On the window sill in my office there is an ever growing collection of rocks. Most of them I've found around the grounds of Christensen's, some more exotic ones arrived in tree balls or were given to me by customers. Rocks have interested me since I was a kid. I had 'em stashed everywhere - dirty rocks in my sock drawer, jars and buckets full of rocks all over the yard, and a couple cool polished specimens were displayed on my dresser.

As I got older I wanted to know the stories behind the rocks, what they are made of, and how they came to be where I found them.

Michigan is a fantastic place for a rock-lover to reside due to an amalgamation of geological events.

400 million years ago this area was a briny tropical sea just north of the equator. As the landmass drifted northward jungles full of displaced plants and animals left behind rich soils and minerals, whilst retreating seas precipitated vast deposits of salt and sand. The ancient sea life produced fossils like Petoskey Stones and Crinoids in abundance that we find on our beaches today.

Michigan has something else going for it when it comes to cool rocks. Volcanos!! During the mid-continental rift fiery lava gurgled up great amounts of minerals from the molten belly of our planet. When liquid magma solidifies underground it becomes igneous rocks like granite and obsidian. Granite countertops are made of magma that has slowly cooled under pressure, allowing time for crystallization. A lot of the granite you'll find in Michigan has red in it. The red color comes from the iron oxide that’s mixed in with the feldspar and quartz. When lava cools above ground it hardens into extrusive types of igneous rocks like basalt and pumice. One of my favorite rocks is called pudding stone. It's a colorful conglomerate of red jasper, quartz, and other pebbles that have been metamorphosed into quartzite.

North America was once home to towering ice sheets over a mile thick. The Earth's crust was actually deformed under the weight of these ice age giants. As they slowly scraped their way down the continent countless tons of material were picked up along way (including my pudding stones). The massive ice sheets eventually settled in our Great Lakes Basin and melted, releasing rocks and debris that span both geography and time.

The combination of glacial transportation, continental drift, and volcanic upheaval have led to perhaps the most splendid mixes of rocks of anywhere in the world.

In all bad things, there is good.

COVID-19 has caused havoc in many industries. It has closed many businesses, some never to reopen. Covid has sickened people and some have died from the illness. This is the bad.

Here is the good for the Green Industry:

• People were forced to stay home so they improved their homes
• Money issues were mitigated by a $1200 stimulus payment
• Businesses utilized the Payroll Protection Plan to keep their employees working
• The unemployed received $600 weekly from the federal government
• State unemployment checks continued to be paid
• Many people planted a vegetable garden for the first time or the first time in years
• Less travel meant fewer expenses for fuel, auto insurance
• Vacations were postponed or cancelled so with time and money available home living conditions were improved
• Landscaping and gardening are not impacted by crowds or social distancing
• Landscapers are remarkably busy because of limited staffs, no immigrant workers
• There is pent up demand within the green industry to hire additional staff

So what does the future hold for the Green Industry?

Here’s my view thru a slightly cracked crystal ball:

• Working from home will stay with us into the future
• Zoom meetings will replace much business travel
• Education will transition from the classroom to ??????
• Plants will occupy more of people's time and attention
• Embrace the change - it is happening!

As the shrub and perennial investor at Christensen's I rarely get to go outside to meet and greet. Now while we are socially distancing for COVID-19 it is even worse. When I do get outside, I can’t tell the difference between employees and customers. It was bad enough with hats and sunglasses, now there are masks! And just before the shutdown happened I was about to get new glasses... So currently six feet is a little far away for me. Pardon me if I don't recognize you!

I decided to try and use this column to get some feedback. Do I get it right? (Did I get it right in this mess?) Please! This is a Roast Me – did I get it wrong? Go ahead - I can take it!

What plants am I missing in the nursery? We NEVER want you to be caught short on plants that you need, so please let us know what you want and when you want it.

You are welcome to yell at me – however it is best to yell at your salesman. Then they can get it ordered for you. (It would be much better for me if you yelled at them. They are scared of me and usually bring me gifts like cookies and such with your orders! Isn’t that sweet of them!?!?)

Contact information for all our sales staff can be found in our app and on our website. And, you can send me your feedback here: rothk (at) christensensplantcenter (dot) com.

