Lawn and Order

About Lawn and Order

The Stadium District sits in a bowl above Commencement Bay, and the yards there come in terraces, one short green shelf stacked above another. Lawn and Order works those grades late in the afternoon, when the water below goes the color of pewter and a mower has to be walked sideways across the slope to keep the cut honest. Mowing, edge work along the retaining walls, trimming the strips too narrow to turn a machine on, weeding the borders, then carrying the clippings out by hand — patient work on ground that never once lies flat. A terraced lawn cut square looks like it was drawn onto the hillside, and that is exactly the result worth chasing. Summer runs on rhythm, week after week; in October the maples of the North Slope let go all at once and the whole slope has to be cleared again. Order, on a hill this steep, gets earned twice.