Lemcke Landscape

About Lemcke Landscape

The near south side still carries the shape of the German neighborhoods that built it -- brick two-flats set close to the sidewalk, corner taverns with painted signs fading a little more every winter, streets narrow enough that a plow and a parked car barely pass each other. Frost settles heavy on those old brick fronts, more of it holding on the shaded north walls than anywhere the low winter sun can reach, so the same block can be half bare and half glazed by midmorning. Sidewalks along that stretch run right up against the buildings with almost no buffer, which means anything sliding off a roofline lands square on the walk and has to be cleared as its own separate job. The small yards behind those two-flats, barely wider than the buildings themselves, get shoveled by hand rather than run with any machine. It's tight, old, close-built ground, and clearing it takes the same patience the neighborhood itself seems to run on.