By the third week of September the groves on Smuggler Mountain go all at once, and for about ten days the light coming down into town is yellow the way a lamp is yellow. Then the wind comes and every one of those leaves lands in somebody's yard. Creative Nature works the whole arc of that: mowing through the green months, edging and trimming so the shapes stay legible, and then the long, cheerful labor of raking a property clean before the first real cold. Spring gets the same treatment in reverse — the winter's litter pulled out, beds opened up, the lawn cut back into order. There is something quietly gratifying about the last pass of the season, when the grass is short, the yard is bare and swept, and a place looks ready to be snowed on.