We got a stupid amount of snow here, and even though I shoveled as much as I cared to, I am still at least another day's worth of shoveling away from being able to drive out my driveway. That will get me to the road, which, as those of you who live in snow country understand is another set of problems. Has the road been plowed? Did the plow push an impenetrable mound of snow across the end of the driveway? Can you bust through that? And so on.
Here is Saint Francis, pining for warmer days:
This is probably a good place to tell the story of how that statue came to reside at my house. A friend and I walk our dogs on a quiet nearby street, and up at the top of the hill is a former hospice - now closed to patients. While walking by it one day I saw Saint Francis, broken in two, lying in the brush. I got the sense that vandals had taken him from the grounds and dashed him against the hillside. After finishing the walk I came back and picked him up - he was broken clean in two, and once I applied some super strength outdoor masonry epoxy and mashed him back together he was as good as new. Now he lives in a bower, under a dogwood tree where I can see him out my kitchen window. He reminds me that kindness to animals is an important part of life. Thanks, Frankie, you da man.
11 comments:
There's nothing worse than scooping wet heavy snow if that's what you have down there, SG. Mine has all been light and fluffy so far but that wind chill felt like it could freeze brain cells.
That's a great story.
Be careful.
A lot of heart attacks start in the snow.
No snow blower? That's the first thing I purchased when I bought the house. I take in you live in an area that normally gets little snow.
I lamented the lack of a snow blower several times today. I thought back to the big unnamed blizzard in the winter of '61-'62. We had a snow blower then, and we liked it!
I figured I was doing good to still have a snow shovel - many here don't.
I wish Roomba would develop a snow blower.
My neighbor up the road used his leaf blower to clear the snow off his driveway. This was an unusually dry snow so that worked.
We only got about an inch out here in the western NC mountains. The Piedmont got it good. My son is in Raleigh and he said the roads were impassable. It was a dry snow, so I tried the leaf blower thing to clear the restaurant parking lot. No luck. The pressure from the air flow melted it enough so that it started to pile up a couple of feet away from the blower.
I purchased a snow blower about five years ago. It might be the only one within a hundred miles. Of course, the three winters following my purchase were extremely mild, so I never used it until a couple of years ago. There wasn't enough to warrant getting the blower out yesterday, so I just waited it out. The high was only 26 here, so it actually took awhile to melt that inch. Of course, none of the crew could make it in the treacherous conditions. Honestly, though, with some of the steep driveways and shaded roads, there can be very bad conditions, even with just an inch of the frozen stuff.
Snowstorms in the south aren't as fierce as upstate NY where I grew up, but they are lots more adventuresome, especially fighting the locals for milk and bread at the grocery store.
We had a major storm--the blizzard of '93--when we got two feet during the course of the day, then it drifted in places. Took me two days to dig out. Then my neighbor and I dug out the neighbors who live above us. He and I worked on that for three days together. Tough old guy. He's in his 80s now. He went skydiving for his birthday last year. I told him he's my hero. They moved in a couple of years after we did, and he came down to ask if he could shoot hoops in our basketball goal. We've had some incredible old guys who lived in our neighborhood.
They say that St Francis was the most sanctified man to have lived since Jesus. He spontaneously developed stigmata while contemplating the Crucifixion. He said that he could feel all the pain of death and all the joy of resurrection simultaneously. (Isn't that what women feel during childbirth?)......St. Francis is to saints as Abe Lincoln is to Presidents. He's a truly exemplary saint. I've got my reservations about some of the others.
grab the lute and run?
Sounds like you've been out drinking with Troop.
If the snow is very wet and heavy a snowblower is close to useless. You need a plow for that.
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