The first cut of spring is a small ceremony. LIL DOG TREE & LAWN CARE LLC makes it around Hawthorne Park once the Pontiac ground firms up enough to hold a mower without printing tire tracks behind it. From there the work settles in: mowing, trimming around trunks and posts, edging the sidewalk until the concrete shows its full width again. Shade is the local puzzle — half these yards live beneath mature canopy, and the cutting height has to respect it. By June the grass has caught up with itself and the whole block looks like it woke up.