Just downriver from Covington the Yellow River shrugs over the shoals at Porterdale, and the old mill brick holds the afternoon warm long after the sun has moved off it. Southern Quality Lawn Care keeps the yards of these blocks — narrow mill-village lots in town, deeper ones out toward Almon, red clay under all of it. Mowing, edging, trimming along fence lines and walks, then blowing the clippings back off the concrete so the grass ends exactly where it ought to. Through summer that means every week or every other, whatever the rain and the bermuda settle between themselves; come fall it turns to leaves. A yard finished right is a quiet thing, and this is a town that has always known the difference between work done and work finished.