Chores is the right word for it: the small standing list a property keeps handing you, week after week, whatever the sky happens to be doing. McCall's outdoor chores works that list around Edwardsburg — mowing, trimming and edging through the growing season, cleanups when the leaves come off the oaks near Christiana Lake, then plowing, shoveling and salting once the ground goes hard. Between the lakes the weather can't make up its mind; a warm week in December melts everything and the next one glazes it over. Knowing a yard year-round means knowing where the drift piles and where the water sits. Nothing here is grand — it is just done, and then done again.