Kev’s Thoughts & Stories | HomeDabbler.com

Category: Kev’s Thoughts & Stories
- HomeDabbler Pro Series: Expect Failure, But Don’t Glamorize It
  
  Posted at 11:55 am by HomeDabbler, on September 8, 2019
  I lost my first business. Hard.
  
  I haven’t yet experienced anything more painful or humiliating. It haunts me to this day.
  
  If you’re an ambitious perfectionist with an entrepreneurial streak like me, failure will haunt you too (keep reading though, the whole article isn’t this gloomy).
  
  If you study modern entrepreneurship, especially startup c ulture, you may have heard the term “fail fast, fail often.”
  
  The idea is that not only should you expect failure in business, you should actively seek it as a necessary step toward your big success. Repeated failure is a glamorous badge of honor.
  
  What a dangerous idea.
  
  Fail fast + fail often = failing strategy
  
  Fail fast, fail often may work for breezy Silicon Valley tech startups full of 20-year-olds with rivers of venture capital to burn, but that is not how everyday businesses operate. For them, one big failure is usually all they can afford.
  
  Most businesses close within their first five years. Most of those failures don’t mean just coming back Monday, playing a game of Foosball, and finding something else to fail at. Those failures mean bills don’t get paid, savings get lost, and families in financial and emotional crisis.
  
  That’s what it meant to me and my family.
  
  Failure is not a game and certainly not something to be sought. Don’t glamorize it.
  
  It took me more than five years and much pain to dig out of my first failure. It’s true, you do learn from failure. I learned volumes (that I share on this blog). What I learned helped me be successful in my second business, which I ran profitably for 10 years.
  
  But please listen to me, failure is not a game and certainly not something to be sought. Don’t glamorize it.
  
  When does this post get happy?
  
  Now. Just because you may fail does not mean you should not start your business. As mentioned above, I started another business after my first failure and it was a success. It was profitable within the first year and grew for 10 years, when I closed it on my own terms.
  
  My second business was successful because I learned from my first failure. That said, I could have learned those lessons other, less painful and expensive ways. Here are a few.
  
  Ways to grow a business other than failure
  1. Read, read, read. And listen. There has never been a better time to learn the art and science of entrepreneurship. There are thousands of books, blogs, podcasts, and websites (including this one) to help you avoid mistakes and failures.
    
    Also, take time to listen to seasoned entrepreneurs. We love to share our wisdom with others.
    
    For instance, I probably should not have bought my first business. From a financial perspective, the deal was too risky. People tried to tell me that, including the lawyer who brokered the deal. But I wouldn’t listen. I was going to beat the odds. Just like in Vegas, the odds beat me.
    
    Doing your homework before starting a business can save you years of time (and tons of money) trying to learn these lessons on your own. In fact, here is an article from Forbes to get you started.
    
    Good book: Positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout.
    
    Good blog: Lesseverything.com (Less is a software development firm, but the content is relevant to all entrepreneurs).
  2. Maybe start your business as a side hustle first. I understand the romance of jumping off the cliff and starting a business with no parachute, you against the world. I’ve done it. But it is largely a myth.
    
    It is perfectly fine (and many times, much more successful), to start your idea as a nights-and-weekends thing first. Keep your day job for now, pay your bills, and see if you actually like running a business. Many folks find out that they don’t. At least you will know before going all in.
    
    If your enterprise starts to grow and you like being an entrepreneur, find the right time and go for it.
    
    Good side hustle blog: ILikeToDabble
    
    I actually wrote a piece for them about my entrepreneurial journey, if you’d like to know more.
  Join the club, but don’t be stupid
  
  I am an entrepreneur and always will be. I will always have business ideas and want to pursue them. If you are like that, don’t be afraid of it. There are few things more rewarding than business ownership. Your time will come.
  
  But don’t buy in to the hype of the risk-it-all, devil-may-care entrepreneur. You’ll go broke and may never come back. The real entrepreneurs in my life are some of the most careful people I know.
  
  They are careful because they hate to fail. And so should you.
  
  Kevin
  Posted in Kev's Thoughts & Stories | 0 Comments | Tagged business failure, business startup, business strategy, entrepreneurship, fail fast, fail often
- HomeDabbler Pro Series: How to Answer “Is That Your Best Price?”
  
  Posted at 9:00 am by HomeDabbler, on August 19, 2019
  It’s an awkward moment.
  
  You’re a business person and you’ve made your pitch. You killed it. Then your prospect looks at the quote and asks … “Is that your best price?”
  
  I was in business 15 years and heard that dreaded question dozens of times. If you’re in business and haven’t yet, you will. Answer it wrong and you’ll regret it, trust me.
  
