A Cut Above All Others

About A Cut Above All Others

Broad Street runs west out of Richmond and slows right here, where Short Pump keeps an old tavern's name and a very new morning rush. A Cut Above All Others works both halves of the Virginia year — mowing, edging and trimming when the fescue is thick and green, then plowing and salting when a February system slides up the coast and turns the shoulders white. There is one satisfaction in an edge cut clean along a hot sidewalk and a different one in a driveway scraped down to dark pavement before the first car door opens. The red Piedmont clay under these lots holds water and holds grudges, and most of the work is learning how it behaves. Whichever way the weather leans, Short Pump and the west end of Henrico get the same attention.