Stone Lake sits right in the middle of Cassopolis, close enough that the village wakes up with water on three sides of its errands. J L Landscaping keeps the lawns around it through the growing months — mowing, trimming, edging along walks and drives, and clearing the clippings and leaves that gather against a curb. Cass County soil shifts from prairie loam to sand inside a mile, and a yard's needs shift with it. Morning is the good hour for the work: dew burned off, air still, everything sharpening up as they go. A cut lawn on a lake road is a small, ordinary kind of beautiful.