The oaks along Route 12 hold their leaves stubbornly and then surrender all at once, usually the third week of October, usually overnight. Cleanup season is the loud, satisfying end of the year: leaves off the lawn, beds cleared, edges recut, one final cut before the ground goes quiet. Everything else leads up to it — mowing week to week through the summer, trimming, edging, keeping a yard even from April onward. A property put to bed properly has a particular look in early November: bare, tidy, ready. Doing that across Plainfield, village by village, is the shape of the whole year.