I know that as a woman of my age, grace, natural beauty and talents that it is next to impossible for me to get it wrong. But that age thing sometimes makes me forget things.

P. S. You cannot roast me on that last paragraph!

Here, at the close of the season, I have the privilege of writing the last Sticks and Stones post of 2019.

It is a privilege for two reasons. The first is because we have made it to the end of the season! We persevered through the trials and tribulations of 2019, and now it is time to enjoy the fruits of our labors.

I look forward to this time of year because winter is when I get to hang out with my kids. I hope that you get to enjoy the same opportunity to spend time with family and friends, enjoying the stepping stones in life.

This year’s stepping stone is driver’s education for my daughter. Now I do not know about the rest of you, but when I turned 16 I drove my parents crazy wanting to go the Secretary of State to get my license. This is my second child to go through driver’s ed. My older son wanted to take driver’s ed (mostly because his friends were in the class) but had absolutely zero interest in getting his license. In fact, he turned 16 in September and my wife and I finally forced him to take his road test in February! Now we are on to my daughter who was eligible to take driver’s ed in April, but was in no hurry to even take the class. Really?? Don’t these kids know that I don’t want to be a chauffeur any more?

The second reason is even more simple. In this last post of 2019, I want to say “thank you”. Thank you for allowing us to serve you for another year – our 88th year as Christensen’s Plant Center. Over the past 88 years many things have changed, but as our staff has has ebbed and flowed, as our customers have started a business that has grown and matured, and have maybe retired, one thing has remained constant. There is a certain quality that makes people choose to enter the Green Industry, and even as our customers become ever more diversified, there is a familiarity that I appreciate. Thank you for being a part of the Christensen's family.

Wishing you all a safe conclusion to your landscaping season, and the happiest of holidays.

On your visits to the Plant Center, you may have noticed us buzzing back and forth across Gotfredson Road with trailers full of perennials ready for sale on the main lot. Did you know that we grow many of these perennials ourselves?

Watch our video and meet some of our all-girl Production Department, and see how we all work together to grow perennials that are Michigan-ready for your landscape jobs.

It’s not always all grinding and going at Christensen’s Plant Center, sometimes we crew members get to stop and smell the flowers - and during the summer - find some of them crawling with beautiful monarch caterpillars.

Monarchs are not yet an endangered species, but they and their migration are being threatened and need protecting. So at Christensen’s we started rounding up our Monarch caterpillars and putting them into mesh butterfly cages with a milkweed plant for food. Monarchs feed solely on Asclepias, using the toxins in the milkweed to make themselves very unpleasant to predators. Animals and birds who eat a Monarch caterpillar or butterfly get pretty sick from it and won't eat another. There are still a lot of losses, though, so raising and releasing them really helps boost their numbers.

They are voracious feeders, so we check them daily, replacing the host plant as needed. Once they’re nice and fat, they’ll eventually J-up (they hang, head down, in a ‘J’ shape) and morph into a chrysalis within hours. Then after about 10 days, you’ll have a beautiful Monarch butterfly. Easy, right? One day when we came into work, we had three hatched and ready to take off!

Be careful of escapees though - we had one little guy escape and he ended up morphing into his chrysalis under the table. If you have a cage with a zipper, make sure there’s no one by it when you unzip it or a caterpillar could get caught in it (yes, sadly we learned that one from personal experience). Also beware of invaders: spiders and flies love to sneak in which can be dangerous for the butterflies-in-training! Other predators include wasps, assassin bugs, ants, toads, and even mice.

Plants like Allium, Buddleia, and Liatris seem to be swarming with Monarch butterflies this time of year. Monarchs are an important pollinator for many wildflowers. Providing a safe place for Monarchs to grow and multiply is a rewarding and beautiful experience.

See here for more about growing milkweed: Milkweed for Monarchs - Michigan DNR​

Christensen’s Plant Center is very excited to welcome "Brutus" to our hard-working family. But first, let me tell you about some of our other family members.

Each one of these family members was selected to make getting your landscape material to you efficiently and professionally. There are: Betsey, Agnes, Orange Crush, Big Blue, The Twins, Red Brick, Gray Flat, Lola Ryder, and Thing 1 and Thing 2 - among others. Obviously some of us here like nicknames and in this case we have given nicknames to most of our delivery equipment.