  It’s Not Their Fault
  
  Some people are taught to always ask it when making a large purchase like a car or hiring for home services. “Never accept the first price!” we are told. The assumption is that the first price is intentionally inflated to 1) take in suckers who accept it or 2) give some wiggle room for those who are savvier.
  
  Sadly, this is true many times. Bad business people have made customers skeptical of all business people, even good ones.
  
  Do Better for You … and Them
  
  Reducing your prices is obviously bad for you but in the end, it is bad for your customers as well. Your heart will not be fully in your work if you know you are not making enough money. Even though you will try to do your best, you simply will not.
  
  Remember this – If you do poor work, the customer will only remember that it was poor, not less expensive. If you do great work, the customer may remember the price but will be proud that she got full value and will tell others.
  
  Three Powerful Words
  
  Early in my business career “the question” terrified me. If someone challenged me on price I immediately folded and reduced my quote. I needed the work and was afraid my prospect would not hire me unless I did.
  
  I felt trashy every time I reduced my price. I also enjoyed the job less because I knew I wasn’t working for what it was worth. Over time it started to make me angry.
  
  One day I got frustrated enough to try a different tack. I had just delivered a quote to a potential customer, a job that included multiple small jobs around her home. She looked it over, glanced at the price, and asked.
  
  “Is that your best price?”
  
  My gut clenched and I felt that familiar insecurity. She would be a good customer and I didn’t want to lose this opportunity. But for some reason, I decided to risk it.
  
  “Yes it is.”
  
  And I waited. Not because I was a steely-eyed negotiator. My nerves simply wouldn’t let me speak.
  
  My prospect looked over the quote again and, after a tense moment, said, “Okay.”
  
  And that was it, my business life had changed for the better.
  
  Three Really Powerful Words
  
  I tried it the next time the question came up and it worked again. And again. In fact, it never failed. In my remaining years in business, no one ever chose to not hire me because of price.
  
  Later I added to my response. I would say (helpfully, NOT snarky), “Tell you what, if you’d like to shop around I will give you the numbers of a few of my competitors who do good work. Have them look at this scope of work and if they can do the same job for a better price, you should hire them.”
  
  No one ever took me up on the offer. I got the job every time.
  
  Why “Yes It Is” Works
  
  In short, credibility. If your prospect knows you are willing to walk away from an opportunity instead of compromising your price, you are telling the prospect that you can be trusted to shoot straight. And if you haven’t figured it out yet, trust and credibility are everything in business.
  
  Conversely, if you do drop your price you are admitting that you inflated your first quote unnecessarily. You have therefore broken trust by starting this relationship with a lie.
  
  Tips Before You Try This
  1. Make sure it is your best price. Don’t be a jerk. Set appropriate prices that you can justify. Otherwise, you deserve to get beat.
  2. Ask them to compare apples to apples. If your prospect does want to get quotes from other vendors (and she should), ask her to use exactly the same scope of work that you bid on. Some shady vendors will try to cut corners so they can come in at a lower price (especially on materials – cheaper brand paint than you bid, for example).
  3. Be sweet. Do not be impatient or sarcastic when you say “Yes it is.” Be helpful and honest.
  Do good work for a fair price. Fair to you and to your customers. You’ll be happier and so will they.
  
  Kevin
  
  P.S. – Another note about scope. If your prospect does want to cut the task list to get price down then by all means adjust your price likewise. Just make sure you get the final scope in writing (*signed by you and the customer) before beginning work.
  Posted in HomeDabbler Pro Series, Kev's Thoughts & Stories | 0 Comments
- “Welcome to My Bathroom!” Why Excellence is Always Impressive
  
  Posted at 10:44 am by HomeDabbler, on August 18, 2019
  
  Paul Newman supposedly said, “I like watching excellence. If I see a waitress doing her job really well, I could watch it all night.”
  
  Same.
  
  I was reminded of and humbled by this recently in an airport bathroom. I tra vel a lot for work so I visit lots of airport bathrooms. Some are better than others but none is impressively clean. Except this one.
  
  It was in Charlotte International. Across from gate E4. The first thing I noticed was the bathroom attendant. He stood just inside the entrance, greeting us individually.
  
  “Welcome to my bathroom, fresh and clean!”
  
  He wasn’t being ironic.
  
  The man had a European accent (Italian?) and spoke with genuine gusto.
  
  “Welcome to my little kingdom!”
  
  His presence and hospitality took me by surprise. This is not normal bathroom attendant behavior, trust me. But then I looked around the bathroom and it was indeed clean. Very clean. And no foul smell, which is a minor miracle in a men’s room.
  
  As I did my business, the man continued to greet his guests, for that is what we clearly were to him.
  
  I finished, left the bathroom, and caught my plane. But that man and his care stayed with me.
  
