Gallatin's hills fall away west toward the Hudson, and from the high meadows you can watch the Catskills change color all afternoon while the Roeliff Jansen Kill works through the valley below. Lawns out this way are wide and set among stone walls and hedgerows, so the mowing takes the long approach and the trimming handles what a mower cannot reach. Edging along a gravel drive gives a country property a line to keep, and a clean one holds all summer. The season opens by clearing what winter shed into the yard and ends with the leaves off the grass and hauled clear. Columbia County shows a lawn off against a great deal of open sky, which is reason enough to cut it level.