Tools every homeowner needs

6^th Speech to Networking Toastmasters, 6/24/2013

Good morning, Toastmasters and Honored Guests:

I come dressed for work, with a batch of tools to show you, tools that every homeowner would find very handy to have around, regardless of whether or not you do your own gardening, or hire help.  If you hire help that has tools, it is very handy for the help to have extra tools available on occasion. 

More important, if you know what you need to have done, and have the tools to do it, you can hire workers without truck or tools for as little as $10 per hour, rather than $15 for those who have tools, and teach them how to garden right from the start.  As a garden coach I can help you figure out exactly what you need to have done, and you can tell your helpers exactly how to do it, or have me explain it for you.

I’ll start with a little gem that everyone should own, a battery powered surface sweeper.  It’s light, easy, and so quiet you don’t even need earplugs.  (demonstrate) Even if you have a gardener with this tool, having two means having twice the sweeping time; they only work about 15-20 minutes to a charge.  With it, and maybe some extra batteries, you can easily keep your pavements and paths clean between your gardener’s visits.  There are several kinds, some with smaller and more powerful batteries.  They run about $50-$98.

Another handy tool to have around between visits by your gardener is a web duster.  I have this one on a 16’ extendable pole to get webs up to the second story.  Cobweb spiders are the homeless tramps of the spider world; they don’t clean or repair their dwellings; they camp.  When a web gets dirty, visible, and therefore useless, they move on and build another one, leaving you to clean up.  It pays to hit every nook and cranny, even if you don’t see webs; the spider is in the web you don’t see yet.

These can even be operated without gloves, which is why I bring up gloves second.  You should have some to handle plants from your garden, or soil, or tools, all of which can be hard on hands.  These nitrile gloves are great because you can actually feel the textural differences of different kinds of plants; no seams; very comfortable, though a bit sweaty.  In winter, you can wear two sizes, for instance a small in a medium, and they keep your hands surprisingly warm, even when wet.

To carry gloves, tools, trash and small weeds, a small tool belt is just the thing.  This is about the smallest one Diamond sells, and I love all four pockets, the biggest one for trash.

One tool my belt cannot be without is Kengyu pruning scissors.  Once it was pruners, but these bonsai scissors can cut anything pruners can in smaller spaces. They can also be used for weeding, by cutting annuals like crab grass under the crown when they are blooming; at that stage, they have no food in their roots and will die. 

Loppers come next in the line of cutters, and this model of lopper, Fiskar’s 18” gear-action lopper, can cut through nearly anything they can get around, thanks the extra leverage from this gear action.  The gear makes it possible to get the same leverage as a much longer handle, but with the short handles, you can work in tighter spaces.   They have become surprisingly hard to find; I order them these days from Amazon.com.

Of course you should have a good, solid wheel barrow, a round shovel; a square shovel; and a garden rake, the solid, heavy kind of rake.  But rather than a leaf rake, you should have a folding rake like this.  It expands out for leaf cleanup, but narrows down to get in tight spaces and is more rigid when narrowed, so you can move gravel and dirt with it, often taking the place of a hard rake.   Thanks to this, I rarely use the heavy garden rake.

This rake works well with a hula hoe to maintain light gravel paths.  All path mulches eventually become seed beds, including gravel.  But 4 x 8 sand, actually a light, rounded gravel, can be worked with a hula hoe, cutting off and pulling small weeds, which can be gathered with a rake and discarded. 

The last tool is one you might find surprising: wide polyester cloth.  I buy it at Wal-Mart in the remnant rack for $1 or $2 a yard.  The width is important to cover a truck bed.  It can be used to line a truck for carrying loads of material; it keeps stuff from leaking out of the truck, and makes it easy to pull out the last of the load.  The same allows easy dumping of clippings from a truck.  A smaller cloth can be used to cover a load for hauling, and then cover the ground behind the truck to catch the slop during unloading.  A smaller cloth still can line a wheelbarrow so you can easily pick up clippings and dump them in a truck, or to catch dirt during digging operations, so it can all go back in the hole.

