There's a stretch of days in Exeter when the Squamscott still runs open but the wind coming up off the marsh has already changed its mind — and that's when this work turns on its hinge, from saws and stump-ground to plow blades and the first pass down a driveway. Curtis Tree Care & Excavation works both sides of that turn: limbs taken down clean before ice can find them, ground opened and shaped where a yard would rather drain than pool, grass cut in long even rows along streets where brick and maple lean over the sidewalk. The pleasure is all in the after — a drive black and clear at six in the morning while the rest of the road is still white, a crown thinned so afternoon light drops through, a lawn holding its edge right to the curb. Around Exeter and the nearby seacoast towns, that's the whole ambition: a place that looks tended, and keeps looking that way through whatever the river valley sends next.