It begins with the low drone of a mower finding its first line, the quick snap of a trimmer along a fence post, a pair of hands turning the machine at the corner and walking it back the other way. Johnson Landscape Service Inc keeps lawns in Abington and the nearby South Shore towns — the flat green yards set back from the old shoe-factory streets, the ones that slope down toward Island Grove Pond and the cedar shade along the Shumatuscacant. There is a plain, physical pleasure in the finished thing: stripes laid straight across a June yard, a crisp edge where grass gives way to walk, every clipping gone and the whole place suddenly looking looked-after from the road. Then the oaks let go all at once and the work turns to raking and blowing and hauling, until the lawn lies flat and clean and ready to sleep under the low coastal light. Come the thaw it greens again, and the mowers go back out.