Four in the morning on the north end, and the lake-effect band has been coming ashore off Lake Huron for hours, packing the drives from Fort Gratiot up through Lakeport with the fine dry snow that drifts. The Outdoorsmen Lawn & Landscape is already out in it — plowing, shoveling the walks by hand where a blade cannot reach, salting the ice that sets up wherever the wind scours a driveway bare. Getting somebody out of their own drive before they ever knew they were stuck is the best part of the job. When the ground lets go in April the same trucks come back carrying mowers: weekly cutting, trimming, edging, fresh mulch in the beds, shrubs shaped before they go leggy. Between the river and the lake the green season runs long, and the white one arrives sideways. Both of them get worked.