October gives itself away early in Nashua — the maples along the river go copper, and the last mowing of the year becomes the first raking almost overnight. Skelley Landscaping works both ends of that turn, carrying lawns through the green months with mowing, edging, fertilization and weed control, then raking the yards down to bare ground in the fall clean-up and opening them again each spring. Their hardscaping is the part that stays put through all of it: custom walkways, patios and walls set into the sloped yards above the Merrimack, granite-country lines that hold their shape while everything around them changes color. Come January the trucks are out under the mill-town streetlights, plowing and hauling snow off drives so the morning starts on clear pavement instead of guesswork. From Southern New Hampshire down into Northern Massachusetts, the result reads plainly from the street — a crisp edge, a swept walk, a yard that keeps its shape from thaw to first flake.