By late February the cottonwoods along the Santa Fe River are still bare, but the grass underneath them has started thinking about it. Yellowstone Landscape reads that turn — the first cleanup of the year, dead thatch pulled off, bed lines cut back in, the mower out before anyone else believes it is time. From then until the nights turn cold again it is a steady cadence: cutting, trimming, feeding, aerating the packed spots where the ground froze hard. Santa Fe gives a lawn a short and demanding season at seven thousand feet, and the yards that look good in June belong to whoever started on them in the cold. There is real pleasure in being the reason a place is already green when the town wakes up.