Ep 121. DSL, Drum Circles, and Deep Roots: How Erin Found the Green Industry

Summary

Green Side Up, Episode 121: DSL, Drum Circles, and Deep Roots — How Erin Found the Green Industry

Host(s): Jason Lee & Jordan Upcavage
Guest: Erin "Bunny Fly" Alvarez
Date: April 23, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode is a lively, candid, and often humorous dive into the origins and career journey of Erin Alvarez—now a business development manager for Sky Frog Landscape. The trio of Jason, Jordan, and Erin share stories about early influences, the sometimes-bumpy road through academia, and how hands-in-the-dirt experiences forged Erin’s lasting bond with the green industry. It’s an episode rich with nostalgia, practical insights, insider banter, and a big dose of real talk on what it takes to find your place (and passion) in landscaping and tree care.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Weekend Plans & Green Industry Life

• Opening banter sees the hosts and Erin chatting about weekend plans, including yard work, kayaking, taco nights, and the perpetual presence of landscaping chores (03:00–06:10).
• Reflection on work-life balance:
  • Everyone juggles demanding clients, tight project turnarounds, and still tries to enjoy family and downtime.
• Anecdotes:
  • Humorous stories about tree work logistics, client relations, and the relentless Florida taxman (06:27–07:04).
  • “These bastards… I claim zero, I still owe thousands of dollars. It ain’t fair.” – Jordan Upcavage (06:35)
  • Lighthearted ribbing about teamwork, Gorilla Tape, and the unique struggles of maintaining dignity and humor in the field.

Early Seeds: Erin’s Childhood & The First Sprouts of Horticulture

• How did Erin get interested in the green industry? (14:00–15:44)
  • Grew up in Florida and Atlanta, always outside—playing, reading, and gardening.
  • “I was outside all the time as a kid... either inside reading books or outside digging in the dirt and grubbing around like a little dirtbag child.” – Erin Alvarez (14:44)
  • No family background in horticulture—mom was a gardener, but professionally not tied to the green industry.
• Academic zig-zag:
  • Started as a science nerd, wanted to be a vet, then bounced between zoology, political science, and English before finding horticulture (17:32–21:14).

Academic Adventures: UF Experiences, Clubs & Hard Lessons

• UF undergrad years: (16:36–21:14)
  • Erin recounts trying out multiple majors, working at the university newspaper, and wrestling with feelings of being adrift.
  • A “real-deal” landscape cleanup at the Alligator newspaper triggered the realization that she needed to be outside, not in an office (21:33–22:48).
  • Mom’s late-in-life return to school for landscape design at a community college inspired Erin to look at Environmental Horticulture at UF.
• The turning point:
  • Overcame academic setbacks (“D is for done!” – Dr. McConnell, 32:13) and discouragement from advisors, eventually finding a welcoming mentor in Dr. Dennis McConnell.
• Finding community:
  • Experiences joining the Horticulture Club: initial intimidation, making friends, the “cliquey” dynamics, and the importance of student organizations for scholarships and networking (34:15–36:07).

Grad School, Teaching, and Industry Insights

• Graduate school journey:
  • Stint in landscape architecture—realizing it was too “engineery and drafty.”
  • Disillusionment with design culture that minimized plant knowledge.
    • “Plants don’t matter? I disagreed and I did not go back to the class.” – Jason Lee (36:30)
  • Real-world lesson: the importance of knowing both design principles and plant specifics for practical landscape success (39:19–41:19).
• Practical experience:
  • Interned at a wholesale nursery; saw first-hand how the industry’s design/specification disconnect can lead to installation and maintenance headaches (38:46–41:49).
• Developing as an educator and leader:
  • Erin shares experiences TA-ing, teaching residential landscape design, and the camaraderie of student clubs and competitions (49:49–53:25).

The Deep South Landscaping Era

• Origins of a partnership:
  • Erin and Jason recall forming Deep South Landscaping (DSL) after working together on side projects while at UF.
  • Erin brings out a vintage work shirt as a prop—sparking memories of hot, sweat-sticking logos and the payoff of hard work over two years (55:31–57:07).
  • “Was way more profitable when you don’t have to pay taxes.” – Jason Lee, jokingly (57:16)

Memories, Friendships, and the Power of Community

• Recounting friendship formation:
  • Memories of meeting each other at university functions, student events, camping trips, and enduring bonds forged “in the trenches.”
  • “Just flew in like a bunny fly.” – Jordan Upcavage, laughing (60:36)
• Stories of college hijinks:
  • Tales of drum circles in Maryland, late nights at horticulture conferences, and the vital role of mentors and friends in professional development.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On growing through failure:
  • “Here we say, D is for done.” – Dr. Dennis McConnell, as quoted by Erin (32:13)
• On industry knowledge gaps:
  • “You still have to know what plants to put in—right plant in the right place.” – Jason Lee (40:15)
• On club dynamics:
  • “We got accused of being cliquey… but you can come have a good time with us, too.” – Erin Alvarez (49:11)
• On Deep South Landscaping swagger:
  • “It’s so hot… when you sweat it sticks to your back. It’s like a little homunculus.” – Erin Alvarez on early work shirts (55:57)
• On the long-game of business development:
  • “Relationship building takes time… could take years. Once you get the flywheel spinning, the connections will really start paying dividends in 2027.” – Jason Lee (63:19–64:15)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|----------------| | 00:47–06:30 | Weekend plans, work-life balance, field banter | | 14:00–15:44 | Erin’s childhood introduction to nature | | 16:36–21:14 | College major changes, early work experiences | | 21:33–22:48 | Realization: outdoor work brings happiness | | 32:13 | “D is for done” – key academic turning point | | 34:15–36:07 | Joining the Horticulture Club, making connections | | 36:30 | Jason’s experience with LA classes undervaluing plants | | 38:46–41:49 | Wholesale nursery insights, industry disconnects | | 49:49–53:25 | Horticulture competitions, campus adventures | | 55:31–57:16 | Deep South Landscaping — humble beginnings | | 60:36 | “Just flew in like a bunny fly.” – Erin’s social arrival | | 63:19–64:15 | The patience required in business development |

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Tone and Energy

• Conversational & irreverent: The hosts and Erin play off each other with inside jokes, friendly jabs, and a down-to-earth tone.
• Reflective and instructive: Candid stories about mistakes, detours, and opportunities create a roadmap that’s both honest and uplifting for aspiring “green” professionals.
• Rich with nostalgia: Longtime friendships, campus memories, and “how we met” stories abound, painting a picture of the green industry as one held together by people, not just plants.

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Takeaways

• Finding Your Fit: Erin’s path illustrates that often, finding your calling means following what feels natural—even if it’s not a straight line.
• The Importance of People: Clubs, teams, and mentors turn career confusion into confidence and help build lifelong networks.
• Plant Knowledge is Power: In an industry where “the plant doesn’t matter,” being the one who actually knows their stuff is a tremendous asset.
• Growth Takes Time: Whether it’s friendships, professional confidence, or business development—success is rooted in patience and persistence.

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Next Episode Preview

• Erin will return to discuss her current role at Sky Frog Landscape, tackling business development and the long game of growing a service company in a competitive market.

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For listeners: This episode is both a blueprint and an anthem for anyone blazing an unconventional trail in landscaping or tree care. Packed with practical wisdom, real-life gaffes, and the reminders that it’s okay to get a “D” as long as you keep showing up, “DSL, Drum Circles, and Deep Roots” is a celebration of finding your footing—and your tribe—in the dirt.

Transcript

[Jason Lee]

Welcome to Green side Up, the perfect podcast for small business entrepreneurs looking to cultivate success in the landscaping and tree care industry. Join Jason Lee, a seasoned landscaper, and Jordan Upkavage, a true tree whisperer, as they share their wealth of experience and insights to navigate the challenges of growing your business. Get ready to hear real life stories, practical solutions, and invaluable advice that will empower you to thrive amidst the chaos of entrepreneurship. And now, let's keep the Green side Up with your hosts, Jason Lee and Jordan Upkevich.

All right, welcome back to this week's episode of Green side Up Podcast. Jordan, it is great to see you again live in Sky Palm Studios.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah, man. And it's not just me. There's some hot chick sitting to my right shoulder.

[Jason Lee]

We are joined. Aaron has already been on the show, but now we are going to have a more formal episode with Ms. Aaron Alvarez.

[Jordan Upkavage]

I think it's Erin Bunny Fly Alvarez. Oh, he's a bunny fly. I think that's her. Her real name.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Thank you. Thank you.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Spirit name.

[Aaron Alvarez]

That would be an honor considering the origin of bunny flies. So thank you for that.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah. Well, thank you for taking time out of your day, slaving away and pretending to do whatever Jason thinks that you do. And yeah. Came over here to chew the fat with us for a little bit.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Thanks for having me.

[Jordan Upkavage]

You know, we can ting tong here for a little.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yeah.

[Jason Lee]

So we had a more formal episode of Landscape Radio recap before.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yes.

[Jason Lee]

But then now we can. We can tell our friendship story and our business stories and whatever other fun stories might come to mind.

[Aaron Alvarez]

The real deal.

[Jason Lee]

It's always any stories.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Face Ventura.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Well, you were just telling us about you're going to go. You might go kayaking because it's Friday afternoon. Right. And we're like, hey, what are you going to do this weekend? And we talked about shooting guns, we talked about monkeys. And then it turned really quickly into chicaca and bumblebee tuna and Ace Ventura to pick everybody up on the past five minutes of the important things that we are actually doing here for multimillion

[Aaron Alvarez]

dollar businesses, solid components to any weekend.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah. So what are you going to do? You're going to go have taco Friday, Meatloaf Friday? We're going to Las Margares after this. What's your weekend look like?

