April in the country outside Carterville is a race, and everybody loses the first heat. The rain comes, the ground warms, and suddenly every yard from the gravel lanes to the blacktop is a week ahead of you — so you chase it, mowing, trimming, edging, and going back again before it can get away. By June the rhythm settles and the lawns out here look like they were always meant to be that way, which is the whole trick of it. Past the last streetlight the parcels get bigger and the mowing takes real time, and the payoff is a long clean sweep of green running back to a treeline. Not a bad way to spend a summer.