October turns the road up to the ski basin into a gold seam, and a week later that same color is lying all over the yards on the east side. Tierra Bonita Landscape Management spends those short afternoons on cleanup — raking under the fruit trees, clearing leaves off the turf before the first hard frost pins them there, taking the lawn down one last low pass so it goes into the cold breathing. Locust and cottonwood drop on their own schedules here, so it takes more than one visit, and they make more than one visit. When the work is done the grass is bare and even, the beds are swept back to their edges, and the whole lot has that scrubbed look a place gets before winter. Come April, that is the yard that wakes up first.