September on the shoreline is stone-hunting weather, everyone bent over the gravel looking for that six-sided pattern — and up in the yards it is the finest month grass gets all year. John Hoffman & Sons Landscape works Petoskey right through it: mowing, trimming and edging on rotation, beds weeded and mulched, borders held to a shape. Cleanups run at both ends, the spring rake-out and the fall haul, so nothing sits on the turf long enough to do damage. Landscape work in this country is mostly patience — build the bones, then keep them, and let time do the rest. What comes of it is a property that looks composed in any light, not only in the hour after a mow.