April in Middleton stays brown longer than anyone would like — frost easing out of the glacial soil, the low spots soft underfoot, the ball fields still weeks from firming up. Prescription Turf Services reads that thaw closely, because what a lawn does in July is mostly settled in the six weeks after mud season. The work is patient then: raking out the winter's litter, feeding, mowing early and often as the grass wakes up, keeping the edges honest while everything is still tender. Then one warm week arrives, the town goes green almost overnight, and the lawns that got attention in April are unmistakably the ones that look it. Watching that turn happen up and down a street never really gets old.