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