[Aaron Alvarez]

Maybe tonight might be out. It's been a. I've been cooking all week, so maybe some peppers, little margs and fajitas.

[Jason Lee]

Oh, that sounds good.

[Jordan Upkavage]

All right.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yeah, they have. There's one of those Places that you can get the small margarita, and they bring it and intentionally put it in a fishbowl so that people go, oh, I ordered this small. Yeah, that's that. But it's good. It's solid. Little local. Not local. It's like a regional chain.

[Jordan Upkavage]

I could see burns's dad or uncle when they. I ordered a. Can you believe it?

[Aaron Alvarez]

Excuse me. I asked for the small margarita.

[Jordan Upkavage]

It's a good value.

[Jason Lee]

I wanted the medium fishbowl.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yeah, exactly.

[Jordan Upkavage]

And so then what are you gonna

[Aaron Alvarez]

do on Saturday and Sunday? Saturday I've got a bunch of stuff to plant. Like, it's that time of year when the things I had in the greenhouse or the area. The yard I call the greenhouse, have overwintered. And now they're starting to outgrow their pots and need watering, which means I need to plant them.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Let's put it in the ground time.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yeah. So what do we call that? Yard work or just taking care of my babies?

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah, yard work.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yeah. Kayaking, though. We might go kayaking. Yeah.

[Jordan Upkavage]

A little Saturday yakage.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Little yakage. See if I can see some manatees.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Hmm.

[Jason Lee]

They kind of.

[Jordan Upkavage]

You know, what I've done before and it didn't work. It's probably a felony, But I have trolled heads of lettuce down a river before with no hook.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Right.

[Jordan Upkavage]

But just to see if I could get them. It doesn't work. But I have trolled lettuce before. I've told a lot of plastic lures. I've trolled live bait. I mean, iceberg. It was romaine. You know, I want to get them the vitamins.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Right. You know, they need the iron, the nutrition.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah. Plus, have you ever tried to troll something round? Like, imagine trolling a disco ball. It doesn't track as well as something more torpedo shaped, like romaine. You gotta do romaine butt first, of course. Right? Like an arrow. Pointy side, heavy side, feathers on the end. I mean, come on.

[Jason Lee]

Just gotta wedge out the iceberg, man. Wedge it out.

[Jordan Upkavage]

And that takes effort. And then it's gonna fall apart. Jason.

[Jason Lee]

Oh, I'm not a lettuce expert, bud.

[Aaron Alvarez]

You just get you a nut bag and put some spring mix.

[Jason Lee]

Now we're pulling a chum bag with spring mix. What are we talking about here? Well, we got.

[Jordan Upkavage]

What a great show this is. Welcome, everybody, to greenside. Up the next hours of absolute nonsense.

[Aaron Alvarez]

We'll talk business, serious business. How are you doing, Jordan? What are you gonna do this weekend?

[Jordan Upkavage]

I have a commercial. Well, I have a birthday party for my Neighbor's kid, Andrew Fucarino, Right. His kid is turning six. So we have a birthday party on Saturday. It is like, race car themed. Nice. Okay. Then the one old neighbor guy is restoring an old McLaren McLaren McLaren race car. So they're going to bring it by and take the kid on a little joyride. Right? So it's race car themed Saturday. And then Saturday night, me and Sawyer, we have the Daddy Daughter dance at school. So we're going to the dance in the cafeteria on Saturday. Sunday. I don't think we have any plans, but I do have a job site I gotta go look at in St. Pete, which is not convenient to go to. I was supposed to look at it last week or earlier in the week, and I never got to it. I never got to it. And then I got an email from Brad. Hey, Jordan. Following up. And I'm like, and my next time to go look at this job site, it's for a customer that's a custom home builder. And we've done probably over a hundred thousand dollars gross revenue for the many different properties that they've built homes on in the past 12 months. And so I don't want to lose them to any other tree guy. Like, I want to be the one and only tree guy. Phone call. So the next time I can see him Monday through Friday is next Friday in seven days. I'm like, damn it, I can't wait. They can't wait that long.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Too long.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So I got to take a trek over to St. Pete one day this weekend on either Saturday or Sunday. Look at it. Get them the bid, be the greatest tree company I can be. And then mix in a rager of a birthday party. Right? And then go to a dance. That'll be cool.

[Aaron Alvarez]

It's a big weekend. Sports, cars, dancing, and then the grocery

[Jordan Upkavage]

store and, you know, all that Olive

[Aaron Alvarez]

Garden, Bed Bath Beyond. Just don't know if there'll be time.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Aaron, I am getting hammered by the taxman so bad. I'm trying to, like, not spend a ton of money. These bastards. I don't know, man. I have three deduction monsters that live in my house that go to school. I claim zero. I still owe thousands of dollars. It ain't fair.

[Aaron Alvarez]

It's not. Who will build the roads? Who will fund the schools? Who will be rich?

[Jason Lee]

Tree guy, Jordan up.

[Aaron Alvarez]

That's right. Thank you, Jordan. Thank you for doing your part.

[Jordan Upkavage]

I can check two out of the three boxes. I got the first ones down pretty good.

[Aaron Alvarez]

No, it's that season. I was just talking client and she was talking about doing her taxes and you know, it's a point of conversation

[Jordan Upkavage]

for us rat bastards, man.

[Aaron Alvarez]

She was lamenting her multi house deductions,

[Jordan Upkavage]

which I feel for multi house deductions,

[Aaron Alvarez]

costs, the taxes of the tax burden of dealing with multiple homes. I don't have that burden myself, so I'm not familiar with it. But I was happy for her and sad.

[Jason Lee]

Well, she has multiple homes then.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Exactly.

[Jason Lee]

Like a great Sky Frog customer she would.

[Aaron Alvarez]

We had a good conversation. She was happy to see me because her dog was not a fan of men. So she was glad when I showed up.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Oh yeah, that must have been hard. Every time you got. All right, I'm gonna stop where that was about to go.

[Aaron Alvarez]

No, but don't.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Jason, how hard is it for you to tuck it every time that you gotta go in there Prior, you gotta waddle like a. Like an opposite. Like a pigeon toed penguin waddling in there.

[Aaron Alvarez]

You think this gorilla tapes for irrigation repair. God.

[Jordan Upkavage]

You gotta let it soak in the bath before you take it off.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Put a little baby oil to loosen the glue.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yep. Gori's waxed like terrazzo floor sealed.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Terrazzo, not the old unsealed.

[Jordan Upkavage]

I'm gonna stop talking for a little bit. Jason, it's your turn.

[Aaron Alvarez]

What are you doing this weekend, Jason?

[Jason Lee]

I don't know what we're doing. Yard work. Oh, Tally texted me last night. Oh yeah, they are in town.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Good.

[Jason Lee]

So I might try to get Keith to go out and adjust the lights tomorrow night in Cedar Key.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yep.

[Jason Lee]

So for our listeners, we have been working in Cedar Key on a residential project we've completed. Turned out very nice. It's starting to hit our social media at Sky Frog Landscape. As of yesterday, it's first post. So we some posts about our Cedar Key project coming out. We did a landscape lighting in Cedar Key and I think we had like nine or 10 pathway lights and or area lights, however you define them. But then we did two down lights from this giant oak tree and they need to be adjusted. So we have to adjust the down lights via ladder.

[Jordan Upkavage]

This is Cedar Key. Is this the live switch house?

[Jason Lee]

Yes.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Where you started doing it for the first time. Okay. The live oak in the back and you talked about air spading and such. Sure. Yeah.

[Aaron Alvarez]

And the deep root feeding and the.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah, yep.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Cabling. They were great clients. They're. They're good clients to work for.

[Jason Lee]

Yeah. So as long as Keith's available or I told her I'd go meet her. Either way, just look at what she's got. It's on my agenda.

[Jordan Upkavage]

How high in the canopy do you

[Jason Lee]

got to put the lights as tall as the lighter reaches.

[Jordan Upkavage]

That's a good answer.

[Aaron Alvarez]

They're up there.

[Jason Lee]

So one of them. One of them just needs to be adjusted down and it's shining through a bunch of the suckers. The sprouts.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Jason.

[Jason Lee]

I don't know the right term.

[Jordan Upkavage]

All three of us have degrees.

[Jason Lee]

Water sprouts. Water suckers.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Water sprouts.

[Jason Lee]

Water sprouts.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Okay, so. So what are suckers?

[Jason Lee]

Excuse me?

[Aaron Alvarez]

What.

[Jordan Upkavage]

What are suckers? I.

[Jason Lee]

It's just shoot. It's a shoot.

[Jordan Upkavage]

And where do. Where do suckers originate?

[Jason Lee]

Oh, sucker. The roots. The roots from the roots. Sorry.

[Aaron Alvarez]

They're not epicormic shoots.

[Jason Lee]

Well, I did not listen very well. I did not listen very well in horticultural physiology. So Orana didn't take Edgilman's class.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So they are. They are water sprouts.

[Jason Lee]

Water sprouts, not root suckers.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Right.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Okay, new metaphor.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Black mangrove.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Oh, I remember that from Gilman's class.

[Jason Lee]

So.

[Aaron Alvarez]

So.

