The clock tower on the Clinton County courthouse keeps time over Saint Johns whether or not anyone is awake to look at it, and in January almost nobody is. First Choice Lawn & Snow LLC is out before that hour anyway, plowing driveways, clearing walks and salting the slick spots so the town can get to work. Mid-Michigan winters arrive in gray waves off the lakes, quiet snow that piles up without ever making a show of it. When it finally lets go in April, the blades come off and the mowers go on, and the season turns into cutting, edging, trimming and the cleanups that open and close a yard. Same properties, same people, twelve months of looking after them.