Anyone who drives out to the landscape yard on 140 Riverview Drive in East Wenatchee in the morning can’t help but be struck by the view.

The lot overlooks the Columbia River, lies nearly adjacent to Saddle Rock across the river, and offers a clear view of Wenatchee till it fades into Highway 2.

It’s a lot that, on Friday and Saturday mornings smells like hemlock and fir bark — a smell that’s an almost sure sign of spring and the yard work that goes with it.

And in the middle of it, all is Jay Gensinger. Doing what he does best — loading pickups with gravel, spotting semis delivering gravel and bark, and keeping the little paved lot behind Hobby Lobby in immaculate shape.

“I was in my early twenties when I bought my first backhoe and that’s kind of where it started. Went from a backhoe to a truck and a trailer to excavators to loaders and dozers — all that stuff,” he said. “My dad was a union operator, and he bought a backhoe and just did weekend stuff … we used to do a lot of irrigation back in the ’70s when I was in high school. I’ve been around equipment all my life.”

What draws people to this yard in particular?

“The location and variety of products. Other places don’t have paved bins to put their products in so you’re dumping on dirt,” he said. “This was a bare piece of ground when we got it, and we paved it and built all of this. We moved all the blocks down from Chelan.”

The business specializes in a number of other things: four types of bark, a variety of landscape rock, dirt and mulch, and rock structures much like the one’s outside the shed-turned-office where Gensinger monitors the yard.

“For a little piece of property it’s pretty full,” he said.

The rocks are especially unique — no one else in town has anything quite like them, Gensinger said. They’re column-shaped rock formations from out of Waterville. And they’re valuable in the landscape business.

“There’s only a few places in the world that have these columns,” he said. “Each area of the state where these are formed they’re either a little different color or density or shape.”

Gensinger’s sister owns property out in Waterville, where they mine the quarry for these columns.

And although spring and summer are the biggest months for business, Gensinger said that doesn’t mean business is completely out of the question in the winter months.

“We run till the weather shuts it down,” Gensinger said. “I’m just on call in the winter time, if people need sand for their sanders and stuff.”

That’s one of his draws for staying in Wenatchee — the same place he’s lived all his life.

“You get all the seasons ... I think you get a little bit of every season is why I like living here,” he said. “I mean I’ve worked in a lot places but this is just an easy place to live.”