If you own a home with a yard, you should have the tools to work in that yard, regardless of whether you have someone else do the yard work.  At the very least, you should be able to blow away the debris and sweep away the cobwebs.

I yield the floor to the Toastmaster.

Disorderly Property is Dangerous

5^th Speech to Networking Toastmasters, 6/3/2013

Good morning, Toastmasters and Honored Guests:

Grants Pass’ top stated goal has long been, “to be a city that looks safe and is safe.”  What’s wrong with that goal?

I’ll tell you what’s wrong; that it’s only a goal.  That our city has been taking no real steps to attain it.

What makes a city look safe?  I submit that it is cleanliness and order: clean streets, well kept properties; no litter; no graffiti.  Order is intimidating to the disorderly and lawless, comforting to the orderly and law abiding.

Weeds, litter and filthy pavements, on the other hand, are encouraging to low life and disturbing to respectable folks.  Disorderly property is worse than bad advertising; it is downright dangerous.  That’s why we have property nuisance codes.

In 1982, James Q. Wilson wrote an article for Atlantic Monthly about the disorder that encourages crime.  He called it, “BrokenWindows.”   It has lent its name to a policing philosophy which holds that, if we take care of disorderly nuisances like broken windows, major crimes will be reduced.  “Take care of the little things,” they say, “and the big things take care of themselves.”  It has worked in New York and Cincinnati; it can work in Grants Pass.

He said that the things that aggravate us the most are not major crimes, which rarely happen to us, but constant nuisances imposed on us by thoughtless others, like barking dogs, litter and weeds—except that Wilson wrote about broken windows, panhandlers and prostitutes, being a city boy.  Nuisance codes were written to keep the peace, by having our public nags, our city police, remind us to love one another so we don’t drive each other nuts. 

Broken windows are several steps down the road to disorder.  Disorder starts with weeds gone to seed, and tree trash left rotting on pavements.  “Seedy” is a word that denotes neglect in property or dress.  Litter soon follows, as people add their ugly to ugliness.  As gangsters get comfortable, they start tagging their territories.  Kids looking for bad fun start breaking windows and entering abandoned buildings, like the Dimmick hospital.

Disorderly vagrants throw litter around weedy places to see if it gets old, or gets picked up.  Old litter means that a place is safe to camp in; no one cares, and good people stay away.  It marks their territories. 

Ownership is control, and cleanliness also marks territory; the territory of the law abiding and orderly.  The way to take control of your city is to clean it up and keep it clean, and thereby make it look safe, so it will be safe.

Truly, it is kinder to warn one to clean up a bit of litter and a few weeds, than to wait until it ripens into a major safety hazard that is a huge, expensive hassle to clean up!  But the latter is what our city has been doing for some time, and it shows.   

After all, the city makes no money off of warning people to clean up nuisances.  But it can abate safety hazards for 10% over cost.  You see the occasional “notice of violation” sign on selected neglected properties this time of year.  

But since nuisance codes are not enforced, more safety hazards ripen than our code enforcers can harvest.   Thus we had a forest fire, complete with water drops, right off 7^th Street two years ago, that started in the weeds behind Burger King’s lot and roared up a hill into tall pines.

In 2006, short-time-City-Manager David Frasher created a Code Enforcement Office, and forbade police or firemen to enforce our codes.  He apparently read our City Charter, which mandates enforcement of all city ordinances.  It seems that he started Code Enforcement to create the appearance of enforcing city codes while making it the place where property nuisance complaints go to die. 

He soon renamed them “Community Service Officers” or CSOs.  They “serve and protect” property slobs, developers, and bankers, not neighbors.  They enforce city codes only by complaint—and then tell the slobs who complained about their property.  I’ve had a couple of neighbors in my face because of them.

It can be a dangerous job to ask a disorderly person to clean up his property or to complain to police about him.  That’s why nuisance codes must be enforced on sight, and all officers trained to spot violations and warn violators.

Right now, our police are citing people for crimes that they should be jailed for, while being forbidden to cite nuisance code violators.  Please ask the Council and Manager to eliminate the Community Service Code Enforcement Office and train all of our police to use their citation power where it will be most effective, to nag our residents and landowners to obey our nuisance codes.  Then we can really be “a city that looks safe and is safe.”

