Morning comes slow to Ayer, the light sliding down off the drumlin hills to pool along the brick storefronts of a town the railroads once knit together. Out past Grove Pond and the old depot, the mowers are already tracing clean lines across a lawn, the smell of cut grass lifting into the Nashua River valley air. G.J.G Landscape & Construction tends the yards of this Nashoba Valley town, keeping the grass even and the beds tidy through the long green stretch of summer and the raking-down of autumn. There is a plain, honest pleasure in a lawn left crisp at its edges — a yard that looks cared for from the road — and that is the quiet mark this work leaves behind. Around Ayer and the orchard towns nearby, the season keeps its shape one trimmed border at a time.