Ship Shape Enterprises

About Ship Shape Enterprises

The name belongs to boats, but it suits a prairie town just as well: everything stowed, nothing loose, corners squared. In October the maples around Anson Park let go nearly all at once and the yards go ankle-deep overnight. Ship Shape Enterprises works through that — leaf cleanup, a final low cut, beds cleared back to bare soil before the cold sets in. There is a particular pleasure in an autumn lawn put fully in order, with nothing left to blow around the block and nothing waiting on spring to forgive it. Marshalltown looks its tidiest in the week the leaves come off, and that is no accident.