  And his use of the word “my.” “My bathroom,” “My little kingdom.” He took ownership of that bathroom and felt responsible to give us his best effort.
  
  I never thought I would say this, but I had a great and memorable customer service experience in an airport bathroom.
  
  “Welcome to my bathroom, fresh and clean! Welcome to my little kingdom!”
  Bathroom attendant in Charlotte International Airport
  
  Excellence is always impressive, always. Even if (maybe especially if) the job is “menial.”
  
  There’s a lesson.
  
  Kevin
  
  Posted in Kev's Thoughts & Stories | 0 Comments | Tagged customer service, diy, entrepreneurship
- An Ode to Lightweight Spackle
  
  Posted at 8:00 am by HomeDabbler, on August 13, 2019
  
  It is rare that a product truly delivers.
  
  I discovered lightweight spackle when I had my home renovation business. I was using wood putty to fill nail holes in finish carpentry (or caulk in a pinch) and drywall joint compound to repair small wall blemishes.
  
  Wood putty is clumpy and hard to spread. Joint compound takes forever to dry. Caulk is messy as all get out. It was a dark time.
  
  And then, well, I was delivered. Lightweight spackle was here.
  
  First, it’s really light (truth in advertising), the consistency of good butter cream icing. That’s important for getting into the tiniest cracks where not even joint compound dares go. It also has the perfect moisture content so you can apply it with a putty knife or your finger. Oh the versatility.
  
  Its lightness matters in another way. If (when) you drop a bit on the floor it won’t stick unless you step on it, not even on carpet. How does this magical substance cling to a wall but not the berber? Sorcery? Don’t question it friends.
  
  But what of dry time?
  
  Lightweight spackle dries quickly, like 15 minutes quickly. Also crucial if you want to patch and paint same day (and who doesn’t?). By the time you schmear the last nail hole, the first one is ready to sand.
  
  After its negligible dry time, lightweight spackle is sandable to a silken finish, making it applicable to drywall and fine moldings alike.
  
  As with many precious materials, it spoils quickly once exposed to the environment. It is best fresh, so buy it in small containers, like caviar.
  
  Now don’t use lightweight spackle for big cracks or holes, more than 1/8 inch. It doesn’t want the showy repair, the drywall crevasse. Lightweight spackle is a specialist, the closing pitcher. Literally made for finishing touches and final flourishes.
  
  Am I being dramatic? Maybe. But fill nail holes with caulk or wait 24 hours to paint a small drywall patch and you’ll see. You’ll see.
  
  Kevin
  
  Posted in Home Repair & Renovation, Kev's Thoughts & Stories | 0 Comments
- Why I Wear a Red Hat
  
  Posted at 7:15 am by HomeDabbler, on August 5, 2019
  
  I thought I was going to black out.
  
  It was August in Florida, another August, and I had dozens of bushes left to trim. Tight little holly bushes that had to be shaped into spheres, so I had to bend over. This particular townhome complex had hundreds of bushes like this and they had to be kept tight.
  
  I had long since sweat through my clothes and was dehydrated. At 100+ degrees and more than 90 percent humidity, you would soak just standing still outside. Swing a 10-pound power tool for a few hours in that, bent over, and you simply couldn’t consume enough fluid to keep up.
  
  There was a point when I had been so hot for so long and was so tired that my vision went white for a second. I could feel the heat in my brain and hair, under my skin, in my core. Sweat poured into my eyes and dripped onto the lenses of my glasses. The thought occurred to me that if I passed out in this planting bed it could be hours before anyone walked their dog this way and found me.
  
  I had another thought in that moment as I stood up straight to stay sentient, a feeling really. It was pride.
  
  I had started my business Service Meisters out of desperation about five years before that day, after I lost my first business. It had been five long and very dicy years but our property repair and maintenance enterprise had beaten the odds and here I was, standing in the mulch struggling for consciousness. And that was a victory.
  
  That said, I was proud in that moment not because my business was successful, though that was satisfying. It was because, in a tangible way, I knew I was providing for my family with my own two hands. As effort drained from my body, it turned into sustenance for my loved ones. I have never felt more useful. I hope to never forget that feeling.
  
  When I started Service Meisters I wanted a uniform, something people would recognize on sight. I chose a black shirt for practical reasons – it hid dirt. I’ve always been a ball cap guy, so I knew I’d need one to complete the look. I found a cheap red one at Walmart. I was wearing it that day in the mulch.
  
  My life has changed a lot since then. I no longer make my living outside and I don’t wear a hat every day. But when I started HomeDabbler, I pulled my latest red cap off the hook.
  
  It is a reminder of what it took to get here.
  
