Winter in St. Clair County is an argument between rain and snow, and some nights snow wins outright. Nickens Landscaping & Excavating LLC is out in the dark on those nights, plowing Freeburg driveways and lots and salting the walks so the first person out the door at six finds pavement instead of glaze. Come August the same trucks pull mowers across ground that rolls east toward New Athens, cutting and trimming in heat thick enough to lean on. Both jobs end the same way — a property somebody can actually use, whatever the sky decided to do to it. That is the whole ambition, twelve months running.