Burlington is more woods than open ground: Sessions Woods on one side, Nepaug State Forest on the other, and Punch Brook working its way down between them. Yards here are carved out of that, so keeping them takes real attention — mowing, trimming, edging, mulch, and the cleanups that pull the forest back off the lawn each spring and fall. Then the cold comes down off the ridges and the same properties need plowing, walkways shoveled, and salt or sand where the shade never lets the ice go. There is a plain pleasure in both halves of the year: a lawn striped clean in July, a hillside drive opened wide before the school bus. Burlington's roads climb and turn, and knowing which ones drift shut first is half the job.