Winter comes at Longmont sideways — a chinook shoving down out of the foothills one night, eight wet inches waiting on the driveway the next. Ward's Lawn Service is out in the dark for the second kind, plowing and shoveling drives, walks and steps so the first car of the morning backs onto bare concrete without anyone having to think about it. Ice melt goes down at the seams and on the north-side stairs the sun won't touch until noon. Come April the same routes turn green and the work changes hands: mowing, edging, spring cleanup, and hauling off whatever the wind took down over the winter. There is a plain satisfaction in a street where you can tell at a glance which houses somebody looked after before sunrise.