So, we need the snow. And, indeed this has been a very strange winter. warm. dry. sunny. My pansies never actually stopped blooming. I still had broccoli in January, and during the drier weeks of winter, I could clearly see that some perennials never quite went dormant. The snow has come in waves. Either several feet for several days or nothing for several weeks. This is not acceptable to me. I expect to shovel a bit of snow at least once a week throughout the winter months. I consider it a grand opportunity for exercise, sunshine, and fresh air. But when the sky opens up and deposits dump truck loads of snow in my driveway all at once, it is frankly more than I can handle. We just had a huge multi-day snowstorm. Day 1) "The sun will come out and melt that snow tomorrow. I'm sure of it." Day 2) "More snow? oh great, I should have shoveled yesterday. I will shovel when it stops snowing all together." Day 3) "Still snowing? You can't be serious." Day 4) "Sure, now the sun comes out. How am I ever going to shovel all of this snow?" After three days of snow, my driveway has two deep icy trenches all the way up the center where I pulled in and out of the driveway. The plow has deposited all the snow from my entire street at the end of my driveway which has made it completely impossible to leave my house by car, and the mailman is on strike until he can reach my mailbox without getting out of his truck. Several times today I walked outside and examined the scene. I sized up the job and then returned to the indoors for another warm cup of coffee. I decided two winters ago that I had no interest in owning a snowblower. "I am young and strong. I don't have a bad back or bad knees or a good excuse." I still subscribe to this train of thought, but Ugh!
As a child, I looked forward to snow. Snow was magical. Snow meant sledding and snowball fights. Snow meant - maybe- a day home from school. We built forts and snowmen and generally reveled in the beauty of the day. Cold? never. We would have been hypothermic before going indoors on our own. Our parents would summon us and we would run blue lipped and soaking wet to the warm comfort of our homes, which we suddenly appreciated. My mother would make us hot cocoa and milk toast (milk toast is only delicious if you have just been playing in the snow. Otherwise, it is questionable). At the end of a snow day, a warm bath was never so wonderful, and sleep was never so sound. Shoveling snow was not of our concern, nor was driving in the snow. 18 inches of beautiful white snow fell on Tuesday. It would of course have to be shoveled. Even 4 wheel drive can not rival that much snow. But, there was an air of childhood magic about it. There was just soooo much snow, a person couldn't help but stop and admire the beauty of it. Evergreen boughs yielding to the weight drew pictures in the ground snow that had risen up to meet them. All the world was eerily silent and for a moment the driveway really didn't matter. I had an overwhelming urge to build a snowman. I calculated that using the driveway snow for construction material would considerably reduce the shoveling necessary. The sun had grown weary, the gentle humm of innumerable snowblowers sang in the background, and I built a snowman.
