On another note I have added a Facebook “like” button to the main page which links to the page for the company on Facebook. No plans for a Twitter follow button anytime soon though.

In the next few weeks I’m going to be adding some more content to the gallery as well as updating some of the other pages.

On another note, spring is finally on the way after a long winter filled with lots of snow plowing, record breaking amounts actually, but we battled through it. I’d just like to say thank all my employees for all the hard work and long hours.

Start by making sure the blades are sharp and in good condition, if there are any large notches, bends, or any cracks you need to replace the blades, a blade that is badly damaged can be dangerous to you and to the mower. A cracked blade could break off and a notched or bent blade is out of balance and cause damaging vibrations to the mower.

Then preform the needed maintenance on the engine including changing the oil, replacing the air and fuel filters, and grease any bearings as well as the crankcase if it has one. This is just as important for a lawn mower as it is for a car, and neglecting doing it can shorten the life of the mower the same as it would your car.

Maintaining a mower properly can help it last for many years and give you an excellent quality cut for your lawn.

After a long and fairly dry winter we are just starting to gear up for spring. We are getting all the lawn mowing equipment ready to go as well as our landscaping equipment.

The snowplows and salters are still on the trucks and they won’t be coming off till early April. You never know if winter has on last blast in store till at least April and while I wouldn’t mind on last snow storm I’m sure everyone else is looking forward to an early spring.

On final fun little note, Google street view just came online for Windsor and I am on it (check it out here). Yes I’m talking on my cell phone but don’t worry it’s before the ban went into effect. I actually saw the Google car a few times I just can’t remember where I was when I saw it other than this time.

Well that’s all for now and I’m going to try to remember to update this more often from now on.

We are just starting to ramp up our advertising for the snow and ice management season. Our availability this year will be limited, since our quality of service is of prime importance we can only take on a certain number of new clients and still maintain our standards of high quality service .

Also a word of caution, please ask all the contractors you are having quote on the snow and ice management services for your property to provide you with proof of liability insurance. There are far to many people out there that snow plow without any insurance (or even a business license for that matter). If you happen to be unlucky and some one slips and falls on your property you could be on the hook for potentially millions of dollars in damages if your snow removal contractor does not have proper insurance.

Anyway here is another job we did, as you can see from this before picture the existing landscaping was very overgrown and out of control. I gave the homeowner a rendering of a much more cleaned up and simplified landscape which you can see here. We came in and removed all the old mulch and pea stone, we also removed quite a lot of the plant material, what trees and shrubs we did leave we trimmed up quite a bit to make them look more clean. We installed new cedar mulch in the top part of the bed then redid the wall dividing the top part of the bed from the bottom, in the bottom part of the bed we installed black granite stone fill. In addition we also put some new plant material including Wintergreen, Japanese Barberry, and Blue Star Juniper.

You can see the final result by clicking here.

When it comes to lawn watering to much can be just as bad as not enough. A mistake some people make is watering too frequently and not deeply enough. Most of the common varieties grass that grow around here need 2 inches of water per week. This should be delivered in three separate waterings, Monday Wednesday and Friday for instance. Watering for 20 minutes per area each time you water will usually add up to 2 inches. To find out if your getting enough water take an empty plastic container (like a Sour Cream container) and put it out while you water, measure what’s in the container with a ruler and multiply by three.

The reason to water infrequently but deeply is to promote deeper root growth of the plants, this allows them to better resist stress. Also keeping the thatch layer consistently damp can result in an outbreak of disease so watering less frequently allows the thatch layer to dry out preventing disease.

The first picture shows what the job looked like at the very beginning before we started doing any work.

The second picture is the digital rendering I did when i gave the home owner the quote for the job.

The third picture is the finished product.

We installed a mulch bed around the perimeter with pea stone and a flagstone patio in the center. The homeowner wanted something done a little differently with the flagstone patio than normal, they wanted some ground cover type plants to grow in the cracks, so we put black earth in the cracks between the stones instead of sand then we placed creeping thyme seeds into the soil this will create the nice green fill they wanted and provide a pleasant scent when people walk on it. The portfolio page has some more pictures of this job and shows the finished landscaping from several angles.