Lake-effect weather comes into Amherst sideways, off Erie and over the flats, and it never asks what time it is. Tammy Landscaping & Snow plowing keeps those hours — blade down on the side streets off Transit and Sheridan while porch lights are still the only lights burning on the block, so the first car out rolls onto clean black pavement instead of a foot of drift. There is real pride in a driveway squared off at the corners, in walks and steps cleared down to the surface, in the ridge at the curb broken open before anyone has to reach for a shovel. When the ground finally lets go in spring, the same routes turn green and the work turns with them: mowing in straight lines under that wide Western New York sky, trimming, and the crisp edge where turf meets walk. Snow removal in the cold months, lawn care in the warm ones, for Amherst and the towns pressed up against it.