On a clear spring morning the Organ Mountains stand up east of La Mesilla like a torn edge of paper, and the valley below them turns green weeks ahead of the rest of the state. Landscape & Design Center, Inc. starts the year there — first mowings, winter debris cleared out, borders re-cut where the beds have wandered — and then holds the rhythm all the way to frost. Their days are mowing, string trimming, edging and taking the cuttings away, on properties from the old village out toward the fields. What they are after is coherence: grass at one height, lines where lines belong, nothing shaggy at the margins. It is a modest ambition and a surprisingly hard one, and this valley hands them nine months a year to practice it.