We have three box trailers that each have drop decks and large side doors to make unloading much easier. We have five flatbed trailers designed to haul large loads of trees, shrubs and other nursery stock. We have two more flats that are designed to haul brick, wall block and other hardscape materials while toting one of our two Moffett forklift machines that we use to unload hardscape product for you on your job site.

We currently have five semi-trucks ranging from Ol’ Betsey, the matriarch of our fleet, to the Twin Freightliners, to Agnes - our first heavy hauler - and finally, our newest member, Brutus.

Brutus is a real life Michigan Special. He's a 13 speed, 18K front axle with 44K rears. 575HP with turbos that whistle when idling. Brutus is set to haul the biggest of brick loads without breaking a sweat. He’s a prefect addition to our BIG truck family.

So no matter what landscape material you need or where you need it, we have a family member to get it to you.

As a welcome to the family celebration, if you tell your salesperson that “Brutus is a Brute” we will waive the delivery charge on your next delivery. This offer is limited to one per customer and only good until 11-29-2019.

Coming soon to our family... “Axle"... Stay tuned.

Ever wonder how Christensen’s stores and maintains trees in "the field" to keep them viable all year long? If you've ever tried to keep above-ground material healthy over a long period of time you know there are challenges to be met. But for the most part, it’s really not that far off from what you do when you plant a tree in a landscape - except we do it for a few thousand trees.

First, we grade out the area where the trees are going to go and then auger holes to place the trees in. After the tree is straight in the hole we backfill it with dirt and lightly pack it down.

Then an irrigation emitter is placed into every root ball. We use two different sizes of irrigation emitters, yellow for trees that are 3” or smaller and black for anything larger. We do an irrigation check on the trees at least once a week depending on the time of year. The irrigation system for the field might run 24 hours a day in the summer, so making sure that the trees get the required amount of water is sometimes difficult. We check the emitters to make sure they are not clogged, that they are spraying correctly, and that they haven’t come off of the feeder line and are flooding the tree.

After the trees are put in the ground we apply pre-emergent to prevent weeds from growing in the root balls and the surrounding soil. We generally do this twice a year. As the year goes on if weeds begin to grow we spray with non-selective herbicide. We add a non-toxic blue indicator dye to make sure that we are only hitting the targeted weeds and not the trees.

We do several other sprays throughout the year to prevent disease or insect damage. For instance, we spray for apple scab in the early spring as the trees just start to leaf out. There's also a scheduled spray to prevent gypsy moth, when the temperature is right. We do other targeted sprays as issues come up. Our nursery is inspected regularly for pests so we can be sure that our material is ready for distribution.

At the end of the season we put tree guards on the trunks to prevent damage that could be caused by roaming rabbits and deer. In the spring we remove any guards that are made from solid material in order to allow the trunk of the tree to stay dry and also to prevent bugs from making a home there.

Lastly, when we lift trees from the field to go on your truck, we carefully re-wrap the rootball with fresh burlap if needed. You can be confident that the trees we store are ready to go on your landscape job, spring, summer, or fall.

Welcome to Spring 2019!!! The Detroit Tigers home opener is April 4, and Christensen’s has already had its season opener. So let’s play ball!

Over the past winter, as in every winter, we have spent a significant amount of time getting ready for this season. Equipment, people, processes, pricing. Everything is repaired, trained, updated, and reviewed to get ready to serve you, our customers, in the best way possible for the year.

The first question I usually get from our customers is, “How far did pricing go up this year?” This year I am happy to report, not much - if at all. The buyers and managers here at Christensen’s Plant and Hardscape Centers have worked very hard at keeping our prices as close to 2018 prices as possible. We know that everything in your business has increased quite dramatically over the past several years. It surely has in our business. So this year we felt it was very important to help our customers keep their profitability.

Our price catalogs have been mailed and you should have yours in hand. If you need extra copies for your office or truck, we can provide them. Our Hardscape catalog is at the printer and will be ready soon, so grab your copy on your next visit.

As always, we thank you for your continued business. We enjoy the relationships we have made over the past eighty-eight years. May you all have a safe and blessed 2019!