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