Late August is the softest week of the Frisco year — willows along the Blue River going gold at the tips, days still warm at noon, nights already dropping toward freezing. High Country Conservation Center tends lawns and grounds in that narrow window when everything up here is green at the same moment: mowing, trimming, edging, seasonal cleanups, and carrying the clippings away. Mountain turf is a stubborn, thin-soiled thing at nine thousand feet, and coaxing it into an even color takes patience rather than force. The reward is a yard that looks deliberate — clean lines against the gravel, tidy borders, the last cut of the year laid down before the first hard frost takes the valley.