The big snow of 2015

The ‘dusting’ of snow has become a dump.  Vernon had its first snow day in 35 years today.  I woke at 5:45am to Skype with Jay.  That went well as usual, and at 7:15 I happily headed outside to shovel.  So much snow had fallen overnight that I had to divide the yard into 3 sections.  It took me one hour to finish the front; then I had breakfast and tackled the walks around the house.  That took about an hour, so I went in for another break.  I was still enjoying the day, not too cold and the birds were chirping.  Finally I tackled the car and parking area.  That finally took the fun out of it.  The snow was dry but really thick.  The birds were still chirping but I wasn’t.  The car was buried, and by the time I had pushed all the snow off the roof and windows, it was no fun shoveling the surrounding hills that were higher than the tires. I took another break and went out to start all over again about 3 hours later.  This time it was easier.  I started at the car park and by the time I got to the front, I was pleasantly surprised to find Taiyo, the boy who looks after the house whenever I’m away, and his sister, mother and father finishing up the whole front area, including the public sidewalk.  What a great family!  It’s almost 6:00pm now, and I’m going to go out again for a round of shoveling when I finish this.  It’s still dropping snow, so I might have to go again before I sleep.  Of all the horrors of climate change that the world has been experiencing lately, this is minor, but it’s tiring.  The banks are so high I can hardly throw the snow over them.

Beautiful hoar frost on trees beside the cross country trail on Saturday

Snow starting to pile up on Monday morning. The purple finches love it, to be continued.