. The State has its own "grass belt" that extends across two counties — Lake of the Woods and Roseau. Minnesota's 22,000 acres produced 5.4 million lbs. of Kentucky bluegrass seed in 2002. In recent years farmers have increased production of perennial ryegrass seed, as well.

Only the states of Washington, Oregon and Idaho produce for seed, reported the Duluth Superior News.

See what you miss when you ignore this blog. — Ron Hall

Hey, what's up with Mikulski's amendment?

Please, somebody speak up and let us know what's going on with the 3-year extension to the Save Our Small and Seasonal Businesses Act.

U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) introduced the extension to Congress this past February and everybody got excited. In fact, many of us drafted letters and sent emails to Washington D.C., as the Senate yammered about immigration reform through most of April.

The extension, as far as we can determine, remains a part of the Senate's version of the immigration reform bill, which is about as likely as get through the House and approved as I am of winning the Mega Millions lottery.

Mikulski, indeed the entire group that was pushing for the extension that would allow returning H-2B workers not to be counted against the annual cap of 66,000 visas, is too quiet on the issue. I guess they're figuring everybody in the landscape business is too busy right now to notice.

Hey folks, if something doesn't happen with Mikulski's extension (the act she sponsored several years ago to expand the number of H-2 workers expires Sept. 30), a lot of landscape company owners are going to be SOL come next spring.

Somebody speak up and tell us everything is cool with the extension and that you've got a plan and that something is going to happen with it before Sept. 30. Why so mum? — Ron Hall

GIE-OPEI Trade Show merger a done deal

This year's Green Industry Expo, the landscape trade show founded in 1990, will be the last GIE. At least as we've come to know it over the past 16 years. The GIE started as a collaborative effort among three, and then two associations - the Professional Grounds Management Society (PGMS), the Professional Lawn Care Network (PLCAA) and the Associated Landscape Contractors of America (ALCA). PLCAA and ALCA merged in 2005 to form the Professional Landcare Network (PLANET).

The legacy associations built their educational programs around the trade show.

This year's GIE will be held in Columbus, OH, the first week of November. The Outdoor Power Equipment Institute's EXPO, an annual event in Louisville, KY, takes place a month earlier.

We reported in October '05 that folks from PGMS and PLANET were strolling the show floor and outdoor exhibits at the OPEI Expo 2005, mostly an equipment trade show. It was the first time most of them had ever set foot at the Expo. They were scoping out an impending marriage.

While the GIE has always been touted as "the national" trade show for the Green Industry, it rarely strayed west of St. Louis. Other factors that made the decision easier to make were the expanded and renovated facilities at the Louisville Convention Center and the huge outdoor demo area at the Center. Two years ago the OPEI moved the date of its Expo from the blistering heat and humidity of July to October, just a couple of weeks earlier than the GIE.

The EXPO has, for all of its 24-year history, been a dealer show and an iron show.

It will be interesting to see how the major suppliers of chemical products -fertilizers, pest controls, etc. - embrace the merged trade show in L'ville. - Ron Hall

Talk about a hot foot

Some of the methods that Mark Hecker used to kill weeds at the pesticide-free park in Lawrence, KS, have included a machine known as a Flamer that burns weeds in the cracks of sidewalks and a horticultural vinegar. The Flamer discolored the concrete, which stayed hot for another 15 or so minutes. The vinegar killed the tops of the weeds, but they returned in a couple of weeks, he said.

Hecker, the parks and recreation superintendent there, says you don't need pesticides to maintain a nice, green city park — not if you can muster a lot of old-fashioned elbow grease. Hecker's department has been maintaining one of the city's nicer parks without pesticides thanks to a lot of hand-weeding by employees and park volunteers.

It's not likely the program will expand much unless a lot more volunteers step forward, though.

"With just doing the one park, it hasn't been that difficult to juggle our staff around and get done what we need to do," he was quoted in the local newspaper. "But it would be a much bigger concern if you did it systemwide."

In this case that would mean 52 city parks, requiring perhaps hiring four additional crews of three people each. The crews would also need trucks and equipment. And, of course, there's the matter of weed control in 200 landscaped flower beds located in parks throughout the city.

At least from this corner it would seem that the parks budget AND the environment come out losers if the city implimented a pesticide-free approach in all of its parks. In other words — more workers, more trucks, more energy used, more vehicle emissions, etc.

Click on the headline or visit for the article in the Lawrence Journal-World at http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2006/jun/18/pesticidefree_park_difficult_doable/?city_local. — Ron Hall

Big Box mishandles pesticides; pays big fine

The Home Depot will pay a $425,000 fine and is changing the way it handles pesticides and fertilizers after being cited by the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, reported the Hartford Courant newspaper. The penalty includes a civil penalty of $99,000 and $326,000 that will go to a fund to educate other retailers in Connecticut about the proper handling and storage of hazardous materials.

