Batten Down the Grasses

About Batten Down the Grasses

By two in the afternoon a thunderhead is stacking itself over the pines north of town, and everybody in the Lakes Region knows how to read it. Batten Down the Grasses works to that clock — mowing, edging, string trimming and hauling the cuttings clear, getting a block finished before the sky opens. Keystone Heights takes its weather in bursts: weeks of dry sand, then a storm that puts three inches of growth into a lawn overnight. Hedges get shaped, beds get cleared of whatever the wind delivered, and the borders come back sharp. There is real pleasure in a yard that stands up neat after a squall has gone through it.