West of Escanaba the county opens into fields and fence rows out toward Bark River and Harris, and spring there smells like turned ground weeks before anything is actually green. Seven Acre Gardens works to that rhythm — cleanups first, then mowing on a weekly round, trimming close to beds and posts, edging where lawn meets bed so both sides look deliberate. The northern growing season is brief and worth every day it gives. By October the work turns to leaves and to settling a property down for the long cold. A yard that has been kept all summer shows it plainly, and that showing is the point of the year.