Winter reaches Ravena off the river — wet, heavy, and almost always overnight. Vasto and Son Landscape Contractors are out in it before the county has finished 9W, opening driveways and lots so the first car of the morning rolls straight onto black pavement. A three-a.m. push down toward Coeymans Landing has its own hush: the Hudson dark past the bank, the Catskills a low shadow to the west, the blade throwing everything aside. The same hands turn to grass when the ground lets go in April, mowing and maintaining those properties clear through a long Hudson Valley summer. Two halves of one year, both measured by how little the weather is permitted to get in anyone's way.