July in this valley keeps a schedule: bluebird until about one o'clock, then a thunderhead stacks up over New York Mountain and the rain comes sideways for twenty minutes. Chard's Yards Inc reads that clock. Mowing, trimming and edging get done in the bright half of the day, fertilizer goes down when the sky is about to help, and the open ground is finished before the first crack of thunder. What's left afterward is an Edwards yard steaming a little in the returning sun — stripes straight, edges clean along the walk, the smell of cut grass hanging in air that just got ten degrees cooler. Summers are short at this elevation, so every cut has to count, and it shows.