Dooryards in Canaan run right up to the stone walls, and the walls run off into hemlock shade where the Blackberry meets the Housatonic and the roads bend toward three states at once. Strong Oak Landscaping works that ground for homes and businesses alike — mowing through the long green weeks, spring and fall cleanups, mulch and patios laid stone by stone, gravel driveways graded to shed the valley's rain, tree trimming and removal when a limb has grown into the wrong sky. There is a plain pleasure in the finish of it: the mown stripe that ends clean at the wall, the raked verge, the new patio holding the last of the afternoon light off the Litchfield hills. Winter turns the work to plowing, and the satisfaction narrows to one thing — a dooryard opened wide and a drive scraped down to gravel before the first car of the morning ever turns over. From the Northwest Corner out across Connecticut into Massachusetts and New York, the yards keep the shape they were given.