In McAllen, January can feel like someone else's spring: tall palms sway along the boulevards of the City of Palms, grapefruit hangs heavy in backyard trees, and the lawns hardly pause. Southern Landscapes works with that long subtropical calendar, mowing and trimming yards that stay green well past the point where northern lawns have gone to sleep. Mornings ring with the raucous calls of chachalacas and flashes of green jays in the brush, sounds that belong to this stretch of the Rio Grande Valley. By the time the sun turns fierce, the turf lies level, the driveway edge is clean, and fallen fronds have been gathered off the grass. Here a cared-for yard is less a seasonal chore than a lasting piece of home.