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LASN & LC/DBM January 2016 Commentary: Welcome to 2016!01-06-16 | 11

Welcome to 2016!
LASN & LC/DBM January 2016 Commentary

George Schmok, Publisher

Happy New Year! While for me it is still a bit before Christmas, by the time you read this 2016 will be in full swing. By all accounts it is going to be a doozy of a year.

By now, El Niño should be drenching the West, relieving a great deal of the drought that has plagued the region. Hopefully the mountains are full of snow, and hopefully I've been able to take full advantage of one of the better ski seasons in recent memory.

Out there on the East Coast, the winter run on Hawaiian shirts is most likely over, as sooner or later it will be getting cold again. With a 70+ degree Christmas in D.C., maybe now you all know how we Southern Californians feel as we trudge through winter after winter of sunshine and temperate weather. It was just last January that record snows from the "nor'easter" fell in Canada and the central and eastern U.S. There is no doubt that climate change is coming. I just can't wait to see which way it goes next year . . .

They say this year's El Niño is going to be a strong one, but only time will tell. I remember back in 68-69 . . . That's 1968 . . . When it rained so hard here in SoCal that as a 10-year-old I was throwing sand bags onto the Santa Ana River bank to keep the waters from flooding our Costa Mesa home. Houses were being swept away in the canyons, as it seemed to rain for a couple of months without letup. By the end of the rain that same river, which only a few months earlier had been a 40-foot-deep channel built above grade and lined with lizard trapping boulders, was now a river of silt. The boulders had mostly washed away and the river bottom was now elevated almost 30 feet, making the channel only about 10 feet deep, but 30 feet above grade. Today it is back to being a 40-foot-deep channel, but now it is completely contained by vertical concrete walls.

But that was history and today is today, and this today is in the year of our Lord 2016 and, like I said, it is already shaping up to be a doozy of a year.

This is an election year, so mixed with El Niño there should be a ton of mud slinging. Partisan politics will be the norm, as will the assault on PC, as Trump tries to trump the field and Yale looks to ban the First Amendment and join the rest of the colleges across the country in raising kids whose emotions just must be understood. I wonder whom Nicki Minaj is voting for?

The good news is the construction industry looks like it will weather the storm, and the landscape industry will enjoy a prosperous year. To start with, as mentioned above, the Northeast may already be enjoying swimming pool weather, bringing an early start to the construction cycle, and in the West, there may be just enough water to plant a seed or two of . . . What's that called . . . Oh yeah . . . . Grass.

So yep . . . 2016 is shaping up to be a doozy of a year all right. A year that, despite all the finger pointing and yelling that will be flooding our cable waves, should produce a storm of activity in the landscape industry, raining down projects from coast to coast.

So gear up, lean forward, and get ready to ride the rapids . . . 2016 is going to be a doozy of a year . . .

God Bless . . .

George Schmok, Publisher