Summer storms cross this township from the west, dark over the fields, and afterward the low country along the Portage River smells like wet earth and green. Growth is fast in that week. So the route runs long: mow, trim, edge, clear the walk, move on. A July afternoon means tall stands of grass that go down in one steady pass, and the pleasure is in the change — shaggy to orderly in twenty minutes. Nothing complicated about it, just a yard that looks the way its owner pictured it the day they planted the maple out front.