Tag: snow

Snow, Snow, and Snow Again

It’s 07:46 on a sunless morning, but it’s a relatively warm one (35ºF/1.6ºC) — it has just snowed AGAIN after all — and I take this photo while taking a break from dragging the white blanket off of my truck with the snow brush, 29 December 2021.
I think it’s time to shovel, scoop, excavate(!) out my truck’s bed of the snow that has accumulated so far during this winter season. My plow guy has been and will be busy! There are still three more snowfall months yet to come because it’s only 29 December 2021. The whiteness you can see in the background are not covered structures, but snow piles pushed there by the plow as he builds the mounds higher and wider with each snow event, hoping that he will not run out of space to put the snow — or turn his truck around.
The path of a tire showing the depth of the most recent snowfall of the season. The driveway had been completely cleared before these white flakes began to fall. (January and February are historically heavier snowfall months, yikes…) 11:17 a.m., 29 December 2021.
This year’s snowfall has nearly obscured the external water tank which the water company fills in a timely manner whenever I call for a delivery. Naturally, I shovel out a path and brush off the hidden ladder and dig out the fill hole for the delivery person before the truck backs in. Only three weeks ago I had prepped for a delivery, but I can’t tell that now… In late May there will still be a chunks of thick ice floating on top of the water.
(Photo taken at 11:17 a.m., 29 December 2021.)

Keeping the White Dress

Golden daffodils are popping up through the remaining hillocks of sparkling snow. Young girls in Easter dresses gambol about seeking colored eggs among green blades of grass. The sun warms the skin and the heart with the hopes of spring. Somewhere. Somewhere much more southerly.

Here the tiny snow crystals fall — as they have been falling steadily throughout the last eighteen hours. The delicate white flakes blanket the world in another layer of shimmering lace and tug at my truck’s tires like velvet. Mother Nature has decided to keep her white dress.

Yesterday the birds sang, the sun shone brightly in the cerulean sky, and it felt like spring was truly coming. Today I am brushing snow from the truck and scraping ice off of its lights once again.

A female Arctic redpoll alights atop a spruce leader, 13 March 2021.

Spring comes slowly, sometimes stubbornly here. Two weeks ago the birds wheeled and dipped and darted. Water dripped from eaves. Two little healthy avians alit atop the leading branch of a small spruce, using the stiff needles as ladder rungs to walk up and down, around the conifer’s leader and each other. One flitted away but the female hung out for a bit to allow me to snap some photos. Then, she too flew off to continue her aerial dance, singing a rapid vibrato chirp. Their perky excitement lifted my own heart. Now, sounds are hushed by the veil of white. Icicles point downwards, and the snow brume blurs the boundary between the hilltops and the muted sky.

Perhaps some years Mother Nature is just not ready to select her garb from the the browns and dirty yellows of snow- and ice-melt in her closet. Pristine pretty white makes the world look so much more aesthetically appealing. The trade-off for us is more snowfall, and even more…

One of two finches pausing in the bright sunlight, 13 March 2021.