In Mitchell County the afternoon arrives like a held breath — heat standing over the peanut fields, pecan shade pooling deep and cool at the edge of a yard. Champions Landscaping LLC works Pelham straight through that heat, mowing and edging and running the trimmer around fence lines and mailbox posts until a place reads cared-for from the road. South Georgia grass grows most of the year down here, so keeping ahead of it is the whole discipline: a steady route, a sharp blade, clippings blown off the drive instead of left to stripe the concrete. The reward comes late, when the light goes long and gold across a lawn that has just been cut straight. That is the picture the truck drives away with, out toward Camilla, Meigs and Moultrie.