The Sheldrake runs small and half-hidden through the north of New Rochelle, and every April its banks green up a week ahead of the lawns above them. Concha Landscaping takes that as the starting gun: rakes out the winter mat, opens the beds, gets the first cut on before the grass can bolt. Spring here is fast and wet, soil holding water in the low yards while the high ones dry by noon, and the job is knowing which is which before the mower ever comes off the trailer. By the middle of May a property that spent the winter looking abandoned has definition again — a mowing pattern, a bed line, a hedge with a top to it. That turn from ragged to kept is the part worth showing up for, on every street from the Sheldrake down toward the Sound.