Stephens County ground is red clay — bright, stubborn, and willing to hold a mower track for a week after a rain. Earth Advocate of Georgia reads that soil the way other people read weather, mowing Toccoa lawns at the height the grass can carry and trimming close without scalping the high spots. Around here the shade under a poplar and the full sun twenty feet away are two different lawns, and both get cut to look like one. The reward comes at the end, standing at the mailbox with the whole yard running away from you in even stripes. Through the growing months it is mowing and edging on rotation; when the canopy lets go, it is leaves hauled off before the grass suffocates.