Yucca Yards

About Yucca Yards

Once or twice a winter the basin wakes up white — an inch of snow on the Joshua trees, the boulders capped, half the town out taking photographs before it burns off by noon. Yucca Yards works the cold months and every other one: mowing while the grass is growing, cutting back and clearing when it is not, edging, trimming, weeding, hauling off whatever the year has piled up. Named for this ground and the plant the town took its name from, the outfit holds the local view that a yard should look like it belongs where it stands. There is a straightforward pride in an even lawn with sharp borders sitting under all that sky. Yucca Valley and the nearby high-desert communities, on a schedule that does not lapse.