Summer mornings in Edwardsville come up out of the Cahokia Creek bottoms as fog, and by seven it has burned off the fescue along Governor's Parkway into something that smells like cut green and warm asphalt. AJ Services LLC works those hours, mowing and trimming and edging while the dew still weighs the blades down and the stripes lay over flat and even. There is a real pleasure in the last pass of a yard, when the clippings come off the walk and the line at the driveway's edge runs straight as a chalk mark. Lawns here take the heat of a Metro East August and the sudden storms that cross the river, so the work stays steady rather than showy: keep the height right, keep the borders cut, keep the leaves moving in October. That is a whole season of one town held in order, yard by yard.