Half of Ansonia stands on a slant. The streets climb straight up from the river in a way that makes a July afternoon honest work, and LIONS LANDSCAPING & TREE CARE LLC does plenty of it on foot — walking a mower across a pitched side yard, trimming the steep bank nobody else wants, keeping a hillside lawn from going ragged at the top where the sun bakes it hardest. Grass on that kind of grade tells you what it needs, and the crew reads it: cut a little higher through the heat, keep the edges tight so the terrace still has shape, mulch the beds so the roots stay cool. Late in the season the leaves arrive all at once from the big maples that shade these older neighborhoods, and they get taken away rather than pushed around. The result is a yard that holds its lines all the way down the slope, from the door to the curb.