Where the two branches of the Tioughnioga come together, the water keeps moving even under a skin of January ice — and so does the work. A & E Property Services LLC plows and shovels through the dark hours so Cortland wakes to driveways already open and walks already salted. In the green half of the year the same trucks come back with mowers, and the lawns get their weekly cut, their trimmed borders, their leaves hauled off in autumn. There is a particular satisfaction in a lane cut clean to the pavement before the first car of the morning turns onto it. Cortland is a city of early risers, and this crew likes being the reason the day starts on time.