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Have a dandy lawn,  October 15, 2008   
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Tom's Blog on lawn care and some other things.
Tom Perkes is Senske's corporate and marketing communications manager. He earned his Bachelor's Degree in business and Spanish while playing NCAA-level basketball at Albertson's College in Caldwell, Idaho and recevied his MBA from the University of Worcester in England.  Tom has worked in the green industry since 1998. He is married with two small children.
 
Do you have a question or comment for Tom about lawn care, pest control, or Senske in general?  Tom will do his best to answer in a future blog post.

Can't get enough Tom?  Neither can we.  Be sure to read through the back issues in the archives.
   
 
Fall Yard Cleanup - Yuck!
October 13, 2008  rss feed

The air outside is crisp, the nights are cool, and the leaves are changing colors. It all points towards fall. There are a few good things about this time of year, high school football, Halloween, college football, fantastic sceneries, and pro football; pretty much my favorite things. But with fall also comes one of my least favorite things, the fall clean-up.

That’s my mom on a Saturday. Her only war was against my <br/>dreams of eating sugary breakfast cereals and enjoying my day off.
That’s my mom on a Saturday. Her only war was against my
dreams of eating sugary breakfast cereals and enjoying my day off.
My hatred for the fall clean-up began as a young boy. You have to understand where a young kid is coming from. When fall and all the great football return each year, what comes trotting in right with it? Kind of like, you know the not hot girl that the hot girls would bring to the party? Yeah, I’m talking about school. With all the good of fall, came the not so hot school. So as a young kid I would go to school and do all of my learning, and would be completely worn out by Friday, in hind sight elementary school was fairly easy and I shouldn’t have complained. I would look forward to my weekend as an opportunity to rise early and watch cartoons, while eating large amounts of highly insugarated cereal. (Before you go huh on “insugarated” it isn’t a word I made it up. It means to be injected with large amounts of sugar, quantities that would feed third world countries, but were only barely sufficient to feed a 7 year old.) Only to be thwarted by my mom, who wouldn’t buy the cereal
A Saturday at my house looked like, notice there are <br/>children raking and no dad? He’s watching football.
A Saturday at my house looked like, notice there are
children raking and no dad? He’s watching football.
I requested, and my dad who thought all Saturdays were created for his children to do yard work. Saturdays would then drag on for what felt like eternity. It wasn’t the first time my dad thwarted my dreams, and certainly wasn’t the last, but it was the most painful because it occurred weekly during the fall. There was so much to do, rake leaves, prune plants and trees, prep irrigation systems for the winter, get fire wood, and whatever other mundane Saturday ruining task he could invent. I can remember a Saturday where all I did was pick up rocks out of the garden. Was he serious? Rocks? It apparently helped the garden grow better the next spring, which was the same garden that thwarted my Saturday plans during the spring.

As a 7 year old all I wanted was Saturday to be a special day, where I didn’t have to worry about the mundane tasks of yard work. Fast forward 21 years, now I’m a 28 year old who wants Saturdays to be special. I don’t want to have to worry about mundane fall tasks like trimming and sprinkler blowouts. I’m certain that you don’t want the hassle either. I’m a dad, and I spend the majority of the time my children are awake outside of the home. So Saturday is the best time to be with them, not working in the yard, but quality time playing soccer or reading books. Have Senske come and do your sprinkler blowout and your tree trimming and make Saturdays special again. I tell you what, if you sign up for your blowout (or any of our web specials) and enter "blog" in the promotional code when you check out, you’ll save $5 off the purchase price. We’ll call it the blog special.

On to the fun stuff
Being a sports fan and a blogger I’ve had some neat links sent to me. One of them was for this little golf game. I’d seen this before, and I played a little back in the day. I took three tries today and the best I could do is 4,619. Give it a shot and put your distance in the comments. There aren’t any fabulous prizes; however, you will go down in Tom’s Blog’s history.

Sometimes in our busy lives we forget about the important things, but this video that I saw today touched my heart. I don’t know if it is more as a father, or for the gratitude I have for men/women that are willing to spend the time away from their families for us.

Paul Newman
Who is this old guy?
When I graduated from college, a friend of my family took me to a Champ Car race in Portland, OR. He is a friend of Carl Haas, a prominent owner in open wheel racing, so he was able to get us into the team’s pits. So for an entire practice and for all of the race day preparations; I was able to bump elbows with guys like Sébastian Bourdais and Bruno Junqueira, it was amazing. Half way through qualifying I was standing next to one of the spotter platforms when an old guy tries to throw an empty water bottle from the platform into the trash can next to me. He missed and asked me to retrieve the bottle, and he shot again, and missed again. This went on for a few minutes, and I kept getting annoyed by this old guy who can’t make a dang jump shot. Seriously he was only like 8 feet away. Finally the old guy makes it and leaves me alone. A couple of minutes later my friend comes up to me and asked if I knew who that old guy was. I quickly responded “no, and he can’t shoot either” I was quickly chided for not recognizing the great Paul Newman and should be happier that I got to interact with him, even if it was as servant boy retrieving his errant water bottle shots. So with his passing this week this story became semi-relevant. Movies will be less fun without him.

Until next week.
   
 
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