Auburndale wakes to the hum of Highway 10 and the scent of cut hay drifting in from the dairy farms that ring the village. Hilgart Landscaping works in that open central Wisconsin light, where a lawn can be seen from the road and a straight mowing line tells on itself. In May the grass comes on fast once the frost leaves the ground, and the job is to keep pace with it: mowed, trimmed, edged neat against the sidewalk. By midsummer the yards along the village streets look as tended as the fields beyond them. It is steady landscape work for a place that knows what well-kept ground looks like.