Enough, already!

Remember the other day I said we had had 76+ inches of snow this season? Well, it's probably closing in on 7 feet now. Of course, some of it melted during our January thaw. But here are some pictures of the scene that greeted us this morning, for those of you in snowless climes. The one on the right is the view from our front door at about 7:00 am. Yes, those are the lions, nearly covered in snow.


Here is a more expansive picture of the view from the
front door. If you click to enlarge it, it appears a snowblower is being used near the car in the parking lot of the apartment building across the street. (My sister checked into it and a 2 bedroom apartment goes for $850 a month; I'd guess maybe heat is included.) You can also see the many overhead power lines. Much has been made recently here of the 10th anniversary of the Great Ice Storm of 1998, when many people were without power for up to 9 days or more. Today we probably will not have quite such a disaster, but outages are being predicted because the heavy wet snow is to change to rain and then if it freezes later, branches will break and lines will go down. The tree-trimming schedule is better now, but I still wonder why some effort hasn't been made to put some of the lines underground. Just another infrastructure issue, I guess, where we defer maintenance to "save money." Then, like the I-35W bridge, more money, and lives, are lost.
And here's a little Shakespeare for you, the verse that
comes into my head whenever I look out the window
at this picture:

WINTER

When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail;
When blood is nipt, and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl
Tu-whoo!
Tu-whit! Tu-whoo! A merry note!
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all around the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson's saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marian's nose looks red and raw;
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl --
Then nightly sings the staring owl
Tu-whoo!
Tu-whit! Tu-whoo! A merry note!
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

Although there are precious few shepherds blowing "nails" here, milking is done mostly with milking machines, crab(apple) roasting is in decline, and most of us are fairly clean and keel (stir) our own pots now, it is surprising how much of the rest of the poem still fits our experience of winter.

And apropos of the owl, one last photo, of the truck with a snowplow attached (a common amenity here) which has just finished clearing the parking lot of the Snowy Owl Gallery next door. (They cast silver, mostly, jewelry for a number of local designers and sell some of it in the front room. They bring their dogs, Isabella, Truman, and Chester, to work, and Rusty enjoys visiting with them.) I am looking down over our front yard and our driveway, which is on the basement level; it's not really a miniature truck.