  Kevin
  
  Posted in Kev's Thoughts & Stories | 0 Comments
- What I Learned from Edward the Uber Driver
  
  Posted at 1:59 pm by HomeDabbler, on July 27, 2019
  
  I travel a lot for work. I therefore Uber.
  
  The Uber rides are one of my favorite parts of the trip. You are paired with a random human for just a few minutes and, like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get.
  
  As soon as I shut the car door I try to surmise all I can about my driver, Holmesian style. Music, smell, what’s dangling from the rear view. What type of car it is. The driver’s accent, age. To me, it’s mildly exhilarating.
  
  I was on a trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico recently and met the best Uber driver I’ve ever encountered – Edward. Our 20 minutes together turned out to be unusually meaningful to me.
  
  Edward drove a Jeep. Not one of the dandy new ones that doesn’t look like a Jeep. A Wrangler, with legit wear and tear. Los Angeles Dodgers bumper sticker (from L.A.? Turns out, yes.), canvas top. He had one of those cool wooden-bead seat covers.
  
  He was a Hispanic man in his late forties (I guess) with a pony tail. He wore cargo shorts, sandals, and an aged t-shirt. Edward spoke with the breezy cadence of Keanu Reeves (Point Break Keanu, not Bill and Ted). He told me to throw my bags in the back seat so I could sit up front. You won’t get that invitation in D.C. We rode with the windows down.
  
  Edward was talkative, my favorite kind of Uber driver. He told me about the weather in Santa Fe – they get snow into May (lots of ski resorts), and how the area had experienced a 30-year drought. We chuckled about the minuscule Santa Fe airport with its one-slot baggage claim. Then he threw me a curve ball.
  
  “How’s your crypto-currency doing, man?” he said.
  
  “Huh?” was all I could muster.
  
  Edward pointed to two small tablets that he had harnessed to the console of his Jeep. They had little trend lines moving up and down on the black screens, a digital stock ticker. I had assumed the tablets were for navigation. Some Sherlock I am.
  
  Edward the hippy Uber driver was managing his crypto-currency portfolio.
  
  “Life changing times, man,” Edward encouraged. “Gotta get in low.”
  
  I was amused and fascinated, but also felt a little pang of guilt. I thought I had Edward figured out – genial flake shuttling corporate types like me to the Three Amigos airport all day. But whether or not he made a dime with his BitCoin holdings, he was more interesting than I gave him credit for.
  
  Snap judgments are typically lies. No matter how much I travel or what diversity of people I meet, I need to be taught this lesson over and over again.
  
  Then I noticed the fishing pole.
  
  Edward had one of those fold-up fishing rods on the dashboard, also uncommon among Uber chauffeurs. I asked. He kept it handy in case he wanted to turn Uber off for a while and cast into one of the nearby mountain lakes. What a nice thought.
  
  We compared fish species of New Mexico and Florida, then we were at the airport. Too soon.
  
  This blog is about home. How to fix it and improve it, the building and yard we call home. But also the idea of home, how where we come from shapes us and our relationships with others.
  
  I’m not quitting my job for an Uber career and I don’t think I’ll invest in crypto-currency any time soon. But I might get one of those fold-up fishing rods to keep in my truck.
  
  Kevin
  
  Posted in Kev's Thoughts & Stories | 3 Comments
- I’m Rethinking Beef
  
  Posted at 8:00 am by HomeDabbler, on July 25, 2019
  
  Here’s a story about my drive to work and how it may change my eating habits.
  
  I live in Northwest Florida, a pretty rural place. It is flat, as you might imagine, and cloaked in millions of acres of rod-straight pine trees used for paper production and lumber.
  
  From my house, a couple of two-lane black-top roads take me to state road 22, which leads to town. Most of the drive was through pine forest. Was, until a couple years ago, when the ranchers came.
  
  In 2014, a timber and ranching company bought more than 380,000 acres of pine trees in my area, including the land on either side of my morning drive. They promptly stripped the land of its timber and planted grass.
  
  It is cow pasture now.
  
  Pastoral Paradise?
  
  I’ve always loved driving by pastures. Something about the fences and the grazing animals and the grass and ponds and out buildings struck me as an emblem of uniquely human achievement.
  
  Agriculture is what let us organize into cities and civilizations. No longer foraging our days away, we could turn to art, architecture, and science. For goodness sake, if it weren’t for farms there would be no Parthenon, no Leshan Buddha, no Hubble Space Telescope!
  
  But I saw how this pasture was made and it doesn’t inspire me.
  
  The pincing timber machines snipped and stacked the countless pines onto trucks with impressive, disorienting speed. Then other, equally massive yet nimble vehicles piled the remaining debris, which was burned. A third division of metal beasts churned the stumps into the mucky sand. Finally, fill dirt was spread over the lower spots and the whole thing was graded smooth.
  
