September puts hawks over the Pascack Valley, riding the ridge air above Emerson's rooftops on their way south. The Eagles Landscape works the ground under all that traffic — cutting, running the string trimmer along fence lines, edging the walks, keeping beds weeded and mulched through the last warm weeks. Autumn is the long haul here, leaves coming down in waves until the borough's oaks are finally through. There is a plain pride in a lawn that goes into winter clean, nothing matted, nothing left to rot. Come March it wakes up ready, and the year starts over.