[Jason Lee]

But there are some water sprouts that are not very large.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Lenticel gas exchange

[Jason Lee]

that one of the down lights are shining through. So it is casting. One of her goals was to create shadowing with the down light to have moonlighting whatnot. So it is casting shadows, but it is not angled down towards the ground, but it's angled towards the fence. So there's lots of shadowing on the fence. Now it's gorgeous, which is really nice. And I think that we angle the light down another 10 or 15 degrees and that shadowing will hit out into the lawn. But then we have one down light that is lining a pathway and it has no water sprouts to add that shadowing. And it's pretty bright. So I got to figure that out. We're going to have to move the light. There's not a place to move the light. I need to get an extended shroud to cover the light. I don't know what we're going to do.

[Jordan Upkavage]

You just hot glue a water sprout there.

[Jason Lee]

It might.

[Aaron Alvarez]

That gorilla tape comes in handy, but

[Jason Lee]

looking at the tree, it's always on them. There are some water sprouts that are close, and I think within a year that they grow.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah, that's cool.

[Jason Lee]

Or we take one of them and glue it in front of the. I mean, you've got me thinking now. It's like, well, could we tie a sprout? You never know.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Just something. Just plant healthcare seems to be all the buzz in the green industry right now. Are you like many business owners that don't know how or where to start, or are you looking to add a new tool to your PHC toolbox?

[Jason Lee]

Mitigro is an innovative product that focuses on root and so soil health. A different approach than loading up the ground with more npk. Mitigro is a blend of mycorrhizae, fungi, bacteria, vitamin B and iba, which is a rooting hormone.

[Jordan Upkavage]

The concept is simple. More roots equals a healthier and more robust plant. This simple concept is exactly why both Jason and I have incorporated mitigro into our PhD programs. Deep Root applications on my end for mature or struggling trees, soil drenches and spray applications for when Jason installs trees and installs new sod.

[Jason Lee]

Give Mitigro a shot for your Their product is easy to apply and no special licenses are needed. Visit mitogrowpro.com to learn more. That's M I T O G-R-O-W P R O.com Ideally, she wanted the down lights, like way up in the tree, like up where you would need to lift. But for us, and for the excess of her yard, it's not accessible unless you either remove landscaping or trespass.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Or you climb the tree, or you

[Jason Lee]

climb the tree or you trespass on the neighbor's property to get a lift in. So that will be a discussion. If she wants some higher up in the tree, then her tree guy, Mr. Duran, can come out and we can assist him perfect with his placement of the tree. That's up to her.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yeah.

[Jason Lee]

So that's what I'm doing this weekend. All right.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Well, that's kind of cool.

[Jason Lee]

Yeah.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So what do. Go ahead.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Well, I say everybody's going to the coast for jobs. You're going to say, Pete, he's going to Cedar Key.

[Jordan Upkavage]

That's where the money is.

[Aaron Alvarez]

I ordered the large margarita.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So, Aaron, we've been friends for, oh, gosh, a while. Here's what I really don't know is how did you get interested in the green industry? Aaron Alvarez is a girl who likes unicorns and rainbows and whatever the hell you like.

[Aaron Alvarez]

That's pretty close.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Well, I have a pretty high success rate when I go there with anybody. How did you start thinking that something photosynthesis based would pique your interest for career in lieu of being a nurse or a veterinarian or a paleontologist?

[Aaron Alvarez]

Good question. I can't say there was one point where I was like, this is it, it's happening. But growing up as a kid, we played outside a Lot I grew up. I was born in. I'm a Florida native. I was born in Tampa, but we moved around a lot till I was about five and then we moved to Atlanta when I was five into a house that had woods in the back and a creek and. Well, we called it a creek. It was a ditch, but we called it a creek and it went to a creek that we played in. So suffice it to say, I was outside all the time as a kid. I was either inside reading books or I was outside digging in the dirt and grubbing around like a little dirtbag child and doing various outside things. So for me, I think part of it was I knew I've always been comfortable outside. When I was little, we moved into that house. Mom started doing yard work. And it was just what we did. We'd go outside, we'd garden, we'd go outside, we'd plant tulips. She had a little bed. I wanted a bed. So I got dusty millers and tulips to plant and have my own little

[Jordan Upkavage]

dusty millers, your favorite annual.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yeah, my little, like, landscape bed. And when we moved, you know, we had a little garden. And mom always did bookkeeping and accounting work when she wasn't taking care of, you know, my brother. She stayed home a lot as a stay at home mom, but I never had that. Someone was in the green industry growing up. We didn't have anybody in the family, but everybody in the family worked. My dad worked in electronics. My grandparents had a ceramic studio. My grandfather was a bus driver. Everybody worked. I always thought that I was going to go into something sciency. I was a big science nerd. I had a microscope. I'd go find stuff outside and take it home and put it on a slide and look at it when I was a kid. And so I definitely was going to life sciences, but when I was in college, I couldn't decide what I wanted to get my degree. And I thought I wanted to be a vet. So I was pre vet and had a zoology major and then went out on my first research trip with. And I know y' all have probably heard the story, but went on. Oh, you haven't? Okay. Went on my first research trip with a grad student. Because that's what you did when you were an undergrad.

[Jordan Upkavage]

They're like, so are we talking University of Florida?

[Aaron Alvarez]

I'm sorry? Yes, University of Florida.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So you started as a freshman at University of Florida.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Started as a freshman at uf.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Okay.

[Aaron Alvarez]

And came straight out of high school when I was in high school, I wanted to go to Emory because that's where I had. Had lived in Atlanta.

[Jason Lee]

Yeah.

[Aaron Alvarez]

We moved back down to Tarpon Springs, Palm harbor area when I was in seventh grade.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Okay.

[Aaron Alvarez]

And so we'd ping pong back and forth between Atlanta and Florida. Our family was either in Tampa or Atlanta at any given time. And so when I left high school, I thought I was going to be a vet or perhaps my family wanted me to go into med school. Of course, you know, my aunt wanted me to be a doctor and go to Duke and do all that, which she wanted to do. So I applied to Duke and Emory and uf. I got into Duke and uf, and UF was the bill that my parents wanted to pay. And fast forward, I put myself through school. They helped me in my freshman year, but I pretty much did work and everything through school myself. But that was a smart decision. So I went to uf, got an English degree.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So you're. I am a freshman. I'm studying English. I thought it was zoology.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Sorry. Yes, I studied zoology, but I started. Started as a zoology major, switched to political science because there was an election, and I got really excited about, like, guerrilla tactics for political elections.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Okay, what year?

[Aaron Alvarez]

Oh, this was 98, probably.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Okay, so this was before W04.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yes.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Okay, so are we talking Al Gore and who was Al Gore against?

[Aaron Alvarez]

There was Bob Dole. There was Bob Dole. Bob Dole's peanut butter. That was. That was probably the election before or the same election.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah, John Kerry.

[Aaron Alvarez]

So Kerry was later.

[Jason Lee]

Yeah.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Bush W04, beat Carrie.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Correct.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Right.

[Aaron Alvarez]

And that was the dangling chad.

[Jordan Upkavage]

The hanging. The pregnant chad. The dangling. Yeah, Yep. Yep. So who was. Who was 20. 20. Was that Bush's first term?

[Aaron Alvarez]

20.

[Jason Lee]

True. 2,000.

[Aaron Alvarez]

2,000.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah, yeah, 2,000.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Clinton. Clinton. And.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Oh, gosh, no, because Clinton did two terms. Yeah, I think it was George H. Bush two terms.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yep.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Clinton two terms. W. Two terms.

[Aaron Alvarez]

That's what it was. So these. This was Clinton era.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Okay.

[Aaron Alvarez]

But I should have prefaced this. I wasn't into national politics.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Oh.

[Aaron Alvarez]

I was into Florida politics and U.S. politics. So there was a. It was a hotbed of college political activity when I was an undergrad, like

[Jordan Upkavage]

governor and Senate seats or more localized commissioners.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Governor, Senate, and then like UF Student government politics.

[Jason Lee]

Ooh.

[Jordan Upkavage]

All right.

[Aaron Alvarez]

I know, because at the time, I was like, oh, our money. And we're going to represent our, you know, everybody. And there's a system, and we got to beat the system.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yeah.

[Jordan Upkavage]

All right.

[Aaron Alvarez]

So that was me. And we Had a whole group that were really active and they were people who were forward facing. And my ex was one of those people who wanted to be elected to office and be very official and presentable, and that wasn't for me. I wanted to be with the guy who had, like, the rooster who was sabotaging department of housing because he's throwing Molotov cocktails. No, no, not that bad.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Clogging the air vents and releasing mold spores. And I got these 10,000 lady beetles. We're gonna release them in the ductwork secretly.

[Aaron Alvarez]

We discovered the air potato beetle that way. But no, it wasn't destructive. It was just. To me, it was exciting to think about how everything, you know, I was just. I was young.

[Jordan Upkavage]

We're gonna make a change.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Exactly.

[Jordan Upkavage]

All right.

[Aaron Alvarez]

And all through high school, I was in. You name it, I was in the club. I was in environmental. The environmental club, not environmental hort. That was later. I was in the literary magazine. I did, you know, all band and color guard and all the things. So I was active. So at UF zoology. Didn't want to do zoology because I realized that if you stayed with it, you were going to have to study one thing and get so narrow. Like, I saw the focus of academia narrowing, and I didn't want that. I wanted to be broad and look at lots of different things, not study one organism on one rock for my entire career, which is what I saw.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yep.