  In just days, a wooded expanse was made a steppe. A slash pine forest was slashed and nascent cow pasture was born.
  
  At first, I was surprised by my feelings about all this. It felt violent and jarring, not exciting and fascinating like I would have expected. Most of all, I couldn’t escape a sense of utter waste.
  
  I had the same feeling when Hurricane Michael prostrated most of the mature trees in our area. In a way, though, the pasturing was worse. It was elective.
  
  The whole thing got me thinking – just how many natural resources are needed to grow beef cattle?
  
  What I’ve found so far has made me question whether it is worthwhile to raise bovines for meat. I’m rethinking beef.
  
  A quick Google search returned a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science that detailed the resources required to raise our favorite foods from livestock – beef, dairy, poultry, eggs, and pork. Those were then compared to the raw material needed for growing our staple plants – potatoes, wheat, and rice.
  
  You can read the study for details, but the essential point is that beef production, by any measure, is embarrassingly profligate.
  
  Raising cows for meat takes 10 times more resources than our other food livestock. Beef production uses 88% of the land set aside for livestock, more than 75% of the water, and nearly 65% of the reactive nitrogen (from fertilizer).
  
  Percentage of the overall national environmental burdens exerted by the individual animal categories. Beef requires ≈88% of all US land allocated to producing animal-based calories, partitioned (from the bottom up) among pasture (≈79%), processed roughage (≈7%), and concentrated feed (≈2%). The land demands of dairy are displayed in the same format. Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
  
  This might make sense if beef were a significant part of our diet or we couldn’t get similar calories or nutrition elsewhere, but it isn’t and we can.
  
  In fact, beef’s role in the average U.S. diet is paltry when compared to other sources. The typical American gets 30% of his daily calories from animals. Of that, beef comprises only 7%.
  
  In other words, we use nearly 90% of our livestock-related resources to fill 7% of our diet. If we eliminated beef consumption, or even drastically reduced it, our bodies would not miss it. Our land and water, however, would see a crushing burden lifted.
  
  Environmental performance of the key livestock categories in the US diet, jointly accounting for >96% of animal-based calories.
  
  What About the West?
  
  But what about the arid parts of our country, the upper-Midwest and West? The soil is poor out there and can’t be used for crops. Cattle are actually beneficial in those areas; their munching, clomping, and pooping are crucial links in the natural cycle that made the Great Plains possible in the first place.
  
  Michael Pollan quotes a South Dakota cattle rancher in The Omnivore’s Dilemma who said it best: “If you didn’t have ruminant animals, all this [gesturing to his ranch land] would be the great American desert.”
  
  Fair enough (buffaloes were the first and founding ruminants on those plains, but nevertheless). The study addresses this objection.
  
  “It [the western lands argument] ignores the ≈0.16 million km² of high-quality cropland used for grazing and the ≈0.46 million km² of grazing land east of longitude 100°W that enjoy ample precipitation and that can thus be diverted to food production.”
  
  Or, at least in my neighborhood, left as forest.
  
  In other words, put the West aside and cattle still take up disproportionate space and resources on land that could be used for other things.
  
  Beef is needlessly wasteful. Granted, it tastes amazing. A grilling steak is one of humanity’s oldest and dearest experiences. But we should eat it knowing what it costs, and not just in money.
  
  According to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, beef cows had a nearly $67.5 billion impact on the U.S. economy in 2016. That is a lot of livelihoods and an industry that is rooted in our national mythos. There are cattle ranchers in my extended family.
  
  I wouldn’t say that the government should crack down on beef production (though Pollan makes the case that government intervention was the catalyst for exploding the modern beef industry in the 1950s. The colossal role of beef in our culture and on our land is not as ancient as we may think). Maybe just think about this next time you’re planning a cook out.
  
  Trees For Burgers
  
  They say all politics is local. I’m ashamed to say that apparently, so are my food choices. It took the elimination of my local forest for me to even think about this.
  
  I miss the woods. I’d give up hamburgers to have them back.
  
  Kevin
  
  Posted in Kev's Thoughts & Stories | 0 Comments
- The 3 Most Influential Gardeners in My Life
  
  Posted at 8:00 am by HomeDabbler, on July 24, 2019
  
  All gardeners have teachers, archetypes. Each gives a little to the next grower down the line, whether by planting an intentional seed or through wind pollination. Fertilized by proximity.
  
  My love of gardening was also inherited, but not just from family members. There were three people who gifted a little of themselves to me, whether they knew it or not. I suspect they did.
  
  Miss Pitts
  
  I’ve written of Miss Pitts before. She was my proxy grandmother and a person incapable of unkindness. Miss Pitts grew plants as naturally as she loved and grew people. She cared for multiple friends and family members as they entered their final sickness, welcoming them into her home and nurturing them to the end.
  
