East of the city the river road runs out to Rocks Village, where the old bridge crosses toward West Newbury and the Merrimack finally slows down. Second sons landscaping works this end of Haverhill through the green months — mowing, trimming, edging, and the cleanups that lift a winter's worth of road sand and broken branches off a lawn. Spring out here starts brown and stays brown a while, then turns over all at once, and the first cut of the season is the one that changes how a whole house looks. There is pride in that first pass: the yard sits up, the lines come back, and the property looks like itself again. After that it is simply a matter of keeping it there.