Darlington calls itself the Pearl of the Pecatonica, and the river earns it, looping slow past town beneath the old courthouse clock. Crist Lawn Care LLC keeps lawns along those Lafayette County streets — the shaded yards near the water, the open ones up the hill, the rural places out among the corn. Summer work is mowing and trimming paced to the southern-Wisconsin heat; fall means leaves coming down along the riverbank in serious quantity. When the Pecatonica runs high with spring melt, the grass comes on fast, and that is when the season truly begins.