The home retailing giant says it's changing the way it handles pesticides and fertilizers. To find out more, click on the headline of this article or visit the Courant's Web site at www.courant.com/business/hc-depot0615.artjun15,0,118447.story?coll=hc-headlines-business. — Ron Hall

A really nice gesture

The Airforce Times magazine carried a recent article about Project Evergreen's "GreenCare for Troops — Serving You While You Serve Us" program, which began May 22. In the program, lawn care companies provide free services to families of service members who deploy to the Middle East.

Katherine Brandenburg of Swanson Russell in Lincoln, NB, has been doing a great job of getting the word out. Nice going Katherine.

More than 1,000 lawn care companies signed up within the first month. (That number reflects branch locations of national companies, too.) So far about 100 families are taking advantage of the offer. You can bet the number will grow as word gets out. The magazine provided a link to the Project Evergreen Web site — www.projectevergreen — where companies and families can sign up. — Ron Hall

O.J. and seed field days

Can it be 12 years and a day since the bodies of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were found in the courtyard of Nicole's condo in Brentwood. The murders initiated one of the most bizarre chapters in U.S. legal history, the O.J. Simpson trial.

It doesn't seem that long ago (6/17/94 to be exact) that colleague Bob Mierow and I were driving down I-5 in Oregon on our way to turfgrass field trials when the radio in Bob's old Volvo crackled with a second-by-second account of O.J., in a Ford Bronco driven by friend A.C. Cowlings, being tailed by dozens of police. The chase that unfolded in slow motion and ended in O.J.'s arrest, even to this day seems almost surreal.

I recall that afternoon, and watching the entire episode rebroadcast on network television later that evening, whenever the turfseed companies in the Pacific Northwest invite us for a June visit.

If you're interested in refreshing your memory of that strange O.J. experience, visit http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/Simpson/Simpsonchron.html or click on the headline above. — Ron Hall

Wow, this is brazen

Even with security at maximum level because of a visit by President Bush earlier this week, someone drove off with landscaper Lee Helmberger's pickup and trailer, which contained three mowers and other maintenance equipment. And they did it in broad daylight, reports the the Omaha, NB, NBC affiliate, Channel 6.

Helmberger told Channel 6 that he parked the truck and trailer at the Lewis & Clark Landing at the riverfront and when he returned they were gone. He says they were taken between 1 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. at a time when the area that was being patrolled by Secret Service and police preparing for George W.'s arrival. — Ron Hall

Florida city 'certifying' lawn service companies

Environmental stewardship is becoming a huge issue in the landscape industry. It will grow. All of us are going to have to realize this. Yes, I know that what we do enhances the urban environments that receive our services. But we live within a bigger world than just the lawns we treat or the properties we mow. That's the one we must protect (and be recognized for protecting) while we provide our services.

With that said . . . the Florida Gulf Coast city of Naples passed a law Wednesday, June 7. The council there agreed that all professional landscape companies providing services within city limits there to have at least one supervisor and at least 10 percent of their workers certified by the city by Sept. 30, 2007. The measure also requires companies that work as contractors for the city certify at least 10 percent of their workers within six months of entering into a contract with Naples, and certify at least 50 percent of their workers within a year of that date, reports the Naples Daily News newspaper.

Six hours of study on a range of subjects, including the effect of chemicals in the environment, proper plant selection, etc. will be required to earn a city certification, which can be renewed annually by taking more courses, says the newspaper.

The purpose of the law is to reduce the amount of pesticides and fertilizers that end up in ditches and canals that flow into Naples Bay and into the Gulf of Mexico.

This program sounds reasonable even with the modest administrative fee attached to it.

To see the Naples Daily News article visit http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2006/jun/08/naples_now_requires_landscapers_be_certified/?local_news — Ron Hall

It's been dry in merry old England

One government agency in England recently said that, per head, there is more water in some parts of Sudan than there is in London. Parts of England are suffering through their driest 18 months in a 70-year spell. Water restrictions have popped up all over the country, with many gardeners forbidden from turning on their garden hoses, a huge inconvenience for flower-loving Brits.

Not all the news resulting from the drought bad, however. Sales of drought-tolerant plants and rain catchment systems are brisk. And well drillers are as busy as they want to be.

The last time it was this dry for this long in England was 1932-1934, but the island nation didn't get much rain in 1976 either, reported The Christian Science Monitor in a recent article. — Ron Hall

Just how many would show up?

