You can read National City's long past along Brick Row, where nineteenth-century row houses stand shoulder to shoulder in red brick. Grand Oaks Landscaping keeps lawns in a town where the bay is never far off, with gray Navy hulls along the waterfront and tall palms leaning into the afternoon wind. On weekend mornings Kimball Park fills with families and picnic blankets, and along the city's southern edge the Sweetwater River winds on to the bay. Mild winters and dry summers let grass here grow nearly without pause, so the mower, the trimmer and the edger come back around like the tide. A street-facing lawn neatly finished and swept bare of clippings is a small point of pride on these lived-in streets, and that finished look is what the whole job is for.