The 10 tomato plants in our garden, including two heirloom tomato plants, are wilting. And the basil just sits there looking helpless.
If this newsletter is late today, it’s because I’ve been in the garden for the last several days giving a hearty drink to the green beans, beets, carrots, radishes, peas, spinach and three rows of lettuce.
The perennials get a good soaking almost every other day.
“Crank up the sprinkler,” says the headline on Page 1 of this morning’s paper. The story says this spring is the fourth driest since they’ve been keeping records.
The story, of course, was probably written because this is the first day of summer. I couldn’t help but notice that three Publicity Hounds offered great quotes for the story.
From Bill Minor of Minor’s Garden Center:
“We just had a guy come in here a few minutes ago–he watered his sod once a day for a week and it died.”
From Brian Zimmerman, golf operations manager for the Milwaukee County Parks:
“What a difference a year makes. Last year, you would have thought Noah had come through here.”
From Phillip J. Pellitteri, a University of Wisconsin-Madison entomologist, commenting on the absence of mosquitoes:
“It’s not normal to go out at dusk or grill and have a glass of wine on the porch and not get stung.”
So what can Publicity Hounds learn from this story? A few days before the official start of fall, winter, spring and summer, mark your calendars and remind yourself that you might have something to offer reporters who are doing stories on the start of the new season. They’re always looking for an angle for these evergreen stories, and commenting on how the weather affects you just might be a great way to sneak into the newspaper or onto the TV news. Read about more ways to piggyback onto weather stories in “Special Report #37: How to Tie Your Product, Service, Cause or Issue to the Weather.”