By the third week of August the birches around Breitung Charter Township are already thinking about it, which is how you know the mowing season is a thing to be used rather than wasted. Thompson's lawn care spends the green months cutting, trimming and tidying yards from the township's back roads to the streets nearer Iron Mountain. A lawn here can go from snowmelt to knee-high in what feels like a fortnight, so the calendar matters as much as the machine does. What stays with you afterward is the look of a fresh-cut yard in low evening light with the lines still showing. Then the leaves turn, and the whole short, bright thing gets put away until the thaw.