From Thanksgiving to the first warm week of March the bermuda out here bleaches to a pale straw, and everybody in southern Garfield County watches the ditches along Skeleton Creek for the first honest green. Ozark Property Services works the lawns of Drummond, Covington and the acreages strung along the county lines, starting with the cleanup that spring demands before a mower ever turns a wheel. After that it is the weekly rhythm — cut, trim to the posts, edge the drive, tidy up behind. Out where a cedar windbreak is the only thing between a house and the horizon, a kept yard shows from a quarter mile off. That is the point of it: a place that plainly gets looked after.