The Southern Grassman

About The Southern Grassman

Winter afternoons in Santee stay mild enough that the mowers are never gone long — a few brown weeks, and the warm-season grass stirs again. The Southern Grassman spends that stretch on cleanup: leaves pulled out of beds, shrubs cut back, lots and roadside shoulders trimmed down to something tidy. Traffic comes off the interstate in every month of the year, so storefronts and rental yards want to look kept in January as much as in May. Come spring the weekly mowing, edging and trimming picks up again along the roads running out toward the wildlife refuge. Either season, the finish reads the same way: nothing ragged, nothing left on the concrete.