By late June the Piedmont afternoon has a weight to it — cicadas sawing in the hardwoods, a thunderhead stacking up somewhere west of the highway. Vaughan Landscape Service reads that clock, cutting ahead of the rain and finishing the trim work while the air is still. Regular mowing, string trimming along fence lines and mailboxes, crisp edges beside the concrete, and every clipping blown back off the pavement. Grass grows fast here between storms, and keeping level with it is the whole job. What is left at the end of a route is a yard that looks calm in a season that rarely is.