Mornings on the Rio Grande at San Felipe Pueblo come up cool and smelling of wet sand and cottonwood bark, and that is the hour worth working. Heat finds this stretch of river by ten, so the mowing happens first, cut at a height that lets the grass keep its own shade, then the edges are run where lawn gives way to sand and gravel. String trimming closes the gaps a deck cannot reach, around walls, posts, fence line and trunks, and the beds get weeded while the ground is still soft from the night. Every clipping goes onto the truck. By the time the sun stands high over the mesa, the mower is quiet and the yard looks like the day started well for it.