Late August, and the light over Lake Zoar goes long and gold about seven, laying oak shadows all the way across a lawn. That is the hour a mowed yard looks its finest — stripes catching sideways, the trimmed line along the drive drawn like a pencil mark. The work behind it is ordinary and exact: cutting on schedule, trimming where the mower cannot reach, edging walks and beds, and clearing the yard down in spring and again when the leaves finish. Oxford ground is rocky and its yards are carved out of woods, so every property is its own puzzle of shade, slope and drainage. Solving that puzzle, week after week, is the whole of it.