Snow!

We just spent about an hour and a half shoveling out our driveway and it would have been longer except our next door neighbour took pity on us and cleared the last bit out with his snow blower.

Like you Mllemass, we are going to have a problem when it snows later on again because we have very little room to put it anywhere!  

Here's some shots of our handiwork...

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The snow pile is almost up to the level of our kitchen and bathroom windows! The mounds on the side of our driveway is almost as high. Luckily we have a park across the road from our house so in a pinch we could cart it over there but that involves about twice as much walking!
As far as the temperature, -6°C is actually pretty balmy for a low temperature.  Our high today is -7°C and the low is going to be -20°C.  With windchill today feels about -14°C as a high and I don't even want to think about how cold it will be tonight with the windchill factored in!  

But it makes great weather for outdoor skating/hockey rinks!  We haven't had a day over 0°C in over a month and one of our neighbours built a beautiful big rink in the park across from us, so the kids have been out on the ice skating all day (and into the night) every day this past month.  I love hearing the sounds of the skate blades on the ice (even in the dark because they have put up floodlights so the kids can skate after the sun goes down).

I can totally believe that a neighbour’s snow shovelling can make people angry! My mother is enraged when someone puts their snow on her property.

Many years ago, I used to park my car on the street, across from our house. Nobody else on the street parked there - just me. After each snowfall, I would shovel out my parking spot. I did it for years, and then one day I came home and found someone else’s car in “my” spot. The next day, my father told me he had spent hours looking out the window and saw who owned the car, and went out to confront her. It was a woman who lived down the street. She didn’t think she’d done anything wrong, but my father set her straight! He told her that her parking spot was in front of her own house, and on this street, each person shovels his or her own parking spot. But, since she had only recently moved to the neighbourhood, my father was easy on her because she didn’t know how things worked,

I figure if you’re not putting it in anyone’s driveway what does it matter where it goes? It’s just water and where I live having extra water on your lawn or garden is a good thing. I can’t imagine killing someone over it. 🤷🏻‍♀️

We’re in the middle of our first big snowfall of the winter. The Winter Storm Warning has now been replaced by a Blizzard Warning, and I’m not sure which one is supposed to be worse. It started last night, and should continue until 5 pm today.

Today is also our garbage day, when I usually go out before 7 am to put out our garbage and recycling. The snow was up to my knees and our front steps had disappeared. I had to kick my way through the snow to get to the garage to get a shovel. I cleared (sort of) a path going from the garage to the front door, and from the front door to the street, where I put the garbage. None of our neighbours do that. They just take their garbage to the curb and leave it on a huge pile of snow - something the city has told is not to do. Even if I wanted to do that, it’s not possible because our property slopes down towards the street. Our garbage and recycling would just slide down into the street if I leave it on a pile of snow.

Unless I have to drive somewhere (which I don’t), I don’t shovel anything else until the snow stops - so tonight or maybe even tomorrow.

So here’s a question for those of you with children! Do you have your children shovel snow or do any other outdoor work at home, like mow the lawn, sweep the walkway, rake leaves, pull weeds? The reason I ask is I’ve never seen the kids on our street do anything. I’ve only ever seen the parents - actually only one parent, the dads - do anything. It was so different in my family! My father never once shovelled our snow. It was something my mother did, and she made me and my sister do it, too. Not only that, she had us also shovel the sidewalks for the elderly neighbours who lived on either side of us.

I’ve lived in this house more than 15 years, so I’ve seen children grow up and become adults without once picking up a snow shovel. I find it interesting that these parents have their children enrolled in lots of sports and activities - baseball, hockey, karate, ballet - but they spare their children from physical work that’s useful, practical and helpful. Last summer, I was shocked to see the teenage boy across the street washing their family’s van! His parents stood watching him from their front door, so it was something unusual for them, too. But after a few minutes, the father went out and took over, and the boy went inside. I loved cleaning and washing my father’s filthy car when I lived at home! Is it common with today’s parents and children that children do nothing to help out at home?