Latitude 41

About Latitude 41

This is the forty-first parallel, and in late June the light behaves accordingly — up before five, still gold at nine, a whole extra hour of growing pressed into every day. Latitude 41 mows against that clock, because a lawn on this line puts on more in one week of Iowa summer than it will in a month of April. The satisfaction is in the geometry: parallel stripes down a long back yard, trimmed corners, the boundary between turf and sidewalk cut to a single confident line. Come fall the work turns to clearing leaves and the last low pass before the ground locks up. Ankeny anchors the route, with Johnston, Grimes, Urbandale and Saylorville close behind.