In Murphysboro the hills start to mean something — the Big Muddy loops around town, and the country west toward Kinkaid and south into the Shawnee is all hardwood: oak, hickory, sycamores leaning over the water. Ellis Tree Service works that timbered edge where yards run into woods, doing tree trimming and pruning to hold a shade tree back off the roof and tree removal when a big one has gone punky at the crotch. Southern Illinois takes its weather from two directions and neither is gentle, so storm damage cleanup here starts with a lane cut down a gravel drive and ends with the yard set right again. A finished morning smells like sawdust and green wood, and it looks like open ground beneath a tree that will stand another fifty years. That is the trade: take what has to go, keep what can stay.