Newark Township is corn, beans and beet ground laid out in mile squares, with windbreaks of old spruce marking where the farmsteads stand. Shrubs out here take the full weather — the open wind in March, the heat that sits on the fields in July — and they go shaggy fast if nobody minds them. We shape hedges and foundation plantings back to a clean line, open the middle of a shrub so light can get inside it, and cart every branch away. Lawns get mowed and trimmed on the same visits, and the yards get raked out in spring and again once the leaves are down. There is real satisfaction in pulling out of a Gratiot County drive and seeing a house sit square behind its hedges with everything in trim.