The first true cut of the year reaches Alto sometime in March, when the pines let go their yellow and the fescue wakes up along the ridgelines. The Lawn Keeper Lawn Care, Inc. keeps that rhythm going until the last mild week of November — mowing, trimming around fence posts and mailboxes, shaping hedges, laying pine straw where the beds have thinned. Late afternoon in Habersham County is the good hour, light coming sideways across apple country toward Cornelia and every mowed stripe standing up like corduroy. Beds get edged by hand where the clay won't take a blade evenly. The reward is small and it is real: a yard that looks looked-after when you turn in off the highway.