In Nokomis the streets run flat and square off Route 16, and from almost any yard you can see the elevator standing over town like a clock that keeps time with the harvest. Noe's Lawn and Landscaping Inc. mows those blocks through the long green middle of the year, when a lawn can outgrow you in four days after a warm rain. The satisfaction is in the finish — a wheel line laid down true along the sidewalk, the edge cut so the walk looks a hand wider than it did. Come autumn there is the leaf haul, and in spring the clearing that gets rid of everything the wind stacked against the garage all winter. Around Nokomis, Ohlman and Witt, that weekly rhythm is what keeps a place looking like somebody lives there and means it.