By six on a June evening the light in Kentwood goes long and gold, sliding under the oaks and laying the mower stripes out flat across a backyard. JD Potter Lawn Care works that hour and all the ones before it — mowing, trimming around posts and bed edges, cutting the walk a clean shoulder so the concrete has a line to follow. West Michigan clay grows a thick, stubborn lawn once it warms, and it wants a sharp blade and a steady week-to-week pass. There's pride in the last strip, the one that closes the pattern, and in the driveway blown spotless afterward. The yard cools, the smell of cut grass hangs on, and the evening belongs to whoever lives there.