Fog fills the hollows along Talking Rock Creek first and leaves them last, and by the time it lifts the mowers are already running. Copper Ridge Landscaping keeps yards on the slopes and benches of Pickens County, where a lawn rarely lies flat and every pass has to be read before it is cut. Mountain grass comes on late and then grows hard, so the calendar matters more here than most places: cut on time, trimmed around the stone and the fence posts, edges drawn straight where gravel meets green. In October the ridges turn and the work turns with them — leaves off the grass, drives cleared, the lawn given its light back. It is unhurried work in a place that asks for patience.