Snow

It took a while this winter. The first big snow came yesterday. All earlier attempts by our local Winter Fairy to produce the first genuine “must shovel” snow had failed. She had, presumably, become confused by Global Warming talk and trends. The earliest attempts came in November but never even fully covered drives, never mind roofs and roads. “It snowed a little,” was the phrase. And while the white did unevenly mark the grass out back, it was light enough so that even shy autumn leaves could hold up small brown sails; some even moved east in the wind, reminding me that Fall Raking had fallen short of one hundred percent.

So January 19, 2019 (a properly uneven year) came with skies triple-grey and dumped snow any which way. It cumulated to about four inches and piled under wind-pressure to hillocks high enough so that taking the garbage out resembled an Arctic trek. We too got snow, not just the East Coast. But continuing to trouble our local Winter Fairy, in Alabama they had tornadoes.

Very white out there, very bright the sun. Lovely, lovely. A neighboring oak’s still holding on to leaves with the usual oaken tenacity; but that’s just a species. Other trees have all obeyed; the evergreens are decorated with white jewelry.

Question to the Fairy? Will this first 2019 storm be the last as well? Who knows, these days. Everything’s confusing when oceans boil and icebergs melt.

Little Red Devil

Thanks to John Magee’s knack with the camera—I discovered this picture on Patioboat this morning—I’m enabled to show my new Toro snow blower, operated here by Monique, which I have named, after a tremendous upsurge of original inspiration, the Little Red Devil.

Except when it comes to books, I tend to be excessively timid in purchasing anything the purpose of which is principally to free me of physical labor. I’ve spent decades admiring and envying such a device when casually used by my old neighbors at McKinley—while I used a red plastic snow shovel for the same long time and only replaced it, at last, when I had eroded a full half of its total surface!

Well, the new house, and so forth, and its seemingly endless drive, at last overcame my scruples and, in a matter of less than an hour I not only decided but also carried out the intention of owning such a thing. The Little Red Devil (touch wood) has done a great job thus far, shared communally too, not least this morning when another 1.2 inches had to be moved out of the way so that we could deploy our Honda for a trip to Sinai Huron Hospital to give blood. The sunshine you see in the picture, however, won’t show up until tomorrow.