[Aaron Alvarez]

So then I looked at political science, and once I got over the exciting part, I went, this is all just fake. Whatever. It wasn't for me. And I was left with, okay, I'm good at reading, I'm good at writing. I'll get an English degree and just finish. Because I couldn't stay in school forever, you know, you got to do something. And at the time, I was working at the Alligator newspaper, working in the advertising department and was finishing. I had finished my English degree and I'd been promoted to manager.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Is the Alligator the UF newspaper?

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yeah. Well, technically it's independent, but yeah, it's the student newspaper for uf.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Okay. It's not the Alachua County Tribune?

[Aaron Alvarez]

No, it was the student newspaper. And I started out doing nighttime dummying, like laying out the newspaper. And then I did phone answering. And one of my jobs was cutting out all of the ads that ran and putting them in, stamping them with a date and putting them in file folders, which today is unthinkable. But that was one of my jobs.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yes.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yeah. And I liked it so much that I just stayed there After I graduated. And my happiest day was when. And I was newly married to my first husband. We had an apartment. We had a cat. You know, we were just starting our family out, and everyone's like, what are you gonna do? And I was coming home every day and eating an entire jar of salsa and a whole bag of chips. Cause I was miserable. I'd get home, and I would just house chips and salsa or some snack and go about my life. And I was like, so there has to be something else. One day, we did a landscape cleanup at the Alligator offices. And it was in the olden days down University Avenue. Now it's all high rises and stuff, but it was across from this restaurant called Farah's. And I don't know what's there now. McDonald's is there now. But we were doing a landscape cleanup, and I got to work, and I was wearing my overalls and my little Converse All Stars and had my bandana on, and I was so happy. We were pulling dirt, weeds, and there was weeds growing up through gravel and crappy landscape fabric. And we're hacking things down, and all the newspaper advertising people and journalists are just miserable. And I'm like, this is great. They were very. Yeah, it was. That night kind of dawned on me that there's something different here. And I remember telling my mom, and she's like, erin, this is. You don't need to work in an office. You need to be doing something else.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah.

[Aaron Alvarez]

And so about that time, she went back to school in Atlanta for landscape design at a community college, just because she wanted to. And she had been watching HGTV and wanted to do Hampton Court and learned about all that stuff, and it blew my mind. I was like, you can go to school for this, mom. And she's like, yeah. I was like, we just do this. This is just what we do. We plant tulips. We do little gardens. I had no clue about landscaping or horticulture as an industry or career path. And I went and looked in landscape architecture at uf, Was interested, but realized there weren't enough plant classes. And so I went back to. I think I found environmental horticulture. And I talked to Dr. Dennis McConnell, who. Legend. He's awesome. I know y' all didn't know him because he retired, but I had gone to see a couple of advisors and was discouraged from returning to UF after I'd finished my English degree because I had one bad semester. I had a semester where I was unhappy, and I knew where my future was leading me. And I completely blew off. Skipped class every day with my friend Alexis, who's. She's a real one. Shout out, Alexis. But we would stay. We'd skip class and play Donkey Kong.

[Jordan Upkavage]

All right.

[Aaron Alvarez]

And you know that nightmare where you go to a final exam and the professor's like, all right, everyone, turn in your blue books. Have a great summer break. Thank you for a great semester. That happened to me in real life. I got there with my blue book, ready to take the exam because I was that cocky a hole who was like, oh, I'll read the books, and I don't need to come to class or study. I'll just get an A because I'm so smart. And that had worked for me most of the time. This time he outsmarted me. It was an American literature professor.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So was there no exam?

[Aaron Alvarez]

No exam. It was a take home.

[Jordan Upkavage]

And you missed it.

[Aaron Alvarez]

I missed it because I'd skip school like a schmuck. I was playing Donkey Kong with Alexis.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah. Yeah. No, I tracked that. But it was a take home test, and you never received the test to do it. So you got AS zero and you thought you were taking an exam and you weren't. And you didn't know anybody in class to tip you off because you didn't go to class.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Exactly. That was the. That was the dark days, Jordan. That was before horticulture.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah.

[Aaron Alvarez]

So. And I looked at him and he looked at me and he knew what was up. And I went, thank you very much. And I handed him my empty book and I left. And that happened in a couple. Some version of that happened that semester. It was a summer.

[Jordan Upkavage]

With age comes wisdom. Yep. Because before we ever just go screw off, we gotta have a mole.

[Aaron Alvarez]

You do.

[Jordan Upkavage]

You gotta have someone in.

[Aaron Alvarez]

How did I not listen?

[Jason Lee]

You have to have Christina Tan in physics and you have to hand her the clicker to click you into class.

[Jordan Upkavage]

You need Cara Monroe to sit in front of you, who's skinny enough for me to see over her shoulder so I can get a C and have no idea what physics is.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yep.

[Jason Lee]

Shout out to Christina because she clicked. We stopped going to physics class. We couldn't understand the professor. Me, Rob Carson. She'd click us all in.

[Jordan Upkavage]

I think we had the same professor.

[Jason Lee]

And then we'd go. And then we'd go and take the tests and fail. I failed every test. But the curve got me a D plus. And so I graduated.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah.

[Jason Lee]

Yay.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Did you have the guy that. Who was Austrian or something? Or Belgian. And he would talk about his Tums

[Jordan Upkavage]

no, instead of thumbs.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Thumbs.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah.

[Aaron Alvarez]

He would be like, oh, my Tums. He would do demonstrations in class. And two or three times during the semester, I took him. He burned his. Burned himself. And he would go, oh, my Tums. But it was saying thumbs. And so that became a whole. Like, there were several.

[Jason Lee]

There was a language barrier there where I couldn't understand the accent.

[Aaron Alvarez]

He had a pretty thick accent, but.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah, like Mandarin. Very Chinese.

[Aaron Alvarez]

I remember that. I got through thanks to Allison, Jen, and Grace. We had regular meetups at the coffee shop and Allison and her flashcards that were alphabetized and heaven help you if you got them out of order. But I went to class once I got into classes I liked, but it was not having people who were also going through the same thing that you could get together with regularly.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Physics was the only class I cheated in.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Oh, it sucked so bad.

[Jordan Upkavage]

And I just straight raw dog. Cheated the whole damn time. Things. The only class I bonafide cheated my way through every. I took calculus twice because I didn't cheat. Yeah, I didn't cheat the first time.

[Jason Lee]

I tried to cheat and failed. I tried. I tried. And guess what? After you try to cheat once and you still fail the test, you don't try to cheat anymore because you just know you're screwed.

[Aaron Alvarez]

It's just extra demoralizing.

[Jason Lee]

It's like, oh, I've never cheated before. Let me try. Let me just try to write this equation down on my arm so I'll remember it.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Oh, the cheat sheets.

[Jason Lee]

Yeah, it didn't work. It's just like I still was. Yeah.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Did you ever get allowed one index card? And you would. It was before we had, like, printers and shit everywhere. You would write so on. On the. Not the 0.7 mechanical pencil that was way too fat. You needed the 0.5. And if even made a 0.3, where you're always cracking the lead and you'd crackle it at the point where you write so damn tiny on the whole

[Aaron Alvarez]

thing and still not even use it.

[Jordan Upkavage]

No, because you couldn't read the chicken shit that you just wrote down.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yeah, that was always a scam. When you get to a class and they give you a cheat sheet, you're like, this is problematic. That cheat sheet's a ruse. That's not gonna help me at all.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah, but it's really a brainwashing exercise to get you to learn the material by making your own cheat sheet.

[Aaron Alvarez]

See, I know that now.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So that's why you make flashcards. When you go into planid to learn Latin, if The exercise of making those teaches you the material.

[Aaron Alvarez]

But it's no good to tell people that. I tried telling students that all the time when I was teaching and that you gotta learn it it yourself. But the whole, like, writing it down. You're inadvertently sneaky. Study. Yeah.

[Jordan Upkavage]

You know, I still have all of my flashcards from Plan id. I work. So I printed color pictures.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Oh.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Cut them out. Taped them on. At the Latin name on one side. The family name, common name picture. Defining characteristics like family. Lamasiae has a square stem.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Facts.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah. Salvia.

[Jason Lee]

Duh.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Right. But stupid shit like that and. All right. What are the armpit hairs in the vein axles of a shoe? Mardok. Well, those are freaking tomantos. Everybody knows that. Yeah.

[Aaron Alvarez]

With the little mites.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yes. But I work, so I couldn't throw it away. It's still living in my desk because it's. I. There's emotional sweat. And you know what's holding it together? A black hair tie. Scrunchie from when I had long hair.

[Aaron Alvarez]

I was gonna say. Is it a hair tie?

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Nice.

[Jordan Upkavage]

You bet.

[Aaron Alvarez]

That's awesome. I still. Mine are so. Because we had digital cameras and printers, but it was so expensive to print things like if it wasn't a fun picture. So I just have dried out little pieces of plant tape to the back of my index cards. I would dry them in my plant ID book. Dr. Dagan. And then there were two landscape architects. I can't remember their names. They used to try to cheat off me all the time. They probably did. But I didn't let them intentionally.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah. You know how I remember La Masier. That is one plant I cheated off of. Urias for Urius. Yeah. It was during, like, test time. And it's like square. And I couldn't remember the family name. And he's like, l. A M. I

[Jason Lee]

was like, oh, thanks, bro.

[Jordan Upkavage]

But that learned me the material, which is the purpose of going to school. Right? Doesn't matter how you learn it.

[Jason Lee]

Nope.

[Aaron Alvarez]

You remembered your was awesome. I went and visited him. He was at Fololi Gardens for his internship. I remember him going out there for his internship. And I went to see him. He was talking about being so happy he could work outside and sweat and the sweat would actually evaporate because he'd done so much landscape work for his dad. He was in heaven in California. I was like, yeah, man. This is. Is this is the place to be.

