Naugatuck is built on a slope — the river down the middle, the streets climbing away from it in both directions, the borough green sitting like a landing halfway up. KC Landscaping works those grades all year: mowing and edging the small, steep front lawns in summer, plowing the same hills when a storm makes them slick. A driveway that runs uphill off a narrow street has to be cleared with the next storm already in mind, so the banks go where they will not come back. Sand and a scraped surface do more for a valley morning than anything else, and the six o'clock commute never notices — which is exactly the point. By May the work turns to cut lines, clean borders, and the smell of the first mowing rolling down the hill.