I have started a petition to do just that.  Please sign it after the meeting.

I yield the floor to the Toastmaster.

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener    541-955-9040     rycke@gardener.com

See the services of the Landscape Supervisor at landscape-supervisor.blogspot.com.

How the Landscape Supervisor can serve you

3^rd Speech to Networking Toastmasters, 4/8/2013

Before this speech is over, you will want me to teach your landscape maintenance workers, audit other properties, renovate your landscape, or coach you in gardening.

The best advertising for a brick-and-mortar business is a good-looking property.  Your business will look more prosperous successful, and competent if it is nestled in lovely, well-kept landscaping.  A beautiful shrub border, full of pretty plants, does not invite litter, and is looked at because it is worth looking at.  Beautiful, orderly properties discourage disorderly conduct like litter, because the owners obviously care.  You are also more likely to notice litter as out of place and pick it up, to maintain that beauty.

            The mind loves beauty, ignored mediocrity, and hates ugliness.  The untrained eye avoids ugliness and seeks out beauty as a matter of course.  The trained eye of this professional landscape gardener and any good maintenance worker seeks out ugliness in order to eliminate it, and we criticize where we don’t work.

            Ugliness brings your business either no notice, or criticism.  Neither is good advertising.  Indeed, other advertising may bring customers to your door, but if your property is badly kept, they may turn right around and go someplace they see competence on display.

            Like every other employee, your landscape maintenance contractor needs regular feedback from someone who truly cares about how well he does his work and takes a good look at it.  It’s better yet if that one knows it can be done better and cheaper and can tell him how.

            If you are in any business other than professional gardening, you probably are not the one who can do that.  You have a business to run, and you are not up on the latest natural low-maintenance techniques.  Your landscape maintenance person probably isn’t either.  The Landscape Supervisor, Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener, is at your service.

            If you care about order and beauty and how much you are spending not achieving it, you need someone walking your landscape monthly and reporting to you, one who knows landscape maintenance better than the mow-and-blow guys.

            I can walk your property monthly, write you a report on its problems and their solutions, and go over it with your maintenance person as well if you wish.  I can also suggest improvements that will gradually bring your landscape to real beauty.

           

As the Landscape Auditor, I can give you peace of mind, and solutions.  I can walk any property, with permission if fenced or posted against trespassing, and give you a report on its fire hazard, signs of camping, and weeds both noxious and nuisance, and suggest abatement alternatives.

            For instance, puncture vine, also known as goat head, and tack vine, infests many vacant and commercial properties around this town.  Star thistle, another noxious weed, is rampant on vacant lots.  I know what these and other weeds look like dead or alive, how they spread, and how to get rid of them most efficiently.

            If you are a Realtor, you can offer this service to your buyers for their peace of mind, and to your sellers to make their properties more marketable.  A certificate of good landscape health can give both buyer and seller peace of mind; a bad report along with recommendations to fix the problems can be useful to both.

           

            Who want an ugly yard?  Not even the people who have one.  I can supervise your home gardener, renovate your property, or coach you in gardening your own property.

            To supervise your home gardener, I can visit monthly and look over your yard, giving advice and answering questions.  I can do the same with your gardener, and give you and your gardener a written report.  

            I can do landscape renovation, wherein you have day laborers work under my direction.  Renovation will thereby be done far more quickly than I could do it by myself, and I will get to train the maximum number of new, independent natural gardeners in my art.

            I can coach you to garden more beautifully, naturally, and easily.  I teach my “natural line of motion” design, which creates long, beautiful curves and easy movement through the landscape, as well as teaching easy garden building and maintenance.

            Ask and you shall receive one free audit of the property of your choice, complete with a written report, which I will then go over with you.

            Gardening is easy, if you do it naturally.  With my help, you can retrain the maintenance people you already have working for you, including yourself, and have a property that is orderly, beautiful, healthy, and naturally low-maintenance.

