Good morning
This is the view out of my garage door this morning. This area looks pretty in snow. However, it lacks a certain………perspective.
So I took a few steps back.
Just in case there’s any ambiguity at all, that’s a yardstick.
There is no Weather category so being as these are photos, I settled on Art. It is not my intention to insult anyone by doing that.
When I came downstairs this morning, after my wife pointed out that there was a large mound of snow on the roof outside our second story bathroom window
I went downstairs and looked out my kitchen window onto the back deck, and that’s when I began to understand the magnitude of what I was looking at.
That bump on the right outside the window is a gas grille. The snow on it is over my head height.
I wanted to let my dog into the front yard, but
so I dug her a path into the yard, but
The snow is powdery and light. It’s really easy to shovel but you can’t climb it, you’d just sink. Keep in mind that you’re looking at an 80-90 lb. Bernese Mountain Dog
whose name is Mabel.
12/17/2020 @ 11:52 am
Wow. There is not much I miss about the weather back East, and this set of pictures tells exactly why I don’t miss winter there at all.
12/17/2020 @ 6:42 pm
Exactly how I feel. Person who bought my home back east sent me photo of first snowfall, “magical”. I’ll take the grey rain here.
12/17/2020 @ 11:53 am
That is like a memory from childhood, which I am perfectly happy to have remain distant.
12/17/2020 @ 11:53 am
Better you than me, I say. (Gratefully snow free out here on the tundra.)
12/17/2020 @ 6:43 pm
My memories much more recent – decades of snow UP TO HERE. Enough.
12/17/2020 @ 11:56 am
It’s called a “poop pad.” You gotta shovel Mabel a poop pad. Advantage: poop stays contained in one area making it much easier to find & collect before spring.
12/17/2020 @ 6:43 pm
I miss my dogs, but not the spring clean-up…
12/17/2020 @ 12:07 pm
Wow! You got socked! I am just back in the house after two hours of shoveling our own comparitively meager 16 inches, and am only half finished. The car has pretty much disappeared but I’m thinking about leaving it, nowhere to be until next Weds.
It’s triple grade A snowman snow though–is yours? I’m thinking of making something silly to put next to the mailbox, for Eddie the mailman.
12/17/2020 @ 12:33 pm
This snow isn’t packing snow. It’s dry, powdery snow, meaning easy to shovel. There’s a service around here that plows so they’ll get to us eventually.
What I did about the poop pad was that the back door opens under the deck. There’s a space there that’s quite big. She went there this morning. She might use what I’ve shoveled in front, we’ll see.
12/17/2020 @ 1:41 pm
Wet (and heavy) here. I just came back from shovelling installment #2 and it is now snowing again. The car can stay in its igloo. My back is already sore.
Dave Epstein who is my weather guru showed VT with 40 inches, that looks about what you got KS. About five winters ago, we had three storms, one per week, all on a Monday, each dumped approx 36 inches of snow. By the second storm there was nowhere to put it when shovelling. It set Boston’s record for snowiest winter ever recorded…101 inches. We’d had hardly any snow before those weeks, and were closing in on spring, thought we’d squeaked thru an easy winter, which made it extra hard to take. The big box store parking lots had three stories high snow mountains. The Globe had a watch on a ‘snow farm’ the city created to dump truckfuls of city snow. The snow didn’t completely disappear from the snow farm until June!
12/17/2020 @ 4:28 pm
Yup. It was reported as 40”. I don’t know if any of it has compressed but I just ran a yardstick into the side of the channel I cut for Mabel and I got a yard even. But that’s the shortest in sight. If it drifted it had to come from somewhere. What part of the country are you in now?
12/18/2020 @ 1:09 pm
North of Boston. Btw, are you shovelled out?
My report: just came in from 4th shovelling installment, and STILL have one round to go, aarggh. Walkway done, back of driveway done, car is free, but the front driveway, still to go. I am beginning to think about researching burly high school students who think thirty bucks is lots of money. It’s Dec. 18th, not even chronological winter yet!
12/18/2020 @ 2:33 pm
No. Got 3/4 way to street, just a path. Didn’t want to overdo it. After all, it’s a good 3’ deep now. Went back out after lunch, felt the soreness immediately, said I can’t finish this and if I try I won’t be able to move tomorrow. The guys who plow driveways are way behind. We’re on their schedule as we’re regulars.
My daughter is now in Ipswich.
12/18/2020 @ 3:34 pm
That last 1/4 is a killer! The four installment plan is the way to go though. Back in after #4. You have the snow depth to contend with, but I have the weight, and five inches of compressed ice as the last layer. If I wanted to make igloo bricks, I could. My back is killing me, but am having hot tea and stollen and maybe a two hour hot shower.
Ipswich is about thirty minutes away! They have the best beach north of Boston (Crane’s) and the best coffee roasters (Little Wolf Coffee). I’m in Salem, where we have, tourists.
12/18/2020 @ 3:58 pm
I went back out to do the last 1/4, did three or four shovelfuls and said I won’t be able to finish today and if I try I won’t be able to move tomorrow. So I took a hot bath because when you’re sore that’s the best thing to keep you from hurting the next day. I know that from long experience. There are some guys working on my little dead end street and the cul de sac street directly across from my driveway (also true of the last house I lived in) and it looks like one of them is from the snow removal service that has us on their route. In the summer they mow the lawn. My mower – my power mower, I have a manual, believe it or not – is a bright green lawn boy that’s approaching 40 years old.
12/18/2020 @ 5:06 pm
You might announce to Mrs. Kosher that the well-shoveled snow-free driveway is now a temporary toll road, the toll being a backrub!
