The Des Plaines River runs the eastern edge of Wheeling under old cottonwoods, and the yards nearby take their cue from it — the wet smell of a spring flood, the leaf drop in October, the ice that holds the bank through January. Bertog Landscape works that entire arc: cleanups and mowing, bed edging and mulch, then plowing and ice control once the ground goes hard as a table. There is real pleasure in the first cut of April, the mower pulling the winter mat out of a lawn and leaving stripes where there was gray. There is a different pleasure altogether in a driveway opened at dawn in January so that nobody in the house has to think about it. Same properties, same attention, two completely different sets of tools.