The Saginaw Valley is flat enough that you can watch a storm come on for an hour, and its black ground grows nearly anything you put in it — grass most of all. Gilbert Landscaping Inc. mows Birch Run's village lots and the properties out along the section roads, cutting on a rhythm that keeps up with June and holds steady through the dry stretch of August. Trimming around posts, gates and foundation corners is what separates a mown yard from a finished one. Under all that open sky a fresh-striped lawn reads from a long way off. And when October empties the street maples, the leaves come off before the weather turns.