April in Wauconda is mud and robins and the first honest green pushing up through last year's thatch. Bartels Landscape Service reads that turn — waiting until the ground firms up out toward Slocum Lake, then opening the season with a cleanup and a first cut that wakes a lawn all the way up. After that it settles into weekly cuts, trimming and clean edges, straight through to the last mow of fall. Wauconda yards run from tight lakeside lots to wide ones near Volo, and each one gets the same eye. Spring always shows what a lawn was given the year before.