Some big numbers are being thrown around about how many legal immigrants might be coming to the United States and becoming red-blooded Americans (just like the rest of us) if the Senate's immigration bill (S. 2611) becomes law.

Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, says that if the bill became law we could expect 50 to 60 million new legal immigrants to the United States over the next 20 years. He says if the bill hadn't been amended in its final hours of debate as many as 103 million could have been allowed.

There are too many "ifs" in this equation to start counting now though.

Chances that the House, which has a bill of its own, will adopt the "guest worker" provisions in the Senate bill are less than slim. But something's going to happen in regards to immigration reform someday; you can bet on that. But it will be after the midterm elections. This Congress isn't going to do a darn thing that might rile constituents until after the dust of the election clears.

Meanwhile, members of the Utah National Guard, on George W.'s orders, headed to the U.S. Mexican border to start building fences, installing lights and whatever else is necessary to keep illegals from heading into the desert on their way to U.S. jobs and earning Yankee dollars. Today, the temperature is expected to be between 105 and 110 degrees F. in the southern Arizona desert. — Ron Hall

Vicious baby groundhog attacks landscaper

An English springer spaniel named Wanda saved a female landscaper from a painful ordeal the last week of May. According to a report in the Weston Forum (CT) newspaper, the landscaper (unnamed in the article) was working in the backyard of a client's property when she felt scratching on the back of one of her pant legs. Looking down she saw an immature groundhog clinging to and trying to nibble on her leg. The landscaper screamed and Wanda, napping nearby, sprang up, leaped on the woodchuck and shook it to death.

Tests confirmed the groundhog had rabbies. The landscaper got a rabies booster shot and Wanda was confined to the family home for 45 days to make sure she hadn't contracted the disease in her defense of the landscaper.

Read all the gory details at www.acorn-online.com/news/publish/article_6998.shtml, — Ron Hall

Got a job you wouldn't do?

In a refreshingly lighthearted look at the current comprehensive immigration reform debate, Santa Monica Mirror writer Steve Stajich writes a column this week on "Jobs This American Won't Do." It's funny, not political, and it'll make you mentally create your own list of "thanks, but no thanks" jobs. Mashed potato scooper? Thanks, but uh ... no.

Check it out here, from the Santa Monica Mirror, May 25-31, 2006, edition.

--Stephanie Ricca, managing editor

Tragedy shows even long-timers need safety reminders

Two recent incidents involving landscape workers underscore the continuing need for safety reminders. This is true even among veteran landscapers.

Jesus Samaguey, 55, died when the mower he was operating in Dublin, CA, started sliding on wet grass on a steep incline and turned over on him just before noon May 17. The incident is under investigation by California Division of Occupational Safety and Health.

In Riverdale, NJ, Joseph Schwarz, miraculously survived after being jolted and receiving burns to his head, hands and stomach after coming in contact with a power line. Schwartz, an experienced arborist, was in an elevated bucket trimming branches when the top of his head struck the power line. Witnesses said they saw three flashes of electricity pass through his body before Schwarz slumped over unconscious in the bucket, according reports in the local press. — Ron Hall

We're not there yet but . . .

We have the means to reduce illegal immigration using technology. Already some folks are talking about bio-metric identification cards. There are even more sophisticated ways to track things, including people.

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is here. Most of us don't know much about it. As we learn more about it we will be astonished and, perhaps, frightened by the many ways it will be used.

RFID tags consist of a flat antenna and an embedded chip that can be as small as a grain of sand. The tags work in conjunction with a reader that emits radio waves as it searches for tags. Once the tag is within reading distance (it varies but can be as far away as 40 feet or more), it picks up the unique information on the tag.

The technology is, in a sense, this generation’s version of a bar code, but more sophisticated and intrusive. And with the ability to deliver a lot more unique information.

To date, RFID is tracking pallets of goods as they’re shipped around the world, and even individual items within retail stores. But the technology is not confined to hard goods. Club goers in some European cities are embracing subcutaneous chips, which allow them to party to their hearts’ content without the need of carrying a wallet or purse. Apparently their identification, which is matched to the club record of their credit card informaiton, can be pulled from the chip. Pets are getting the chip too. If Fido wanders off, all a dog warden has to do is pass a reader over him to find out where he belongs.

Is implanting humans with RFID— guest workers, tourists, felons, sex offenders, whatever — a good idea? The idea scares me to death. But the technology to track people is here . . . and you can bet somebody somewhere is considering implementing it in some form. — Ron Hall

Why all the crime?

You've heard me mention Google alerts before: The system at google.com where you can set up news alerts on specific topics to be delivered to your e-mail inbox every day. One of my key words is "landscaper" and in the last few weeks, every Google alert for that topic has returned a list of headlines from news sources all over the country large and small linking landscapers with one crime after another: petty theft, welching out of contracts, you name it.

