Flora grew up along the highway and the railroad, with the Little Wabash bottoms off to the east and Clay County farmland running out in every other direction. Bullard's Landscaping & Nursery in Flora works both ends of the calendar — mowing, trimming and edging through the green months, cleanups when the season turns, and plowing once winter finally gets serious. Southern Illinois grass keeps growing later than people expect, so some years the mowers are still running in November. Then the weather flips and it becomes drives opened at first light, walks cleared, salt down where the ice sets up. Two kinds of work, one habit: leave a place better than you found it.