Waterbury's back ridges are stitched with old stone walls, laid by people who cleared these hills long before there was a city in the valley below. Marek Family Landscape and Excavation Inc works that same ground in a newer register — mowing lawns on a set rotation, trimming and edging so the boundaries stay honest, and clearing the yard at both ends of the season. Winter turns the work to plowing: driveways pushed clear, paths cut to the door, snow moved off before it can pack down into ice. There is something plain and good about leaving a property better than you found it, week after week, year on year. Waterbury and the hill towns around it, in grass and in snow.