Winter shows up first in the seams: the bluestone sidewalks of the Stockade District go white between the slabs while the awnings on Wall Street are still bare. MATTHEW LANDSCAPING is out in that hour, pushing driveways open and cutting paths to front doors around uptown Kingston, then salting the steps that hold ice longest. Come April the same trucks carry mowers, and the work turns to grass, beds, hedges and the long tidy business of keeping a property looking looked-after. A four-hundred-year-old street grid makes for tight corners and short driveways, which is its own kind of skill. What stays with you is the before and after — a walk impassable at six, swept and gritted by seven.