A waterlogged Jim Campanella is finally seeing the light. Campanella, president of The Lawn Dawg in Nashua, N.H., was stuck indoors for 10 straight days while Mother Nature drenched the New England states with nearly 15 inches of rain.
This is supposed to be a prime time for landscaping services to get lawns ready for the summer season, but the cruel weather prohibited that from happening. Instead, Campanella used the time for sales calls, but not many people were enthusiastic about his company’s lawn, tree and shrub treatment services at this time.
“The calls were not very successful, but people were not rude or anything,” he says. “People would say, ‘I’m not thinking about it right now; I’m trying to get water out of basement.’”
The flooding also caused road closures, which Lawn Dawg’s crews are now finding as they survey the service area. After ten days, the rain has stopped, so they are able to get out and survey any damage.
Fortunately for Campanella, none of his seven branch locations were flooded. The bulk of the damage, he says, will be to the lawns that remain flooded days after the rain has stopped.
But he’s not too worried about the turf drowning and dying.
“Turf is resilient,” he says. “Other than some low-lying spots, it will dry out pretty quickly.”
Once the turf dries out, the issue is getting to the lawns, because many of the rural streets remain flooded. This leaves the crews to work extra to make up for the lost time.
“We’re clearly falling behind in schedule, which will result in working some extra Saturdays,” he says. It could have been worse. Because of the unseasonably warm winter, The Lawn Dawg crews got an earlier start than normal, so they came into April a little ahead of the schedule.
Even with the obstacle, Campanella keeps a positive outlook, because he can remember even worse conditions about ten years ago. The nonstop rain caused damage to a house he owned and set his work back two weeks.
Even though the latest round of rain had stopped, the Maramac River’s water level continued to rise. Camanaella and the crews can only wait until conditions allow them to reach their clients.
“You have to suffer the consequences if you’re going to live in New England,” he says.