By mid-July the afternoon builds white over the Jemez, slides across the valley, and gives Rio Rancho Estates twenty loud minutes of rain. Everything that spent June holding still takes that water and runs with it — grass thickens overnight, and goatheads and kochia come up through the gravel like they had been waiting on a signal. Monsoon weeks are when a yard is won or lost, so the mowing keeps its rhythm, the trimming stays tight to walls and posts, and the weeds come out of the rock while they are still small enough to pull whole. Hedges get shaped before the new growth turns woody, and the cuttings go with us. The reward is a lawn in August that looks like the rain only ever helped.