Winter arrives in Athens on a northwest wind that comes straight off open prairie with nothing to slow it down. BDE Tree and Lawn is out ahead of it, plowing driveways and clearing walks so the first trip of the morning is an easy one, with salt down wherever the ice wants to hold. In the green months the work turns to mowing, trimming and edging on streets where Menard County's old brick and clapboard sit under full-grown shade trees. The country between town and the Sangamon River gives a yard plenty of room to grow and plenty of reason to keep after it. Both halves of the year are really the same job: make the ground in front of a house look looked-after.