[Jason Lee]

Yeah. What teaches you the plan? Identification is having to teach the plan. After taing for two semesters on Aaron's recommendation that I should do that, then it's stuck.

[Aaron Alvarez]

It's stuck permanently.

[Jordan Upkavage]

And I too ta'd two times. It was either via your recommendation or Aaron's recommendation or Aaron's recommendation to you, to you. Recommend to me. So if anybody out there is in plan ID, teach it, all three of us recommend you teach it for two semesters.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yes. least. Yeah.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So where were we in the story?

[Aaron Alvarez]

I don't remember. I'm all over the place.

[Jason Lee]

Starting horticulture.

[Jordan Upkavage]

You were weeding at the newspaper office.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yep, weeding at the newspaper office. And went and talked to Dr. McConnell and after having failed, I don't know, two semesters, I didn't completely fail out of school, but got bad grades. Bad enough to where an advisor who then became VP of ifas, an advisor in the Academic Advising center, laughed at me as I was in her office asking to go back to school for another degree and said, you better just go to Santa Fe. Which at the time was like, oh, slap.

[Jordan Upkavage]

She took her glove off and she did.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Sitting with her feet up on her desk eating a Subway sandwich with red high top Converse. And the worst part was I thought she was so cool. And then she did that to me and I was like, I'll be back. And I was, I went back. But yeah, I went to Dr. McConnell in environmental hort. We chatted about Hemingway because he also had an English background and he told me all kinds of stories. And then at the end of it, I didn't know if I'd been admitted because I was there applying as a post baccalaureate student, which back then they'd let you get 1,000 bachelor's degrees. They didn't care. Now it's get out, get out, get out. But back then UF was like, sure, get 10 degrees, stay as long as you want, as long as you pay us. So I was talking to him about that and I was like, Dr. McConnell, I'm really concerned about this D I have in my transcript, these couple Ds. And he goes, well, Aaron, here we say D is for done. And I was, I wanted to weep. I was just so, like, relieved. Not that I relied on that, but it had been the barrier. And then he was just really warm. And at the time I didn't know it, but he was a plant guy. You know, once you meet people in the green industry or people who are into plants, there's that very. That's not only plants, but certain people give you that down to earth welcoming vibe. He was like a hug. He has passed away. Since. But his legacy lives on. He advised a lot of people, but, yeah, then I started in environmental horticulture and never look back. It was just where I needed to be.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Dang. So then you went to. You were studying environmental horticulture. You did the whole bit. You were part of the horticulture club.

[Aaron Alvarez]

I was right, Yep. That was also Dr. McConnell's advice. I was self supporting. And I said, all right, well, how do I get myself through school? Cause I can't keep working full time and go to school full time. And I knew myself, I couldn't do both. I had to have both feet in one area. I could work part time, but that couldn't be my career. And he said, you need to join the club. If you join the club, you'll get scholarships. But that's the easiest way to get scholarship funds in IFAs or CALs is to join this club. And I went, okay. And I went to my first meeting and they were so clicky and intimidating. And I had. I had. I was like, who are these people? How am I gonna be friends with these? I don't know any of them. And, you know, they were all having a good cause. It was the first meeting of the fall after they'd all been to Italy together. And so me, stranger, you know, comes in and they're all showing pictures and, you know, chit chatting. And I wasn't intimid, but it was daunting, let me say, to get in and be like, hey, I'm here for the club, you know, and we were doing an icebreaker. And it was one of those where you, like, toss a thing to somebody and they catch it. You stand in a circle, right? And it's like you throw it. I throw you a beanbag and you catch it and you have to say my name. And then you throw it to him and he has to say your name and my name. And then you throw it to somebody else and they go back, right? And so we're throwing, and I get to my turn and I throw it to Jen Parrish. And I didn't know her at the time, never met her, and she catches it and she looks at me and she goes to say my name. It doesn't quite say it. And my obnoxious ass goes, aaron. And I guess it came out spicier than I intended it to. And I remember, I'll never forget the expression on her face. She was like, oh, my. What the hell is this girl's problem? But we talked about. I know. You know, after that, we became Best friends. And she got me through school.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Aaron. Duh.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Aaron, I don't know you from Adam, but I'm gonna be obnoxious in this meeting. I've never been to you before. This is a great way to make friends in a new club, is just to be a complete jerk to the nicest person in the group.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yeah. Classic Aaron. But anyway, once I got past that first meeting, I realized everybody's cool, every super warm. Then I started seeing people in classes after that. You know how it is. You join the club and you're like, oh, I saw you the other night, and we're both in annual perennials together. But, yeah, I got a bachelor's, second bachelor's in environmental horticulture. Technically, it's interdisciplinary studies because I did public gardens management. Right, Right. And then thought I wanted to do landscape architecture after that, went back, started la, Found it to be way too engineery and drafty for me.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah, Too caddish.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Way too much cad. Got so sick of doing roadway alignment. And then because I was a ta, the thing that was like the straw that broke the camel's back was I was sitting in our plant selection class, who was taught at the time by the chair of the LA department. And he was a nice man, obviously very experienced, but he was talking about plants that would or would not grow in Gainesville. And there were a couple plants that we had just learned, like, literally that week in Plant ID Lab that were outside the landscape architecture building. And he was like, there's none of these in Gainesville. You can't find these here. And my students are turning, no, I didn't. I was keeping my mouth shut. Right. I learned a little bit of a lesson where I'm like, I'm not going to correct this man in the middle of his lecture. But my students were turning around, looking at me, going, you're in. Are you gonna say something? And like, I remember it was. I feel like it might have been Brett. It was one of those people who was Yalls contemporaries in class, flat out said, well, Erin taught this this week, and she told us it does grow here. And then I could feel myself just like, ooh, shred. And he asked me about it. I was like, well, there's actually. There is one in McCarty Courtyard, but that's a protected area. Da, da, da, da, da.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Or is it the hass avocado tree?

[Aaron Alvarez]

There's the avocado tree. There was a Parodis palm, is what he was talking about, the Acyla raphae wrightii. And I was like y if actually if it's protected, it does pretty well.

[Jordan Upkavage]

It's a microclimate.

[Aaron Alvarez]

So. But yeah, that was that. In that semester I think I was doing all construction and drafting except that

[Jason Lee]

class and landscape architects have that effect on people.

[Aaron Alvarez]

They do.

[Jason Lee]

I was going to get a landscape architecture minor and I made it through four out of five classes. And on my fifth class we got into an argument about plants and they said that plants don't matter was the basis of the argument that they don't have anything to do with landscape design or landscape architecture. And I disagreed and I did not go back to the class. I probably wouldn't drop the class and told Lisa hall, our academic advisor I'm not getting a landscape architecture minor. And that might be another reason why I wasn't Lisa's favorite. You need to just finish your class. No, I don't. I need to not go speak with these people again because I don't value their opinions anymore.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yeah.

[Jordan Upkavage]

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[Jason Lee]

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[Jordan Upkavage]

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[Jason Lee]

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[Aaron Alvarez]

Like the first. I remember the first design studio because if you didn't have an undergrad they would put you in the studio for your master's degree. Because I started with a master's for the master's program so we had to go during the summer. It was like the remedial catch up studio for those who hadn't had undergrad and we were in there with the seniors who were in the undergrad LA program but we were first year master's students and they all said that same thing. I would start with plants in mind. I'd see a Space and okay, I picture this here and that there. And now I understand the wisdom of it. They don't want you to get hung up on a plant to where you don't think about the possibilities of the space. But as a kid, or as a kid, as a student, I was thinking, and I was kind of a kid at the time, well, if I know the perfect plant, why wouldn't I have it in mind? And they're talking about form. But yeah, that attitude really bothered me.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So what are you supposed to think about if you don't think about the plant, think about what you do with the space. Is that what that's about?

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yeah. You'd say instead of saying I want a Schumart o', Kerry, you'd say I want a large ovate deciduous tree and then pick the species based on the site and because when I was in horticulture, my very first semester in environmental hort, after I talked to old Dennis McConnell, I started my internship because I was like, I don't want to wait. We're going, let's do this. And so I went and worked at a wholesale nursery and I got to see the industry as a wholesale nursery employee. And that ruined me in a lot of ways. But it also gave me a heads up about what designers do and how that relates to.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So it took me a few seconds to connect the dots on the statement that you made, Jason, of the plant doesn't matter. I think I understand. It's not that plants don't matter. It's the specific flavor of plant doesn't matter. What matters is the characteristics and feel and texture and shape and size that matters. Then the plant fits the description of what you want.

[Jason Lee]

And in the specific argument that I was in, I agreed that the function comes first, the design comes first, but then you still have to know what plants to put in, where the plants go. That's where we were lost in our argument. I agreed on their point of design. It's like I agree with you. It's like me arguing with Dan. It's like I agree with you on this point. I said, but this still matters at the end of it. So maybe it's not the same because I was agreeing with Dan 100 when we were having our argument. But the, the fundamental of you still have to know what plants to put in to put the right plant in the right place.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Like zone wise.

[Jason Lee]

Zone wise, they have no. Well, that's why we as landscape contractors have to fix so many landscape architect plans because they still don't know, because they don't give a. Like, at the end of the day,

[Jordan Upkavage]

it's like, why do I see Shoe Mart Oaks in city of Tampa? And they're all going to die. And it's the stupidest decision ever.

