The first cut of April is the one everybody waits for: the mower rolls off the trailer, the air smells like wet clay and cut green, and a yard that spent all winter dull turns bright in twenty minutes. Jethro's Lawn Care runs that route across East St. Louis with the bluffs standing off to the east, mowing, trimming and edging as the weeks warm and lengthen. Grass here doesn't ease into a season — it comes up all at once and asks for a schedule. Keeping ahead of it means the same day, the same lines, the same swept walks every visit. East St. Louis and its neighboring towns fill out the week from that first April pass onward.