October in Martinsville turns the streets the color of the old brick fronts downtown, and then one good wind takes it all into the yards at once. Clark County Ready Mix handles the season's turn — leaf cleanup, the last mowings of the year, beds cut back and the lawn left flat and open for winter. In the growing months the work is the steady kind: mowing on schedule, trimming around fences and foundations, the weekly rhythm that keeps a place from getting away from anyone. Ballfield edges, church lots, front yards out on the county blacktop — the town is small enough that the route is really a list of neighbors. Come the first hard frost, the yards are square and quiet, which is exactly how they ought to go into December.