A Saturday in June around Bad Axe sounds like mowers going on three streets at once, and the smell of cut grass hangs around past supper. Lots here are generous — real room between a house and the road — so a good mow is a long straight line, an even height, and clean edges at the walk and the mailbox post. Come the cold months that same generous frontage is the part that fills in, and it gets plowed out, salted, and cleared by hand at the door before the coffee is finished. Spring and fall bookend the year with cleanups, when everything the Thumb wind delivered gets carried off. Warm months and cold ones, the same yard, kept in order all the way around.