[Jason Lee]

Yes, exactly.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yep.

[Jason Lee]

Yes.

[Aaron Alvarez]

And it's not. It may. Worst case, they don't care. Right. Best case, they care, but they're misinformed. So. So many of them have zero horticulture experience for a while. My dream job was to be a horticulture consultant at an LA firm because I could see the design side and I could see the plant side, but there's no way I'd be too crazy. But that to your point, they will. You get an LA in Michigan who's working for a big international planning design firm. Right. And they get a job for a huge site in West Shore Plaza and then they look up in a book what plants grow in Florida.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Oh, B6. It's fine.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Exactly.

[Jordan Upkavage]

But it could be a cuspy fringy and then they spec it and you can't get the damn thing.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yep. Or a California nine. It's not a Florida nine, it's a California nine. Well, what does that mean?

[Jordan Upkavage]

I don't know.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Well, I do. And it's a huge difference. Right. But they don't teach that in LA school. And that's. That's part of.

[Jason Lee]

And you're right. And some of us probably not that they don't care. It's that they're not being taught because the teachers don't care. Professors. Well, at least all the ones. All the professors at UF that I went to class with didn't give a shit. But that's why like with Bryce, Bryce does construction ability reviews. So for landscape architects, because he's a great contractor and installer and so he's checking to make sure that the right stuff goes in the right places and that's it. So like there. There are people for. There are checks and checks and balances for that.

[Jordan Upkavage]

I need your. I have a project and I need your guidance on this project. Okay. There is a apartment complex being built in Tampa. It's called Six Mile Creek is the area. And I've worked with the builder over the past 10 years on other apartment developments. Being the enzyme with the city of Tampa, the arborist doing all the arboristy things. Well, I referred in a consulting arborist to wear that hat because I don't have time for it. And the consultant did a great job doing what he had to do. We did the tree trimming root pruning. Great job. Now the guy that I've known for a decade goes, jordan, we got this wetland on our piece of property. It's a pond that is 150ft by 50ft, small pond, it's a wetland. And he said, jordan, when you come in the development, that's the money shot. You're going to look at that. You're going to hook right to the clubhouse. The clubhouse is going to look at the pond. The gym and the treadmills are going to look at the pond. He goes, we need to to the owners, I got to give them a number to clean it up and make it look good. Can you do that? I'm like, yeah, well, of course I can do that for you. So we got to handle the environmental protection commission of Hillsborough county, you know, because it's a wetland and we need permits and sign offs to you get rid of invasives and herbicide invasives. Get rid of some natives like willow. They're native, but they can be overtaking and not that pretty. Just like dog fennel. It's a native, but it could be less desirable. Right? So we're gonna have to nuke some of the nativey willows and dog fennels, get rid of the invasives and the whatever the hell invasives that are everywhere and clean up some trees. And so I have a cost from my cousin Miles who's wetland delineation, spray core applicator deal. I got a number for him to handle permits and sign offs and herbicide. I have a number from a landscape architect to design the three cypress here, two maples here, some alligator pickerel, plop, plop, rush thing here. I have his design number, but what I need is what is the installed cost. So if we can look at this circle on the Internet and we can just guess that we're going to have 630 gallons, 103 gallons. And if you could give me like a package, a bronze package is going to be 12 grand installed or a super kick ass package is 22,000 installed. And just I need to give them a bid of here's a package you can buy for 30 grand. It's this for 60 grand it could be this. But I'm trying to estimate an install package where there's no design yet. I got the plug number to make the design, but I don't know a plug number of what it would cost to install. That way I can go to the guy and says, hey, do the buyers want to spend 60 grand?

[Jason Lee]

Spend, that's where you need to find out how much the buyers want to spend. We don't know.

[Jordan Upkavage]

We don't know.

[Jason Lee]

Of course you know.

[Jordan Upkavage]

We don't know if it's 30, we don't know if it's 60.

[Jason Lee]

Yeah, we just don't know. I don't know how much things cost, Jordan. We don't know. Right, so just give us some ideas. So the conundrum of being a landscaper. I want to take off. Oh, please. Reduce. What were you talking to? You're talking to your guy. Oh, let's just make a 3 introduction cut here and a 5 inch reduction cut here. So easy, so easy to bid tree work.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah.

[Jason Lee]

Now you bid landscape. No, but it's, it's.

[Jordan Upkavage]

I'm going to show you this circle and then I want you to spit out X. I want you to say two to nine shade trees, 50 to 103 gallons. And I want you to vomit a number and then I want you to change it to something sexier and spit out a number.

[Jason Lee]

And that's how you come up. I mean, this. You have to come up with just the ballpark. You got to come up. We're gonna have this quantity of shit

[Jordan Upkavage]

so we can know what to design.

[Jason Lee]

Yes. It's like, all right, we're going to come up with this quantity and this is going to be the budget for this quantity. And then we'll come back through and make it pretty.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So we need six beers and then we'll be prepared to do that estimating exercise.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yeah, it's no sweat.

[Jason Lee]

We can help you with that.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Cool.

[Aaron Alvarez]

But how are you going to get in there? What's the access? Can you bring in the machine?

[Jordan Upkavage]

Oh, yeah, this is Tony.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Okay.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Oh, oh. Hand labor only. Yeah. Tree guy you were telling.

[Aaron Alvarez]

What was the story you were telling about the customer and she was so sweet and really high end customer. And you were talking about pricing, but walking under the low branch and getting your crew to like go through a really narrow gate.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah, we did the job. Knocked it out of the park. Couldn't be happier.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Beautiful.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Fricking perfect.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Love it.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Didn't take a leaf off of that adjacent weeping podocarpus. We ducked under it 300 times.

[Aaron Alvarez]

If only you'd filmed that. I would have paid to watch that.

[Jordan Upkavage]

That. Yeah.

[Aaron Alvarez]

The story you told was compelling.

[Jordan Upkavage]

No, they did a great job.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Good.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah, we took two days. Yeah, she was saying that it's like, okay, like, that'll be another thousand bucks. And then like when it was done, I was like, well, this just became a two day project. And it would just double. And I was like, guys, this is going to be. I'm not asking something. I'm asking something ridiculous of you. But we got two days to do

[Jason Lee]

it, so chill out.

[Jordan Upkavage]

It'll be fine. Take your time. Like. All right, we'll get it.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Beer's on the after.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah. It's only a bastard when you don't have time to do it like that. That an un. True, unrealistic timeline for the deliverable. They're looking for Y. Yep. Yeah. Thank you, Switchy.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Love them.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah, Switchy.

[Jason Lee]

Pretty cool.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yep.

[Jason Lee]

We're. We were talking about Tang Plan id.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yeah, Tang Plan id. Okay.

[Jason Lee]

Horticulture club.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Oh, yeah. Join the club.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Then you just stayed in. You stayed in the circuit.

[Aaron Alvarez]

I mean, yeah, basically I kind of. I, I, degree wise.

[Jason Lee]

When did you start? Because you were a grad student. Whenever I started, I started.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Good grief. I started at UF in 95, started in horticulture for my undergrad in 2001, finished with my undergrad in horticulture in 040304 and then went right into grad school. No, that's not true. Yeah, I went into grad school for la, but then halfway through my second semester, I switched over to start doing research and environmental hoard. And that's when Sandrock came. He took me on as his grad student. And originally I was going to be looking at quantifying the value of landscapes. We were going to plant model landscapes and track people's eye movements as they looked. This was back in the early aughts. And then academic new professor hierarchy. He got shuffled to the tree unit Citra, where we laid out a bunch of native and non native research plots. And then Gilman ate that because it was going to be lucrative and awesome. And then I moved to half of a project in Gainesville and half. But yeah, it was early aughts. Like 2004 was when you started five.

[Jason Lee]

Yeah, I started in 2004.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yep. So I'd been there two years because

[Jason Lee]

that was our first trip to planet.

[Aaron Alvarez]

But yeah, I joined the undergrad club. Was in that for two years. I think was president the last year. I think I was president. Yeah, I was president.

[Jordan Upkavage]

And then all the cliquey went away with regime change.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Well, I don't know about that. We got accused of being cliquey. So I could see. I saw how it was on the other side. Like we got accused. It was Jen, Allison, Grace and me, the coffee Clatch. Right. And someone came in the club. Y' all are so Cliquey. I was like, what does that mean? Clicky. We have a good time together, but you can come have a good time with us, too. Like, we're not exclusive.

[Jason Lee]

Well, you have to stand up at the end of the meeting and then offer to have everyone come back and drink beers at your place.

[Aaron Alvarez]

And that'll do it.

[Jason Lee]

That will do it.

[Jordan Upkavage]

And I will be very clicky if you're not coming over and helping me carry my couch from the living room to the backyard. I'm sorry, man. I invited you to my home. You're not coming. You're clicked out, bro.

[Aaron Alvarez]

You're not welcome here, even though you're invited. But, no. I met you in grad school, Jason. Right. Because it was. Sandwich Rock was coaching. And I remember he told me Sandrock

[Jason Lee]

put the team together and brought us to the University of Maryland.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yep. And I remember him asking, was it your first plane ride?

[Jason Lee]

Yeah. First trip on a plane.

[Aaron Alvarez]

I think I sat next to you and we talked about that. Maybe. But Sandrock was like, jason doesn't know anybody yet. He's. He's really promising, so make sure he doesn't get.

