The black dirt around Florida is the floor of an old glacial lake, and in July the onion fields run flat and dark right up to the edge of the village lawns. Green against that soil reads twice as green, which is reason enough to keep the mowing tight and the borders sharp. Grass on these bottomlands drinks the humidity and pushes hard through midsummer, so the cut comes on schedule and the trimming hugs the foundations and the mailbox post. When fall arrives the leaves gather along the curbs and the cleanup runs to the last of them. Every week the block looks better for it, and that is the whole idea.