By June the irrigation ditches are running full and every yard in the valley wants its turn at the water. Altamont Landscaping, Inc. keeps grass green through a short high-country summer — mowing, trimming and edging at seven thousand feet, where the sun sits close and the nights stay cold no matter what the calendar says. When the season turns, the same work becomes plowing and shoveling, driveways opened and walks cut clean well before the top of Methodist Mountain takes the sunrise. Both halves end the same way: a lawn mown even as a tabletop, a drive scraped down to plain gravel. The crew works Salida, Poncha Springs, Nathrop and the ranch roads between them.