12/18/2020 @ 6:51 pm
As it stands, the cavalry eventually showed up at four something. I still have to dig out the mailbox, which is surrounded by what was a 3’ plus layer of snow heaped and compressed by a plow, but the driveway you could land a helicopter on.
12/17/2020 @ 6:46 pm
Wow, how I don’t miss the days of shovelling my car out, light powdery or not. Or driving anywhere in the stuff. We get a little snow here and it’s gone soon. One year tho 3 ft o’nite. Disappeared on due…and then another 3 ft. Shovelling a path for the then-dogs across the deck convinced me I needed to roof that area.
12/18/2020 @ 3:41 pm
Myriad, once I retire, if I still have one more move in me, I’m going to research places where the weather is less dramatic, and go there. The popular retirement places like Arizona and Florida (GAH Florida) are not my style. Your set up seems quite wise–near family, winters that aren’t too bad, and a yard to be messy in.
12/18/2020 @ 4:13 pm
I liked North Carolina when I lived there. We hope to go back. We were in Greensboro. Winters weren’t anything like north. If schools closed it was usually because of ice. If it did snow, plowing was slow because they’re not geared up for it. It’s still far enough north that the vegetation isn’t weird – real deciduous trees and grass that doesn’t look like it came from an Easter basket factory. And the cities are reasonably liberal. Like here, the rural areas are not.
12/18/2020 @ 5:18 pm
One of my former students lives in Asheville–he’s a food writer, great gig if you can get it. Pre-covid he ate at for free two three meals a day. He says Asheville is the Cambridge of the South, full of artists and musicians and craftspeople, no Trump supporters. He says politically though, the state disappoints him . Penland is near there too.
Easter basket grass, LOL and I know exactly what you mean ;–)
12/18/2020 @ 6:57 pm
Asheville is lovely. It’s west, in the mountains. There’s a great French restaurant there but not high end french, homey French. We used to drive the three hours or so to go once in a while. You’d like Asheville. It’s also right near the Biltmore estate, the largest mansion in the US, built by one of the Vanderbilts. I look at the name and say They Certainly Did. They give tours, they decorate for Christmas, they own a vineyard there that sells wines people actually buy (even in other parts of the state), it has beautiful grounds. And, oddly enough, it’s owned by descendants who live elsewhere on site. For cost reasons, none of the plumbing in the building works. It has a lot of acreage, though it originally the land holding was huge.
12/19/2020 @ 9:58 am
My favorite cooking in the world is rustic French! Stu has become very good at photographing his plates. Even though he favors lots of hearty meat dishes, even those look kinda good to me. I’ll check his page for the French place.
The Biltmore sounds like the Newport RI Vanderbilt mansions (there are several). One of the biggest of those is the Breakers. If you live in NEngland, you’ve done the tour at least once in your life. It is decorated like Trump’s places: too much gilded relief, towering ceilings, oversized candelabra, highly figured marble, ballrooms. I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump’s seen it and been influenced by it in his own place. https://www.newportmansions.org/explore/the-breakers
Did the post shovel hot shower last night, yet can barely move today. Even typing hurts!
12/19/2020 @ 6:22 pm
No No No No Not Shower. Bath. It has to be a bath. You have to soak.
I did it and I’m fine today. I did a bit more shoveling to free my mailbox.
The Asheville French restaurant is called Bouchon.
12/20/2020 @ 10:51 am
A bit more shoveling for me too, polishing the igloo hatch. I’ll try the bath next time, but a bath is so much work and my tub really should get a scrubbing beforehand. My housekeeping skills are about a C-.
Today, Stu made a post about a restaurant that puts your entire meal in a knotted plastic bag and you dump it in a bowl when you get home. It looks less palatable than some of the other places he goes. I’ll see if Bouchon is in his reviews
12/20/2020 @ 6:42 pm
The work is worth the pain it saves.
01/12/2023 @ 2:39 pm
There’s more $ in swing trading e.g. right now: DIS $100 + $4.07 than, say, poetry as right now loudly Michael McDonald graces this’n mansion of glory: Minute by Minute … and wow koshersalaami your multifarious expertise hardly evah ceases to amaze. Above Mabel in the snow trough glosses and endures. I am such a resilient happy/\hippy to learn you’ve made time to re-experience Disneyland. Is there a laser light show as darkness comes? Nowadays our sole guarantee is bad news on the doorstep: politcs like pickup sticks and purse snatchin ] — [ Say, sir, do ‘ya miss the Open Call 4mat?
01/13/2023 @ 10:14 am
DisneyWorld. Florida, not Anaheim. Fireworks are better than lasers.
01/13/2023 @ 4:41 pm
Learned earlier that one can locate book reviews with an ISBN number.
Happy to see you’re warm, safe and dry under that 66° blue sky.
Betcha’ we’re maybe a year from iPhone aerial pictures.
Wings of a pure white dove, feathers on the smart aleck phone.
Ol’ Walter sure did good. Disneyland Paris, too. Cool to keep FLA
green as the dewed grass. Here the fire is so delightful as I enjoy
your hello and ‘The Letters of Carl Sandburg’; just learned he was
baptized Carl August (1878-1967)…center book oddity references
President Harry S Truman’s letter to C.A.S. on 14 Aug 45 thanking
him for his six volumes about President Lincoln; only five days after the
obliteration of Nagasaki and the death of 74,000 people. Sandburg’s reply
15 SEP 45 includes a boot-glossing namaste wherein he entwines
concerted alliterations as well as an oh wow about President Truman’s piano playing.