Monsoon afternoons announce themselves twice — first as a brown wall of dust rolling up from the south, then as rain that leaves the whole city smelling like creosote. Everything green in Phoenix answers within a week, and the mowing schedule tightens right along with it. Ersland Touch Landscape rides that surge through July and August in the neighborhoods below Dreamy Draw and Piestewa Peak: mowing, edging, trimming, and pulling out the fronds and litter a storm knocks loose. The work is straightforward and the timing is not, so days start early and move quickly from yard to yard. A lawn cut the morning after a storm, the wash still damp and the peak rinsed clean of haze, is about as good as this desert gets.