High on the north-county uplands, where cold air pooling off Mount Watatic keeps spring on a slower clock than the valley towns and the light falls thin and silver through the pines, the grass here wakes late and then grows with a stubborn will. New England Backyards Of Mass tends these Ashburnham lawns — the mowing kept even down long wooded driveways, the edges cut clean where turf meets old stone wall, the leaves gathered off the green before the first hard frost can pin them down. There is a plain satisfaction in a yard combed into tidy stripes against a backdrop of hemlock and the far shoulder of Watatic, in ground that stays cared-for from the shore of Naukeag Lake to the village common. It is honest work, measured out one dooryard at a time, and it leaves each place a little squarer to the world than it was that morning.