  And she cared for food, especially when feeding others. Miss Pitts was a master gardener and had the grandmother’s touch for making a meal into so much more than eating.
  
  She grew up and raised her kids in an era when food was special and hard won. That lesson was delivered on every plate every time. From her I learned that food is precious and hard as hell to grow.
  
  You had to walk past her little patch of tomatoes and peppers on your way into her home, a living welcome sign.
  
  She has dementia now, her final sickness. Others are caring for her to the end.
  
  The tomatoes are gone. I’m glad I learned from her when I could.
  
  Lesson: Gardening is care.
  
  Mr. Dauphin
  
  Mildon Dauphin is not an engineer by trade but is one in mind and temperament. He is curious, wise, and punishingly practical. He hates waste – of thought, money, or land. I’ve never seen anyone reduce a conversation to its basic elements faster, always seeking efficiencies. He worked at the Port of Panama City until retirement but has always been a farmer.
  
  In his heart, Mr. Dauphin is a farmer.
  
  He is a type of person you don’t see much anymore – a polymath. Mr. Dauphin learned to farm in a time when everyone needed every skill. He could weld black iron when he was 10, to fix the implements. He also became a draftsman, a carpenter, a surveyor, an expert in livestock husbandry, an administrator. A farmer.
  
  His father taught him to plant rows so precisely that the soil gave up every field pea and okra pod it could. Precision mattered because agriculture, like life, offered no guarantees.
  
  As a result of this training, Mr. Dauphin can’t not plant and harvest.
  
  He bought his 20-acre parcel of North Florida pines in 1964 and has cultivated it since. He’s raised cows, goats, chickens, and guineas. He planted a 5-acre u-pick blueberry farm that continues to this day. During the housing boom in the early 2000s he grew several varieties of palm trees to sell to landscaping companies. And he always has a prim, abundant vegetable garden.
  
  Why? That’s a lot of work for a guy with a steady job. I don’t think he even made that much money from his land. Then why?
  
  Because growers have to grow and there are no guarantees.
  
  Some of my favorite conversations are with Mr. Dauphin. At nearly 80 years old, if you walk his property with him he will tell you what every patch is for, what it will grow and produce. He can dictate row lengths, watering schedules and amounts, blueberry yields, fertilizer mixes, all of it. He is the master engineer and chief scientist of the finely tuned machine he has nurtured over a lifetime.
  
  What a classroom.
  
  Lesson: Gardening is science.
  
  Mom
  
  My mother is the most universally creative person I know. Everything she touches is more beautiful for it. Had she been born in another time, she would be renown today in some creative field, I promise. As it was, a girl-child of the 1950s with an unsupportive family, she became an extremely proficient executive assistant and mother of four. She has about 27 self-taught hobbies.
  
  She paints landscapes in oils and acrylics, and crafts needlepoint portraits of such detail that, from two feet away, you’d swear they were paintings. She also crochets. And quilts.
  
  She builds massive doll houses stick by stick, does her own finish carpentry around the house, hand-paints Christmas ornaments that surpass Käthe Wohlfahrt, and sews garments. She is currently working on a bank of stained-glass windows for the transoms in her guest room. The windows are her original designs, of course.
  
  And her garden. Of all my mother’s creations, her garden transcends.
  
  It is explosive, profligate. Beauty for beauty’s sake. My mom was a military kid and partly grew up in Asia. She grows hibiscus and Japanese maple and even plumeria, which aren’t supposed to grow where she lives. She is also German (long story) and spent a lot of time in Europe. Bulbs litter the landscape. She lives in Florida, so elephant ears and crepe myrtles and philodendron make an appearance. Something is always, always blooming.
  
  She persuades plants to grow that others can’t. To wit, African violets and orchids (houseplant aficionados will back me up on this). She has a chorus of orchids that sing at her command.
  
  Mom is also a vegetable gardener. In fact, my first living memory of a vegetable garden is when I was six years old and we lived in South Florida. She carved a tiny patch of sand in our back yard and grew corn.
  
  I’m sure there were other plants in the garden, but I remember sitting in our grape fruit tree and thinking the corn was cool. At this point my mother had four kids under the age of six. She had zero free time. Why grow a garden?
  
  I suspect because it was pretty to look at.
  
  Lesson: Gardening is art.
  
  The Joy of Gardening
  
  Gardening is meaningful effort. Not everyone sees it that way, but I do and I’m glad. Glad that these people taught me their inadvertent lessons. They are chapters in my love story with gardening. What joy they have given.
  
