It's all about the Snow

For the last couple of weeks it has been all about the snow.  It just kept coming and coming, and building up and building up.  Bill did almost all of the shoveling - I did the deck a couple of times and our lovely neighbors blew out the big overnight snowfalls twice.  But it just kept piling up, becoming harder and harder to even know if it was safe to pull out of the driveway.  Hard to make safe turns at intersections throughout town, harder to drive into downtown on the few mornings that I actually had to go into work.  There were only three mornings last week, and three more this week before I retire!  Will be nice.  Mostly.

So, it was a bit of a relief last Friday when the temps were predicted to rise into the 40's.  Then they downgraded the prediction, but it was still supposed to be above freezing for most of the day and even overnight, for the first time in a long time.  Actuals did rise to 41, and then above that on Saturday.  You could almost watch the snowpiles recede.  We pushed off the latest 4 or 5 inches from the evergreens, and raked the edges of the roof.  Bill spent an hour or so chipping away at the ice dams that had formed in the valley on the north side of the house.  It was good. 

I wish that I had taken photos of the snow at its height.  And I wish also that I had stepped ou t into the fog that blanketed the yard during the melt to capture the recession at one or two points.  But I didn't. 

This morning there was a new cover of 4 or 5 inches, making things fresh and clean again.  But we had a place to put it.  The Northeast garage roof was overhung with a snow slide of significance, which Bill wisely pulled down this morning. 

I do hope that we don't have another extended period of daily snow accumulations.  But that could be perceived as a selfish hope.  The staff at Bubolz Nature Preserve (and those of us on the Board who are worried about the financial survival of the organization) are no doubt happy about the snow this year.  We take in a major portion of our annual income during ski season if it's good, and it hasn't been good very often lately.  And I know that the snowmobilers haven't had many good years lately and they are very important to the development of the trails that I love so much on foot and on my bike in the summer.