There is a plain, satisfying pleasure in a driveway scraped clean to the gravel while the St. John River still lies dark, the tractor's blade carrying off a night's worth of Aroostook snow in long, even passes. Lapierre and Sons works the properties of Van Buren with that same steadiness once the warm months come, too, when mowing lengthens the day and a fresh-cut lawn holds its lines against the potato fields and the far Canadian shore. Up here at the top of Maine, where winter runs long and the valley keeps its own weather, there is real worth in a place kept trim — a yard mown to its edges, a path opened before the first cup of coffee. Season upon season, the work leaves its mark on the ground: dooryards that look tended, ready for whatever the north sends down next.