Tarpitz Gardening

About Tarpitz Gardening

At Tar Pits Park the ground still seeps asphaltum the way it did when the Chumash caulked their canoes with it and gave this place its name. Midday there smells faintly of tar and salt at once, and the grass on the flat above the seeps grows in spite of all of it. Tarpitz Gardening works the yards around that end of town — mowing, edging, trimming around trees and fence lines, weeding, and hauling off what comes out. Carpinteria is small enough that the same yards come around week after week, and you learn each one's habits: where it burns, where it stays wet, where the mower has to turn. Getting a lawn even, top to bottom, is the whole of the point.