Handyman in Canal Pointe, Port St. Lucie

When the back fence is a canal

Some of these back yards sit right on canal, and parts of the grid connect through to the St. Lucie River, so the back of the lot is a working waterway rather than scenery. It changes the planting in ways people don't expect. Anything you put in near the bank has to hold soil, not just look right. And the strip between the grass and the seawall is exactly where an edge either holds or quietly slides into the canal over a couple of wet seasons.

The housing stock is mixed, which is the other thing worth knowing. There are original block-built houses on these streets and there are new builds dropped onto the empty lots between them. That means two completely different jobs on the same block: one house needs beds re-cut and a ceiling patched after twenty-odd years, the one next door needs the builder's four shrubs and a strip of sod turned into an actual front yard.

Either one is fine by us. Tell us which you've got when you call and we'll come and look at it.