On a July afternoon in Herkimer the heat stacks up in the valley until a thunderhead comes shouldering over the hills and clears the air in twenty minutes. Stumpin' By Mike LLC works between those storms, cutting the dooryards and back lots on the hill streets above the village, where the ground rolls and no two lawns lie flat. Slopes, odd corners, the tight strip along a garage wall — that is the interesting part of the job, and it gets the same attention as the wide front yard. A trimmed line along a driveway is a small thing that changes how an entire property reads. By late fall the work turns to hauling leaves off and putting lawns to bed before the valley locks up.