Lake sits in the sandy jack-pine country of Clare County, where the two-tracks run off into red pine and the frost shows up early and stays late. Cutting Edge Lawn Service takes the whole year on: mowing and trimming through a growing season that has to work fast in this soil, then plowing once the snow starts stacking along the county roads. Late autumn is the hinge — one week it is raking pine needles and leaves out of a yard, the next it is dropping a blade at six in the morning. Both jobs finish the same way, with a property that looks tended rather than surrendered to the weather. Lake, Farwell, Clare, Lake George, Harrison and the surrounding Clare County roads make up the territory.