By December the gardens of Lyons have gone quiet — beds cut back, ground gone hard, everything waiting under a white cover. US Gardens LLC works that dormant season, plowing drives and lots, clearing the walks between house and street, spreading salt at the steps and in the shaded corners where ice hangs on longest. Winter mornings here start pale and still, frost on every rail, and there is a clarity in being the first one out in it. A cleared path through a sleeping yard is its own form of tending. The beds will come back in April; until then, keeping the way open is the work.