From the Ground Up

About From the Ground Up

At Phoenix Park the Eau Claire River comes in to meet the Chippewa, and in April the whole confluence smells like meltwater and thawing dirt. That is the signal From the Ground Up waits on: spring cleanups, the winter's sand and leaf pack pulled off the turf, edges cut back in, the lawn given its first tidy pass of the year. Through summer the work turns weekly and rhythmic — mowing, trimming, edging wherever grass wants to creep over the walk. Autumn reverses it again, with leaf removal and a final cut that leaves a yard flat and clean under the first snow. Grass in this valley gets only a handful of months, and the point is to make every one of them look like it counted.