Come November the pines around Aragon let go of a year's worth of needles, and the floor of the woods turns rust-colored and soft underfoot. GA Pinestraw Service LLC works with exactly that: straw gathered, hauled, and laid into beds until every border around a house sits banked and deliberate, warm against a gray Polk County sky. They mow, edge, and clean up as well, so the lawn and the beds arrive at the same finish instead of fighting one another. Fresh straw has a smell to it and a look — a yard suddenly reads as cared for, front to back, from the mailbox to the tree line. Aragon, Rockmart, Taylorsville, Cedartown: the same pines, the same fall, house after house.