Late May in Chatham: the willows at Memorial Park are already heavy, the Passaic slides past brown and unhurried, and the first real mow of the year is behind everybody. Caitlin Bird Landscape Design tends lawns around the borough — cutting, edging and trimming, feeding and overseeding the shaded turf that Chatham's old maples make so stubborn. Under trees like those a lawn is a negotiation, and the pleasure is in winning it: even color right out to the tree line, a firm border where grass meets bed. Seasonal cleanups take care of what spring leaves behind and what October drops, so the ground is never fighting a mat of leaves for light. It is ordinary ground made deliberate, one property at a time.