Those Pesky Projects

About Those Pesky Projects

In late June the fog lifts off Beverly Harbor by mid-morning, and the grass along the ledge-and-hollow streets above it comes up thick with salt still in the air — that is the hour this work begins. Those Pesky Projects keeps lawns tended around Beverly: mowing lines laid straight across a dooryard, the edge cut clean where turf meets an old brick sidewalk, clippings swept off the walk before the truck pulls away. There is a plain, physical satisfaction in a yard that reads well from the road — a green that holds its shape through a North Shore August, then takes the October light without looking tired. Around Beverly and the neighboring North Shore towns, that is the whole of it: cutting well, tidying after, and leaving a place better than the morning found it.