The sun is late to Sandia Heights. It has to clear the crest before it reaches these foothills, so the first stretch of morning is blue shade over granite, juniper and cholla, with the arroyos running quiet down toward the valley. It is a fine hour to start a mower. Yards up here are cut into the slope and share a border with open desert, so the work stays deliberate: turf mown level, a held line where grass gives way to rock and native ground, beds weeded, shrubs trimmed back off the walks, everything raked up and carried out so nothing is left loose to blow into the arroyo. By the time the tram cars are moving on the cables above, the yard is finished and the day has barely begun.