Come October the fields between Rutledge and Madison go pale, and the sweetgums along the fencerows turn every color they own. Yard work shifts with it — the grass slows to a cut every other week, and leaves become the main event, raked and moved off the lawn before they mat down and smother it. Through the growing months it is the steady kind of work: mowing, string trimming to the fence and the flower bed, an edge cut where the drive meets grass, walks cleared. Morgan County has a way of making a tended yard look like it belongs to the countryside around it. That is the aim every visit — straight lines, clear pavement, nothing left behind but the smell of cut grass.