Digging Out

Here's Trucklette, my faithful Subaru Forester, almost completely buried in snow as the digging out process began yesterday (Sunday).

The little engine that could...sort of. This is the "driver's" view of my snow blower, with the length of the driveway stretching ahead of it. You can see that the snow is higher than the cowling on the augur...with heavy, wet snow, this was disastrous. I kept bogging down every few inches on the way out of the shed and up the backyard, with the snow forming a solid plug in the discharge shoot...finally gave up and shovelled by hand. Then i started the driveway, and for a bit it went o.k., then when i got to the lower end of the driveway the snow was wetter and the clogging started again. Fortunately for me, my next door neighbor had a BIG snowblower (it turns out it's his wife's grandmother's) and did his driveway, his across the street neighbor's driveway, and was starting on his next door neighbor's when i walked down there to see what kind of snowblower he had...and to ask for his help. He did the rest of my driveway in about 15 minutes!

After he finished, i went over to his house to at least give him some gas money...i had barely put my hand in my pocket when both he and his wife said simultaneously "no you don't!" They said i was a good neighbor and would do anything to help them if they needed it (of course) and it was Sunday...hadn't had a chance to go to church so was doing this instead. Great neighbors!

Their daughter was messing around, throwing snowballs at her father, so he picked her up and dumped her in a big drift. She did it again, he picked her up and tossed her in another drift...it was very funny, and reminded me of my father tossing my sister and me into the waters of Lake George when we were little kids. Here's Allie peering out of the second snow drift she got tossed into.

"All" that remained was to clear the corral of snow out from around Trucklette and shovel off her cap...left that task for today.

I also cleared a path from the shed to the bird feeder...discovered the snow in that part of the yard was much deeper...up above my knees! I didn't have my camera with me but took this picture with my phone of the interesting patterns in the snow near the feeder...lots of pairs of bird foot prints...and interesting sharp sweeps that i think are from the doves taking off from the ground.

We have another storm warning for tomorrow...another 8 to 14 inches of snow due between tomorrow afternoon and Wednesday afternoon. Yikes!