Cold air slides down out of the Poudre Canyon at night and pools in the low ground near Bellvue, so frost there arrives first and leaves last. Alpine Gardens works that edge of the county in both directions — lawns mowed, trimmed and put to bed through the growing months, drives and walks cleared when the canyon sends its weather down onto town. A December dawn on the northwest side is all blue shadow and woodsmoke, and there is real pleasure in being the reason a driveway is already open in it. In June those same yards come up thick, and the cut line along a bed gets drawn as carefully as the snow line along a walk. Fort Collins sits where the mountains hand off to the plains, and this work follows that handoff.