In Camilla the heat is something you plan around, so the day starts early — mowers off the trailer while the Mitchell County air is still soft and the gnats have not yet made up their minds. Camilla Lawn & Garden, Inc. keeps lawns through that long southwest Georgia summer, the season when Bermuda grass grows like it has somewhere to be and a yard can want cutting twice in a week. Out past the last streets the pecan groves stand in their patient rows and the Flint River goes on doing what it has always done, and in town the work is smaller and just as particular: a straight line held around the flower bed, the walk edged so the concrete shows its true width again. By late morning the shade under a water oak is the best room in the county, and a finished yard sitting quiet in that light is the whole point of getting up early. It is ordinary work, done attentively, in a place that rewards attention.