Posts Tagged ‘cleaning driveway’
Sloppy Snow
After reading in yesterday’s paper that the warming of the Earth is bringing rain to the Arctic regions, I feel a little sheepish about my whining over getting rain in December at our latitude. Honestly, I could adjust my thinking to accept the rain if that’s all it was but the reality is that we get rain mixed with sleet which then turns to snow. Usually, heavy, wet snow.
My work area just beyond the overhang in the paddocks has turned into a muddy mess again. The horses take it in stride but the sloppy footing makes my maneuvering much less pleasant.
Cleaning off the driveway is a whole other battle in these conditions. When a small amount of snow falls, it isn’t worth bothering to plow, however, shoveling the area in front of the house keeps it from becoming messy.
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Trying to plow the water-logged slop may have cleaned the pavement nicely, but by the time I was able to consider it, the slushy snow was starting to refreeze. The duration of this precipitation is predicted to last a couple more days so I expect I will need to plow at some point. Too bad it will be a frozen mess underneath any real snow that eventually accumulates.
I tell ya, it’s the in-between conditions of mixed winter precipitation that are the most frustrating to deal with. That is until we receive massive amounts of snow in one dump. Then that is the most frustrating to deal with.
Today, it is the rain mixed with sleet that eventually turns to snow that is crimping my style. It’s getting to be almost as bad as the Arctic around here. Not that I would whine about such a thing as crummy weather.
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Missing Out
Now that we are back at home, I don’t have access to television coverage of the Tour de France bike race. I decided to focus on other projects yesterday and headed outside to move lawn furniture in preparation for mowing the grass that is overdue to be trimmed. The dew point temperature was high and the grass was very wet. I was going to need to wait for dryer conditions later in the day.
I decided to fill the time by cleaning up the two sections of asphalt that didn’t get removed by the excavators. Between the shop garage and the house, the old asphalt was still in good enough shape that they can overlay new on top of it. I spent much of the day pulling grass and weeds from the cracks and cutting back the sod away from the edges.
I also did a deep sweeping with a push broom to remove all debris.
While working on all that, thunderstorms started blossoming almost directly overhead. When it thundered nearby I pulled out my phone and checked the radar. Sure enough, the green/yellow/red blotches were materializing right on top of us.
Delilah and I headed back inside just as the intensity of pouring rain started to peak. The lawn was not going to dry out any time soon.
Being stuck indoors, I could have easily checked out the bike race online, but I didn’t even think of it. I finished reading the news and closed my eyes for a ten-minute nap. When I came to again the sun was shining bright. That allowed me to take Delilah out for her noon walk, where we stop by the barn to give Mix a little mid-day feed of extra nutrition.
The dog and I only made it part way through the woods when it started to rain again.
Back in the house we went. I ate lunch and waited until I could get back outside to finish putzing around the upper driveway.
It took until 2:00 in the afternoon for the weather to stabilize and the precipitation end. At the end of the day, around the time I was turning in for the night, I thought to check on the race. I missed out on several incidents with the Jumbo-Visma team, including the yellow jersey crashing.
I can just imagine the heightened alarm of commentators Phil Ligget and Bob Roll describing the drama as it unfolded.
At least I won’t miss anything today as it is a rest day for the competition. My attention will be on a certain paving company’s expected arrival and whether the grass is drying enough for me to mow.
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Tidying Up
With temperatures climbing into the 40s yesterday, Cyndie and I saw an opportunity to do a little tidying up around the property. After the most recent bouts of quasi-winter rain-sleet-snow precipitation, an annoying icy, glazed mass of packed snow had become the surface of our driveway.
I took out an ice scraper and pushed away at the soft, wet edges of the ice pack in front of the house. The portion that will come up without resistance is visibly obvious. I focused on that, picking the low-hanging fruit. After working the edges and then pushing the crumble of snow and ice to the side with my shovel, I looked back to see there was already a whole new measure of visibly obvious portions that begged attention.
How could I not keep going? After three times around, I had the whole upper platform of our driveway clean to the pavement. The melt was happening at an amazing rate.
Cyndie was down with the horses, planning to give each of them some individual attention and grooming. That was my next stop, thinking I could hang out with them and clean up manure while she brushed them out. Even though there was a cloud cover painting the day with a hue of gray, the air was absolutely calm, allowing the warm temperature to feel perfectly comfortable without getting hot.
Legacy’s tail has always grown long, but Cyndie noticed it had reached a point where he was stepping on it, so she decided to give it a trim.
After scooping fresh manure from under the overhang, I fanned out a little further around the paddock and picked up some of the newly exposed piles emerging from the melting snow. Like the last couple of winters, we have been dumping much of the season’s worth of manure right inside the paddock.
Since much of the manure is frozen by the time we get around to scooping it up, there isn’t much in the way of composting that goes on in the pile, so it just keeps getting bigger and bigger with every passing day.
Continuing with the theme of tidying up, I decided to try giving the giant mass a little more shape by cleaning up around the edges. I was surprised to discover over the last few winter seasons that despite the dark color of the pile, if it starts out frozen, if left alone, the center can stay frozen well into May or June.
We placed this pile at a spot that we would like to fill in effort to reduce the amount of slope, but it becomes a long slow process to move from an ugly pile of manure to an unnoticeable natural ground cover nicely filling a low spot.
All part of the ongoing process of running a neat and tidy ranch operation, regardless what the weather presents.
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Relative Something 