Motivated Motion

Our Old Fashioned Winter

If we don't get more cool snow to show you, I will get back to posting about New England.

It is Dec 4th and we have had three storms already this month.
The last storm was about 5 inches of snow, then a night of pouring rain that didn't wash away the snow, and then a day of snow on top of that. Which is making the school kids very happy cuz they are having lots of snow days before Christmas break.

Our ski resorts are going to do well if the snow continues, which is really nice, because our winters have been low on ski condition weather for two years.

Last night we had another storm. So todays snow pictures are fresh morning snow. Our steps and walks were already shoveled today and there is accumulation on them.

You can hardly see the holiday lights on the bush because of the pile of snow on it.



Normally we have a little walking path from the mail man going to our neighbours' house. In the picture below their steps facing us are obliterated by a drift and the mailman is going to have trouble taking his short cut! The brick you see with lines of snow on it is a wall, not the steps. The steps are to the left of the wall.
They don't plow the side streets down to the pavement here. They leave about an inch of compacted snow, so it can hold the sand, giving the drivers a better grip for their tires.
This is our back garden patio. Carl shoveled it clean yesterday. The bunnies have been out playing in the new snow.


We live in the countryside just north of Toronto. Toronto only has a dusting of snow. About twenty minutes north of us is where Mother of Invention lives and they got at least twice as much snow then us since November.

This is an old fashioned winter. In the past years we would be lucky to get any accumulation of snow before Christmas. We usually get a dusting on Christmas eve, and January begins the big freeze and snow. February is actually our worst month of snow. We usually get a province stopping blizzard for Valentine's day week.

This year is like my childhood. Lots of snow days in which the brave families can hop in the truck and head to the slopes. Dad and I spent many snow days fish-tailing the van up to the ski hill for a day of fun. Dad and I reminisced on the phone this morning about dawning snow mobile suits to spend a day of shoveling snow up to his waist (and my shoulder) when the drifts were so bad we had to have two adults push on the front screen door to open it enough to be able squish out the crack of space we made to get out and shovel.

I am seeing we could easily get those days back this winter.

It is really good when we get a lot of snow. Our houses are well insulated, and a few feet of snow all around the house and on the roofs help insulate the house even more. In this situation we can keep the temperatures lower in the house and the house stays warmer longer. The big snow means cozy nights and lots of fire in the fireplaces. We have two fireplaces. One gas and one for wood. We could have converted both to gas, but our area gets lots of power outages in winter, and with no power, the gas fireplace fan won't blow, so then the wood burning fireplace can take on the job of heating the house.

http://motivated-motion.blogspot.com/2007/12/our-old-fashioned-winter-if-we-dont-get.html