[Jason Lee]

You know, I didn't know. I. I didn't know anybody. And where I came from, it didn't matter. It's just like, oh, I'm just going to go home to Putnam County. And we just started hunting alligators. So I was like, no, I'm going to go home every weekend. I just need to get done with school. I'm going to go and work, and we're going to hunt alligators. And then springtime came, and we went to the landscape competition, and Sandrooks was like, oh, you should do this. It's like, oh, no, I don't think so. He's like, no, you should. It'll be fun. You can, you know, drive machinery and do whatever. It's like, okay, whatever. I like driving machinery. So then I remember Aaron coming up as we're walking across campus. She's like, hey, I'm supposed to come talk to you because you're the quiet one and I need to get to know you. And it's like, okay. It's perfect.

[Jordan Upkavage]

They're usually the killers. And I want to make sure you're. I'm not on your list.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yeah, it was funny. Sandrock, I think, because he really liked you, wanted you to get involved, and he wanted to make sure you had, like a. I'm like, I don't think I'm the buddy for this guy. But, yeah, I'll go talk to Him. He seems nice.

[Jason Lee]

Well, then him and Lisa all too. They're like, you should join the horticulture club. It's like, I'm not joining some club. Yep, you should join that. I said, yeah, I'm not joining the club. Then after going. But after going to Planet, it's just like, oh, maybe I'll join the horticulture club. So I did the next fall semester.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yep. Yep. Was that Baltimore?

[Jason Lee]

Baltimore, Yeah.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Y' all know something I don't know?

[Jason Lee]

Well, it was my first plane ride, and I wasn't 21 yet. So everyone gets to the airport and they're pounding booze. It's just like, man, I'd like to have a drink, but I don't know anybody. I should just ask somebody to buy me a drink. And so it's like, okay.

[Aaron Alvarez]

It was like, Burns Barnard, Neil Alina, Justin Scarloff. Justin Scaroff. But a good group. You know, these people, Jordan, like, yeah.

[Jason Lee]

So we get half of them.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Half of them.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah.

[Jason Lee]

So we fly. We go to Maryland. We're doing our thing. Once we got to Maryland, then I got to know John Burns and said, john Burns, will you buy me a case of beer? And he did. And that was very gracious for John for that. But then at the same point in time, don't know Neil. Neil disappears. I don't know Neil at all. Neil disappears, and Neil comes back with great stories. He found a drum circle.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Sounds fitting.

[Jason Lee]

And all these things. And he had an adventure. So he's like, oh, I like Neil. Neil's got all these stories. He seems like a fun guy.

[Aaron Alvarez]

We're in this hotel, and it's got the outside rooms, but it's two story, and the parking lots and the. So you can kind of see across and down. And the room I was in, no shade to the people I was in the room with, if you remember being in. But I didn't. They weren't my people. So I was like, I'm gonna go find somebody else to hang out with. And so I found. I saw the open door and heard the noises and saw the beer. I'm like, that's where I need to be. So we went up there, and it was everybody but we had been to one of those liquor stores that it's like a lounge and the store.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah.

[Aaron Alvarez]

And we go walk in an all college kid like, hey, we're here for beer. Got an underage guy in the parking lot. Da, da da, da da. And it was like the record scratch, you know, when you walked it. Yeah. And. But it Was a night of first. So we get our booze, we go back to the hotel, we're there hanging out. We learned about pennies, something we never knew.

[Jordan Upkavage]

And Neil.

[Jason Lee]

Neil forgot about Sam. Yeah.

[Aaron Alvarez]

And he comes back and it's like, oh, I found a drum circle. I hopped the fence and I found. I heard drums and I followed the drums. And he was gone for like four hours and came back with all these stories about, like, a dog and a drum circle. And that was a fun event. I had never been to Planet. That was my first landscape competition too. But, yeah, it was all.

[Jason Lee]

And then sadly, Dr. Sandrock left after that year.

[Aaron Alvarez]

He did.

[Jason Lee]

And started the demise of the horticulture department.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yep.

[Jason Lee]

Which we should not derail our podcast with.

[Aaron Alvarez]

No, the Environmental Horticulture.

[Jason Lee]

The Environmental horticulture department. So then when did you. So you would have had to have taught residential landscape design that following year, following semester?

[Aaron Alvarez]

It was before that I actually taught residential landscape design, I think before Sanrock even got there, because Nell found out that I had done it professionally and hired me to teach when we didn't have an instructor.

[Jason Lee]

So when I took it with you, it was after Sandrock left.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yeah.

[Jason Lee]

So it would have been in 2005. And that introduced how we started working together.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yep, that's right. Yeah. I forgot. I taught it again.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So y' all had class together.

[Jason Lee]

Aaron was teaching the residential landscape design class.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Got it.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yeah.

[Jason Lee]

Galen was in there with me.

[Aaron Alvarez]

That's right. Y' all sat in the back.

[Jason Lee]

Yep, we sat in the back. Sure did.

[Aaron Alvarez]

I remember that. Yeah. But no, I was teaching landscape. I wasn't full faculty. I was a grad student.

[Jason Lee]

Yeah.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Did we do the front of Fifield? You were there when we did the front of Fifield. Right. Did you help with that install? Okay, so we must have done it right after that.

[Jason Lee]

Yeah.

[Aaron Alvarez]

But yeah, I was working, going to school. So while I was in grad school, I was doing landscape design and actually got in trouble with Sandrock for that because he moved away and left me in the middle of my program. I went to Oregon, fucked off and took another job. And I was there working and allegedly finishing my research with Michelle Scheiber down in Apopka and unsupervised. Aaron is a very adventurous creature. So I didn't have a lot of guidance in my end stage research. So I would, like, go do my research plots, but I could go make money instead of just sitting in the library. So I would go make money and then I would get little jobs and go to the club or Class and say, who wants a landscape job for the weekend? I'll pay you this amount of money. And Jason came out, and I remember after having worked with people watching him and going, I've never worked with anyone who, like, works harder than me and doesn't have to be told what to do. Like, he would just see things and do them. And I'm like, you do that too. Do you want more work? Yeah. I realized it was definitely a good match.

[Jason Lee]

That's how Deep south landscaping was formed. Aaron even brought props.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Hold it. Open it up. Let me look at it.

[Jason Lee]

Look at this blast from the past.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Deep South Landscaping Lesson learned on that shirt.

[Aaron Alvarez]

So y' all can't see, but it's a work shirt. It's cotton. Gildan. I think it's Gildan. And the logo is old school screen printing. And the whole back of the shirt is just solid screen print.

[Jordan Upkavage]

What's wrong with that?

[Aaron Alvarez]

It's so hot.

[Jason Lee]

When you sweat, it sticks.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Sticks to your back.

[Jason Lee]

Feel it.

[Aaron Alvarez]

It's like a little homunculus.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Have you seen an independent tree service shirt?

[Aaron Alvarez]

So hot. How do y' all not just sweat?

[Jordan Upkavage]

I wear black Columbia.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Well, there you go.

[Jordan Upkavage]

No, we sweat a lot.

[Aaron Alvarez]

I know. I sweat, too. You know, sweating. It happens, but that is. It doesn't breathe. It just. And then it gets cold.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Look at how petite this is.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Well, I was petite then. You still are. Well, thank you.

[Jordan Upkavage]

A cute little bunny fly wearing a Deep South Landscaping shirt.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yeah.

[Jason Lee]

I mean, we did. What? We did Deep south for about two years.

[Jordan Upkavage]

We did Deep south landscaping hat. Nice. Dso. How many giggles did you guys get over that?

[Aaron Alvarez]

So many.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So many.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Jason, we used to go to. Was it Bass Pro? We would go hang out at Bass Pro. And I was like, I need a real tree hat because he had realtree everything. And I was like, I need a real tree hat. And of course, the adult ones were too big for me because I had a little bean hat head. And so I bought a youth large made in Bangladesh and told the guy,

[Jordan Upkavage]

I'm like, the best hats are from.

[Aaron Alvarez]

That's right. I was like, I want this embroidered. And he's like, okay, what do you want? I was like, deep South Landscaping on the back. I went dsl. And he just went, no, sure. And I was like, yes. I didn't even think about it, honestly, till after it's. But, yeah, we did.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Warmed my heart.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yep. We did Deep south landscaping for a couple years. Got in a little trouble, made a

[Jordan Upkavage]

little money, stiffed the government, definitely. Good God.

[Jason Lee]

Love it. That's Way more profitable when you don't have to pay taxes.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yeah. But then I graduated. Mom got sick. You had opportunities on the coast, so we kind of went our ways and stayed friends. And I moved Atlanta, Orlando, and then came back to Gainesville teaching as faculty. Eighteen years later, now I'm back in.

[Jason Lee]

Eighteen years later, now back at Skyfront. The band is back together.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Decided to stick it to the man one more time.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yeah.

[Jordan Upkavage]

All right.

[Aaron Alvarez]

They stuck it to me for long enough, so.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Good, good. So you stuck it up the barrel of uf and now you're back in private. Free market capitalism of sky frog landscape. Yeah, Hell, yeah.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Sure, Right. Yeah.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Is that not what it is?

[Jason Lee]

Private industry.

[Aaron Alvarez]

We're private. Yeah.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Isn't that what I said?

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yeah, you did.

[Jordan Upkavage]

I didn't say corporate America. I went through my head, but that wasn't what I was looking for.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Private side.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah, for sure. Well, that's damn cool.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yeah. Long circuitous story. Sorry.

[Jordan Upkavage]

I mean, thank you.

[Jason Lee]

It was beautiful.

[Jordan Upkavage]

I feel like I saw it in my head. I could close my eyes and watch it happen. Yeah.