  Kevin
  
  Posted in Kev's Thoughts & Stories | 0 Comments | Tagged garden, yard and garden
- The Coming Home Maintenance Apocalypse
  
  Posted at 7:51 am by HomeDabbler, on July 17, 2019
  
  Prediction: You’re about to pay doctor and lawyer money for a plumber.
  
  Two U.S. demographic trends are about to converge and make anyone in a skilled trade, or even a handyman, a very valuable person. It’s already started.
  
  First, the American population is getting older and we are living longer. That has a lot of implications but in the home maintenance realm, it means there will be more homeowners who can’t climb on a ladder to paint the house or crawl under the sink to fix a leak.
  
  Second, younger people increasingly lack the skills required to do their own home maintenance or renovation. I love you young people, but you know it’s true.
  
  Soon the great majority of Americans will have to pay for those services. At the same time, there will be fewer people offering them.
  
  Larger demand + smaller supply = rich electricians.
  
  Hi, I’m here to take your money.
  
  I lived this when I had my home maintenance business. In fact, it helped me create it. People were so eager to find someone—anyone—who could and would fix stuff around their house that they stopped even asking me for prices. They hired me by default, simply because I showed up.
  
  On average in 2018, homeowners spent more than $9,000 on home services. According to HomeAdvisor, homeowners said the number one reason for the spending was “replacing or repairing damage, defects and decay.”
  
  Another prediction: That will increase.
  
  You can do much of this stuff yourself and save big dollars. That is one of the reasons I started HomeDabbler, to teach you. Aren’t you glad you are here?
  
  Tell your friends,
  
  Kevin
  
  P.S. – This is also an opportunity.
  
  Do you like to work with your hands and don’t want to spend your career in a cubicle? Learn some of these skills and offer them to the world. There is money to be made, more all the time.
  
  Have a skill you’d like to learn but don’t see here? Message me through the HomeDabbler Facebook page and I’ll make you a video.
  
  Posted in Kev's Thoughts & Stories | 0 Comments
- Full Version: A Month After Michael
  
  Posted at 11:04 pm by HomeDabbler, on April 13, 2019
  
  **A month or so after Hurricane Michael destroyed Panama City, Florida—my home town—I was fortunate to write an article for the Washington Post about what life was like here just weeks after the storm. I had to edit my first version down from 1,400 words to 900 to meet the editorial guidelines. Below is the full-length version.**
  
  by Kevin Elliott
  
  It has been a month since the eye of hurricane Michael passed over my house.
  
  If you saw any coverage of the storm, it was probably drone footage of the damage to Mexico Beach, the coastal village that was eliminated from the Florida Panhandle on October 10. It is twenty minutes from my home in Panama City.
  
  I’d like you to know what it is like here.
  
  You may have experienced a hurricane. We have many times. It’s what we do here, part of our waterfront rhythm. It sounds strange to my friends elsewhere, but we are intimate with our storms. Their names mark our lifespans like notches on a child’s closet door frame.
  
  “Remember Ivan? That was bad in Pensacola.”
  
  “I was in college when Opal hit Panama City Beach.”
  
  “My dad was there for Eloise.”
  
  Tropical cyclones define our salty lifescape as much as beach sand and blackened grouper. We take pride in our ability to live with and withstand them, to “ride them out.”
  
  Took pride. No one is proud of what happened here a month ago. This was different. I struggle to call this storm by name.
  
  It did not just damage our city. We were strafed. A methodical decimation. No, worse. Decimation means destroying one in ten. The destruction in Panama City is universal, not a single unaffected structure or person. Friends of mine have spoken with Vietnam vets who told them that the aftermath of this storm looks in every way like the result of a bombing run. The only thing missing are the craters.
  
  We are homesick on our own streets.
  
  I have heard other people raised in special places like Panama City, tourist spots in particular, say they don’t appreciate the beauty of their community enough. They don’t take advantage of what’s in their back yard, what tourists pay to enjoy.
  
  Panama City isn’t like that. We truly dig our home and its surroundings. Our social media feeds are (were) full of weekend pontoon rides to Shell Island. Evening walks on Mexico Beach. Canoeing on Econfina Creek. A successful hog hunt or fishing trip. Cliché shots of tanned legs stretched over quartzite sugar sand. If there is a pretty sunset on a random Tuesday, you can scroll Facebook and see shots of it from a hundred different angles. Captioned #LoveWhereYouLive.
  
  It’s a soulful life. Panama City is a lovely mix of old Florida Gulf-side hamlet and Deep South gentility, blue collar redneck ethos, military town, and artist colony. There are NRA conservatives and fire-breathing liberals and people who don’t give a shit. But we all like the fish tacos at Finn’s.
  
