Lancaster Landscapers

About Lancaster Landscapers

West of town, where the Prime Desert Woodland Preserve keeps its Joshua trees in loose ranks, the last light of the day turns everything the color of a struck match. That is the hour Lancaster Landscapers is usually loading up — trimmers cooling, a lawn behind them mowed down to an even nap and swept clean at the borders. Out here a green yard is something a person decided on and then kept, and keeping it is the work: the weekly cut, the trimmed line where turf meets block wall, the leaves and grass hauled off instead of left to blow. The reward comes at dusk, when the yard reads as one calm rectangle against a whole valley of creosote and sand. It is a small thing and a good one.