[Aaron Alvarez]

So when did I. We met at Rob Duvall's park party. Or were you in school? No, we met. Where did we meet? Jordan, do you remember?

[Jordan Upkavage]

Is this a trap?

[Aaron Alvarez]

No, it's not. I'm trying. I know that. No, it wasn't Rob Duvall's party. We met. We met outside of that. But you invited me to a party at Rob's, and I remember showing up at the party or. Somebody invited me to a party at Rob's house. It was behind the alligator. And I showed up.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Brick building. The brick building with the jade plant.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yep. And it was E. I don't think it was you because you were way too chill. But Rob or somebody got completely skeeved out because I was at the party and I had been their design instructor. I think it was somebody who was

[Jordan Upkavage]

in the class, not me.

[Aaron Alvarez]

No, it wasn't you. It was either Rob.

[Jordan Upkavage]

It was like his roommate. That's what it was. It was Rob's roommate who ended up playing Hot for Teacher. Do you know this? Who sings this song?

[Aaron Alvarez]

Hot for Teacher. Van Halen. No, I don't.

[Jordan Upkavage]

One of.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yeah.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Whoever that is.

[Aaron Alvarez]

That's not.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah, I forgot about that.

[Aaron Alvarez]

I forgot that I played it.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah. I thought it was Rob's roommate played it. And then you're like, all right, you're busting my balls enough. This is kind of weird. You're making it weird now. It's weird. I've got to go.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yep. That's exactly what happened.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah. It was Rob's roommate who made. Who was a computer nerd.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Okay. Couldn't remember who was James.

[Jason Lee]

Same as James.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Richard. Sure.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Not that one.

[Jason Lee]

Not that one.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Not that one.

[Aaron Alvarez]

No.

[Jordan Upkavage]

The other guy was named James. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Because he had. There were girls there. And he was making a big deal out of that, too. Like, there was a papasan and I remember him.

[Jordan Upkavage]

The potato.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the potato. Anyway.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Anyways.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Not a trick question.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah. Okay.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Was our meeting an epic moment that I have forgotten and you.

[Jordan Upkavage]

No, I don't know.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Okay, good. That makes me feel bad.

[Jordan Upkavage]

No, I don't know where we first met.

[Aaron Alvarez]

It might have been that party. Because I remember hearing about you and I think I met you there for the first time.

[Jason Lee]

Oh, man. Jordan's a good guy, man. Oh, you'll like him a lot, man.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yep.

[Jordan Upkavage]

No, just friends of friends. And I don't know what social event or where or you just.

[Aaron Alvarez]

I just became.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah, just flew in like a bunny fly. Camping.

[Jason Lee]

Might have been camping.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Could have been camping.

[Jason Lee]

Camping was probably one of the first real experiences. Yeah.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah. That was fun.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Definitely.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So I. On Monday, we're cutting down some gigantic bamboo, and I was telling my client about Swahili and what you can do with gigantic bamboo.

[Jason Lee]

So have they contracted you?

[Jordan Upkavage]

We're doing the job. So if you.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Which job?

[Jason Lee]

Which job? The construction of a.

[Aaron Alvarez]

The custom carpentry job or the bamboo clearing job?

[Jordan Upkavage]

The bamboo job we're doing on Monday. So. So I will just tell you. You can make a bong out of bamboo, and you can make it however long you want to make it, but you need a piece of rebar that is long enough to beat the little ballasts out in between the nodes. And I was telling my client, with this massive stand of green bamboo that I read once in a book that there was a bong named Swahili that was 12. Between 12 and 13ft long. How long was it in the. You would remember, Jason. You read the same book, I think

[Jason Lee]

in chapter seven, it was 12ft, 5 inches.

[Jordan Upkavage]

12 foot 5. Yeah. So you make a 12 foot, 5 inch bong and name it Swahili out of bamboo. And I gave him the instructions that I read in the book, and he found that fascinating and requested that I leave a few pieces of bamboo for him. I was like, you got it, sir. So we are doing this job on Monday and I got to share the parables of the folklore book that I got to read in my multicultural film class when I was at Florida State and Jason picked that up during drop ad.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Love it.

[Jordan Upkavage]

And he left landscape architecture. Amazing how. And you have an affinity for reading too.

[Aaron Alvarez]

I do. I love books.

[Jason Lee]

Yeah.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Great one.

[Aaron Alvarez]

I love cultural studies books mostly.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah. So that's a cool thing that allegedly can be done.

[Aaron Alvarez]

That is cool. Yep.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Just need the right access points. Just like a good landscape job. You got to know how to get in and how to get out.

[Jordan Upkavage]

DSL most of the time helps you out with that.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Every time we.

[Jason Lee]

Mm.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yep. Okay.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Are we gonna keep going? Are we done?

[Jason Lee]

Keep going for another where Aaron is on a time of going to pick up her.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Pick up DJ I do Picking up Donovan.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Okay.

[Jason Lee]

So I think in. In another future episode we can dive deeper into Sky Frog conquering the world and Aaron's position as our business development manager.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yeah.

[Jordan Upkavage]

And get an update on what that looks like because it's been. Been a little bit of time since that started and see how it is still. It's hard.

[Jason Lee]

Still early. Well, Aaron and I will. I can, we can wrap it up on this, this point. But it's like I'm. I'm fully aware of how long it's going to take. Like it's going to take. It could take years. It's not, it's not. It's nothing that's going to happen overnight. Relationship building takes time.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Look at us.

[Jason Lee]

Yeah. And for us. Well, even with you in tree season and hurricane season, like that's, that's a season.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah.

[Jason Lee]

Like our bidding season for commercial landscape maintenance, which is going to be one of Aaron's targets. I mean that doesn't start till July or August. So now it's a cram. Like now it's cram as much networking in as you can in this short time to try to get on people's bid lists and make friends and all that stuff. And then Helen, even, I mean if we get on people's radar in 2026, that's great.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Great.

[Jason Lee]

But really like my goal would be you're trying 2027.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah. You're budget. You're bidding this October for 2027's production.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yeah.

[Jason Lee]

And even. And even looking into like getting on the bid list for 2027. Like I see like, like with Aaron coming on board and once you get flywheel spinning like I see it, the connections will really start paying dividends in like 2027 I think is when it's going to start. And then just in the future just be ongoing and ongoing and ongoing. But so I'm fully mentally prepared for that. You might not Be with Fukarino.

[Jordan Upkavage]

But me and Andrew, we have bid one job so far.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yeah.

[Jordan Upkavage]

That I would not have bid without Andrew being present. We got to see the other person's bid. Not the number, but the language that was. Raised the trees to 18ft, period.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Wow.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Hauled debris like that was it. And then our proposal was beautiful with a map and a schematic and pointing arrows. And like, I worked for the bid. It's our first one to do together, so I'm like, gonna work extra hard and take a screenshot from satellite view and like, mock it up and do a bunch of fancy language. So our bid looks like we actually tried. It's probably more money than the other guy, but at least we're swinging at

[Aaron Alvarez]

a ball, you know? Know.

[Jason Lee]

Janita Fukarino, join C A I. C A I definitely.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yeah.

[Jordan Upkavage]

He joined something called caba, which is Carrollwood Area Business Association. But that's bigger than just Carolwood.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Yeah. CIA's Community Association International. And that. That was really big. When I was in Sarasota down there for extension, they did a lot. So Tampa Bay, they've got a lot more here. They're. They're in, like, Jacksonville, St. Augie, they're trying to do more in Gainesville, but down there they're big. Yeah. That'll help lot a lot. Especially for trees. Yeah. Okay.

[Jason Lee]

Another future episode. Be awesome. If we can get Aaron and Fukurino on at the same time, that would be cool. I'll talk business development.

[Aaron Alvarez]

I love that episode you had with him. That was really interesting to listen to. He sounds like a good guy.

[Jordan Upkavage]

What we didn't talk about is he talked a lot about eye drops, but he used to do.

[Aaron Alvarez]

He did. There was a lot.

[Jordan Upkavage]

A lot of turgor pressure problems in reproductive area. Yes. It's called triple P. And it would be an injection just like Carpajet. Right to the pecker. Yes.

[Jason Lee]

Which I still can't believe he didn't bring up on the Dino Jordan tells me the next episode and drops it on me. It's like, huh? Yeah.

[Aaron Alvarez]

He's hiding that the whole time.

[Jordan Upkavage]

He did wang injections as the primary book of business.

[Aaron Alvarez]

I didn't know those weren't self administered. I thought Wang injections were self administered.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Oh, they are. But he makes the wing sauce.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Oh.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So you come in, you buy the wing sauce and the.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Right.

[Jordan Upkavage]

The shot machine.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Right.

[Jordan Upkavage]

And then you go do your own wang yourself.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Diy.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Dyi.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Dyid do your own deeds.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Sure.

[Jordan Upkavage]

DSL done dirt cheap. All right.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Okay.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Let's be done with this.

[Aaron Alvarez]

Hey, thanks. Thanks for having me.

[Jason Lee]

Thank you.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Thanks. Highlight of my day right now.

[Aaron Alvarez]

I gotcha.

[Jason Lee]

Adios.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Adios.

[Jason Lee]

As you continue your journey toward entrepreneurial success, let Jason and Jordan be your trusted companions on this uphill climb. Don't miss out on future episodes of the Green side Up podcast. Make sure to hit that follow button to stay updated. For more ways to connect with the guys, check out the podcast description. Thank you for tuning in. And remember, keep working hard so you can play even harder. And keep the Green side Up.

Sa.