  And the trees. Our historic neighborhoods—Millville, The Cove, Saint Andrews—are known by the shade of timeless live oaks under which those communities sprouted a century ago. The trees are why people wanted to live there. Forests of muscular beauties formed an unbroken canopy, a cocoon, over the homes of common people, a twining web of arthritic branches laced with dainty Spanish moss. It conjured Tolkien.
  
  By some estimates, Panama City has lost more than 90 percent of its mature trees. Maybe that’s exaggerated, maybe not. But as you drive around, it feels accurate. There are few shadows left in our defining enclaves. Imagine Savannah without its oaks. What would it be?
  
  How does that sort of mutilation affect a small town? We know what trauma does to individuals. But can the effects of abuse be experienced collectively, across a populace? It seems so.
  
  This is a crass analogy, but the best I can think of – it feels like we were raped. Pinned and violated, over and over. Taken. Taken from. It was absurdly violent. In less than three hours, we were denuded, brutalized, and left exposed.
  
  There is a heartache here.
  
  We are in phase two now. In phase two, the adrenaline is gone. The visceral needs are met, most roofs are tarped, fewer sirens. Curfews lifted. The astonishing army of out-of-town linemen that rewired our infrastructure has all but dispatched. The first panic is over, but has been replaced with a dreadful clarity about what we are really up against, and for how long.
  
  At first, early in phase one, it didn’t sink in that the foundation of our community could be cracked to the bedrock. But both hospitals were closed. Completely, taking no patients. There was not a single gas station or grocery store in operation. No traffic lights. No cell service. No schools. No municipal water or flushing toilets. No emergency services to outlying areas. Looting in a city that has never, ever, had looting. A local mayor openly recommended on her official Facebook page that her constituents leave for at least two months.
  
  In phase two, the layoffs have started.
  
  A friend of mine, a successful medical marketer, texted me the other day.
  
  “Know of anyone hiring? The medical system is suffering and I am more than likely going to be laid off in two weeks.” Update: she was.
  
  My friend lost her home to the storm as well. She salvaged enough of her daughter’s belongings to fill a few pillow cases.
  
  Phase two has brought a housing crisis. There are literally not enough habitable buildings. By all accounts, more than 30 percent of structures in Panama City proper are unlivable. In some pocket communities like Parker, Callaway, and Springfield, it is well over half.
  
  Many teachers, police officers and fire fighters, paper mill workers—those lucky enough to still have jobs—are homeless. Entire apartment building and condo populations have been evicted for repair and mold remediation, without recourse. A co-worker of mine bought a camper and parked it behind the remains of her home while they rebuild over the next year. As of last week, she was still trying to get running water to it.
  
  At the same time, many places are hiring. Home Depot, Wal-Mart, AutoZone, and certainly the building trades, are open and begging for applicants. Many lower-wage workers had to leave almost immediately, couldn’t wait for the rebuild. But if there are no homes, then coming back, even for a job, is futile.
  
  We are in a quandary.
  
  We will rebuild. All communities say that after a disaster, but we will. As what though? With whom? How long?
  
  Yards are re-appearing. Roofs are tarped. Stacks of debris are more organized and taller, much taller. People are doing what they can. It must be done, but it’s also busy work and therapy, something we can control and achieve.
  
  The busy work is lessening though. We’re on to the stuff that average citizens can’t do. Heavy demolition, rebuilding whole subdivisions and shopping centers, and disposing of the interminable berms of shattered trees and household belongings at every curb.
  
  We will rebuild I’m sure, but it hurts right now. We are vulnerable and scared. We have not moved on. We are grieving.
  
  As in all catastrophes, there are some smiles and optimism. Bucking up. Stories of genuine communal effort. #850Strong is a popular hashtag (850 is our area code).
  
  For Halloween, a group of locals decided to hold a community trick-or-treat event on Harrison Avenue, the umbilical of our historic working-waterfront downtown area. They held a used costume giveaway for kids who had lost their clothes. People donated candy.
  
  My wife and I normally hovel up and cut the porch lights on Halloween night, but I wanted to see how this event would go, how (or if) people would respond.
  
  It was slammed. Costumed families choked Harrison Avenue. Those restaurants that were able to open, did. There were craft tables and blow-up ghosts and a stilt walker. The Saint Andrews Ukulele Band performed outside the damaged Panama City Center for the Arts. It was everything Halloween should be and a much-needed gathering. We needed to see each other’s faces.
  
  I chatted with a couple while we waited online at Tom’s Hotdogs, an iconic downtown joint. They lived in Callaway. Lost everything. They and their two little ones were dressed as the Incredibles.
  
  What does it take to actually dress up as a family and go for hot dogs after the last month in Panama City?
  
  Incredible indeed.
  
  Posted in Kev's Thoughts & Stories | 0 Comments
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