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener    541-955-9040     rycke@gardener.com

Maintenance Gets No Respect

2^nd Speech to Networking Toastmasters, 4/1/2013

Maintenance gets no respect.  On website drop-down lists of occupations, from the IRS to Linked In, there is no listing for gardening or landscape maintenance.  I am the perpetual “Other.”  This goes to show how much the kind of people who create such websites think about property maintenance.

Maintenance isn’t fun or creative to most folks; it is drudgery.  It comes after the excitement of building something new.  It doesn’t directly contribute to making money, so when money gets tight, it is the first thing to be cut.

But it is the last thing that should be cut, and the first thing that should be done.  I have had customers who don’t like me to weed unless they tell me to, because they want me building new beds and planting, and they don’t regard weeds as threatening until they are taking over.  But it is far easier and cheaper to pull a few weeds before they take over, than to ignore them and clean up a major infestation the next year.  Building can wait; maintenance must be done first, lest you build more than you can maintain.

The other day, my apprentice was working and a young man walking by asked him, “What are you doing?”  “Pulling weeds,” he said.  As they walked away, the youngster said to his companion, “I’ve never seen anyone do that before.”

We have developed many labor-saving devices, like weed whackers, riding mowers, herbicide sprays and mulches that make people think that they can get away with not pulling weeds.  And yet, weeds are taking over our town.

It’s because none of these things can replace weeding.  Cutting doesn’t stop weeds from going to seed, it just makes them seed out low.  Riding mowers allow workers to ignore goatheads as they mow, spreading them around and to other properties.  Glyphosate, AKA Roundup, is a heavy fertilizer of annual and broadleaf weeds; it kills one generation and fertilizes the soil for the next.  Spring weeds seed out before they die, not reducing their seed load. 

But weeding is the most expensive part of maintenance, and few commercial crews do it.  I suspect that most maintenance contractors have never actually done the work; they just hire guys off the street, or better yet, the developmentally disabled, and give them minimal training with cutters and herbicide, because they don’t understand or respect their own profession. Their workers care as much as their bosses care, and their bosses care as much as the customer cares.  If they get no criticism from their customer, they slack off and ignore their contract.  They may not even look at the property after they get the contract, leaving it wholly to their crews.

Our Community Corrections work crew bosses mis-train our miscreants, discouraging them from picking up the smallest litter to cover more ground, and not having them weed or pick up litter before weed whacking and mowing.  Many of these go on to work on commercial maintenance crews.

Mexican work crews actually pull weeds and pick up litter, being short and better built for bending.  They also tend to keep the soil bare.  All but a few crews clean up leaves rather than use them for mulch; most mulch with soil-killing fine bark that makes a fine seed bed.

Other people’s servants judge your maintenance further than you may think you are responsible for.  Many customers and maintenance people figure that their responsibility stops at the curb.  Leaves rotting and grass growing in your gutter looks neither professional nor respectable.

But even people who care about such things don’t necessarily think about them, because they sneak up on one.  Beauty attracts the eye; ugliness repels it.  A new landscape gradually become less beautiful and stops attracting notice; as it becomes ugly, the subconscious avoids noticing it at all, especially when the problem is widespread.  It blends in to the general mediocrity, not a good thing for advertising your business.

Grants Pass built a new Public Safety station.  They apparently got a landscape architect to design for low maintenance, with strawberry ground cover in place of lawn.  But they handed the design to an ignorant contractor who used cheap, soil-killing fine bark mulch around the shrubs and Jo Gro on the lawn area.  They then gave it the same maintenance as most other city properties: cleaning up all the oak leaves that would have suppressed weeds; mowing; and not weeding at all.  Their ground-cover lawn became a mowed weed patch, with a few strawberry plants showing the original intent.

The City hires people to supervise their building contractors, but not their landscape maintenance contractors.  Those are allowed to ignore their contracts and do lousy work, because the city has failed to take landscape maintenance seriously as a profession or as a necessity.  If you don’t respect the necessity for maintenance and the skills it requires, your maintenance servants won’t respect you, your property, or their contract.

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener    541-955-9040     rycke@gardener.com