In late April, when the ice finally lets go of Lake Massabesic and the light comes back long and yellow across Auburn's pine ridges, the spring cleanup crews are already out — raking winter's debris off the beds, cutting the first clean edge of the year. Alliance Landscaping works the properties between the lake and the Manchester line: weekly mowing, aeration and fertilization, mulch laid dark around new plantings, flower beds and planting beds designed and kept, shrubs pruned back into shape, tree work and tree planting, irrigation designed, installed, and nursed through the dry weeks of August. They build the stone that outlasts the season too — patios, walkways, retaining walls, drainage and erosion control worked into Auburn's stubborn granite slope — and they keep athletic fields flat and green for whoever runs on them. Then the year turns, the leaves come down over Route 121 and get gathered up, and by the time the first storm bears down on the valley the plows are staged for the commercial lots in Manchester, Nashua, Bedford, Londonderry, and Litchfield. There is a real satisfaction in it: a lot cleared to the pavement before the town wakes, a wall that holds its line, a lawn that carries its color right up to the frost.