When the calls started on a summer Sunday night, Jhony Alanis, the founder and owner of Alanis Landscaping in Winters, California, didn’t think much about it. By the next morning, that was about to change.
“Some guy, I don’t know who he was, he saw it on the Twitter and he asked me if I was the owner of the company and I say yes,” Jhony said. “So he showed me a picture of what the lady posted.”
The picture was of Jhony’s trailer, the one he uses to haul equipment for his landscaping business, the company name splashed across it in big bold letters. The lady he’s talking about just happens to be the popular singer and songwriter Alanis Morissette.
Both the picture and the lady put Jhony’s landscaping business at the center of a humorous viral social media post.
What happened was this: a Twitter user named Jessica Hallstrom saw Jhony’s trailer out and about near Sacramento, took a photo of it and posted it on the social media site with the caption, “You Outta Mow,” playing off of Alanis Morissette’s 1995 hit “You Oughta Know.”
But here’s why it went viral: the Grammy winner herself saw the tweet and kept the landscaping joke going by re-tweeting it with a play on the lyrics: “and I’m here, to remind you of the grass you left when you went away…” She added a crying laughing emoji.
“The calls started Sunday,” Jhony said, “and then on Monday I started getting calls and calls and messages that whole day.”
What were people saying?
“They couldn’t believe that happened in a little town,” Jhony said. “And people were asking to hire me.”
Suffice it to say that nothing like this has ever happened to Jhony before, not that he’s complaining.
“I think it’s good, yeah.”
Jhony and his father, Abel have been in the lawn care business for over 20 years, serving both residential and commercial customers in central and northern California. They formally started Alanis Landscaping in 2014.
“We started with a little house and then another one, then another,” Jhony remembers. “Now we have around 80 houses and four apartment complexes.”
He’s been hauling his many mowers, trimmers and blowers around for years — “I’ve got a lot of stuff” — but never has he gotten this attention, let alone from someone as famous as the Canadian star.
“It’s something that is hard to explain. You never know when something like this is gonna happen.”
How does Jhony Alanis plan to keep up with all this new business?
“I’m gonna have to get more people,” he said with a laugh.
Jhony gets the joke, but he admits that he’s not too familiar with Alanis Morissette’s songs. Does he think he’ll start listening to her music now?
“Yeah, for sure I’m going to.”