August in Champaign County is a heavy, humming thing — tallgrass standing motionless out at Buffalo Trace Prairie, heat shimmering off the section roads, lawns growing fast enough to want cutting twice a week. Grass Masters Lawn Care works straight through it, mowing and trimming and moving the clippings out of the way while the cicadas make their case overhead. Then the prairie turns, and the same trucks carry blades and salt instead of mower decks. Snow here does not simply fall; it travels, sliding off open cropland and packing itself hard against the end of a driveway. Clearing that before the household stirs is the quieter half of the trade, and the half people remember in February.