Come May the road ditches around Freeport turn gold with dandelion and the whole county seems to bloom in the same week. Altmans Weed Free Lawns spends that season on the yards in and around town, mowing, trimming, edging and running the weed control that hands the turf the advantage. A lawn here is competing with prairie soil that will grow absolutely anything, so the work is patient and repeated rather than dramatic. The payoff arrives in June, when a yard reads as one unbroken green sheet from the porch rail to the sidewalk. That evenness is the entire object, and it never stops being satisfying to stand back and see.