"News" often means "bad news," and we hear a lot about why mainstream TV news shows don't play enough of the good news. Is this a similar situation? I can count on one hand the number of "good" landscaper stories that have come across my Google alert wire in the past few weeks. Makes me think that it wouldn't hurt to spend a little time spreading the good news about your own company in your local papers.
--Stephanie Ricca

Goofy journalism — you be the judge

This morning's Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper carried a front page article with these "facts" (among others) regarding lawn care.

7 million — approximate number of birds that die each year as a result of lawn-care pesticides

17 million — gallons of gasoline spilled by Americans every summer in the process of refueling their lawn mowers, leaf blowers and other gardening equipment, "or about 50 percent more oil than marred the Alaskan coast during the notorious Exxon Valdez disaster."

Who actually goes out and counts dead birds and then figures out what kills them? As for the number of gallons of gasoline being spilled, who's wasting gasoline at today's prices? This newspaper article reads like something you would see on a tabloid as you're waiting to pay for your bread and milk at the grocery checkout.

The reporter Michael K. McIntyre culled the "facts" came from a recent book by a Ted Steinberg, an environmental historian at Case Western Reserve University here in Cleveland. Steinberg's been getting a lot of positive press with his book that bashes America's so-called "obsession" with lawns.

Don't know what it is about a pretty green lawn that sets some people off. Criticizing and condemning lawns and lawn care seems to have become an obsession with them. — Ron Hall

TruGreen invades the UK

TruGreen is now in UK in a big way with 60 lawn care franchises and many more on the way. There are an estimated 20 million gardens in the UK, but lawns there are much smaller than lawns in the United States. The TG franchise owners use small vans to deliver their lawn care services. The model for the franchise owners is to move from owner/operator to four or five service delivery techs and vans. TruGreen, a division of ServiceMaster, began selling lawn care franchises in the UK in 2003, and is making eager lawn pros from many different backgrounds. They pay about 25,000 pounds (which is about $50,000 or $55,000 U.S. dollars I think) to get their franchise and training.

Another big lawn care franchise operation in the UK is a company called Green Thumb. I'll fill you in about them as I find out more. — Ron Hall

Stupid mower tricks

About 80,000 people suffer lawn mower-related injuries annually in the United States. The most common types are objects being flung out by the blades and stiking somebody, serious cuts, sliced off toes, etc.

A buddy of mine, back about 15 years ago, while maintaining an apartment complex, backed a riding mower over his two-year-old son. I read a nice article about the kid a few years ago when he was a high schooler, how he had discarded his prosthetic leg and become a pretty good interscholastic swimmer. No kidding. Bet he would have been a lot better swimmer had his dad been more careful.

I can't tell you how often I see dads mowing their lawns with a tiny junior or sis on their laps. Makes me shiver to think about what could happen. Also reminds me when I allowed my three-year-old son to climb aboard the new pony my dad, his grandfather, had just gotten him. Whammo, off it went, right into a busy street with my son clinging to its back.

What was I thinking?

That's the point — I wasn't thinking. This brings me to a recent article in the local newspaper about another braniac on a mower. It seems a guy in small Vermilion, OH, after having a few too many beers, hopped aboard his landlord's riding mower and headed to the drugstore about a mile away. When the police nabbed him and charged him with OVI, operating a vehicle under the influence, he responded: "If I knew that was the law, I would have walked."

Judges in Ohio interpret the word "vehicle" to mean just about anything with wheels on it, including roller blades and skateboards.

But even if you didn't have a beer buzz on, isn't a riding mower a strange way to get to a drug store? The pros know that a mower is a money-making tool and not a toy or a vehicle, but even they sometimes get careless. When they do, sometimes they pay dearly. — Ron Hall

We didn't make this up

The folks in London, Ontario, Canada, have been in a furious debate concening the use of lawn care chemicals. Some people want to ban their use and many people do not. Caught in the middle is the city council. This same scenario has played ou all over Canada these past few years and just when you thought you had heard about every reason there could be for banning lawn care chemicals somebody comes up with another.

Louis Guillette, a zoologist and an associate dean at the University of Florida, said that he wouldn't use pesticides on his lawn because studies have shown that animals, including humans, suffer unwanted affects to their reproductive organs when exposed to environmental contaminants such as pesticides. One of the affects is decreased penis size. Guillette made this and more detailed comments on the subject during a recent speaking engaggement at the University of Western Ontario, which is in London. — Ron Hall

Check it out: "Pesticides may affect penis size," The London Free Press, April 29, 2006