The mower deck settles into its line, the pruning saw finds its bite, and a pair of hands works the edge of a walk until the border reads clean as a pencil stroke — this is the trade KB Lawn and Tree keeps in East Windsor, Connecticut. It is valley country here: the flat sandy terraces above the Scantic, the old tobacco ground and the long river light that lays itself down over Broad Brook and Warehouse Point in the late afternoon. They mow and aerate and overseed, patch a tired lawn back into color, trim hedges and shrubs, prune and remove trees, run the Bobcat where landscaping calls for shaping rather than tidying, and rake the season out in spring and again when the maples let go. Then winter arrives on the valley floor and the plow goes out, opening driveways and walks while the fields lie white and unbroken to the treeline. What lingers, after the truck has gone, is a yard that looks like someone decided how it should be — squared, breathing, ready for whatever the calendar brings next.