A July afternoon up on Starbuck Avenue can bake a lawn to straw if it is cut too short, so the deck goes up and the blades stay sharp. Jake's Lawn Care, Inc. mows on a schedule that keeps Watertown yards thick through the hot stretch, trimming around posts and beds and edging where the drive meets the grass. Clippings are left where they will feed the turf and blown clear where they will not. The year opens with a cleanup that pulls out the winter sand and the broken twigs, and closes with the leaves. Somewhere in between there is the smell of cut grass on a hot afternoon, which is most of the reason to do this at all.