At four in the morning, on ground the glaciers left flat, sound carries: the scrape of a blade down Ecorse Road travels a long way over open fields. That noise is a driveway becoming passable, a walk getting cleared and salted, a lot opened before the first car turns in. When the ice finally lets go and the ground softens, the work changes to mowing, edging and the steady weekly trim that keeps a yard looking tended. Alliance takes both ends of the Ypsilanti Charter Township year — the white one and the green one — off the same route sheet, with the same early start.