There's an hour after a Laporte snowfall — early, before the plows and the dogs and the first door slam — when the neighborhood is nothing but soft shapes and hush. Hoffman's Happy Tree Care spends that hour breaking the silence usefully: plowing and shoveling driveways, opening walkways and steps, and scraping entries down so the first person outside isn't guessing at the footing. Bare branches keep their white outlines until the sun clears the plains to the east and knocks the load loose in slow clumps. By then, if the morning went right, the concrete is already showing dark and dry. A cleared path before breakfast is a small kindness, and it is the whole job.