Posts Tagged ‘shoveling’
Sloppy Surprise
There you go. Two days in a row, shoveling required. We received about 2 inches of powdery snow yesterday. Shoveling was easier to accomplish on Sunday, when I was home all day. I got very little of the snow cleared after work yesterday. First priority was cleaning off the front steps and walkway, then I was off to feed horses before they grew testy. Last to come was rescuing Delilah from the confines of her outdoor kennel.
I know she means well, but she caused me some real pain that I never saw coming. At this point, I don’t even recall what I was doing as I bent over in the fading daylight inside the kennel with her. I was either fussing with her leash, or picking up her water dish, which had frozen around the edges. Of course, she is always overly excited to see us after being alone all day, so she jumps on us and does circles around us as we put things in order before opening the gate to set her free.
When I walk toward her doghouse in the back end of the kennel, she runs away to the door, and runs back to me, as if she believes I must have gotten lost. Back and forth, round and round, up and down. I lost sight of her for a second yesterday, as I crouched down, and then it hit. BANG! She unleashed a sloppy wet tongue across my open eyeball. Yikes, that hurt!
That can’t be sanitary. I know people say that a dog’s mouth is cleaner than a person’s, but I have seen what she puts in her mouth. That adds sting to the sting.
.
.
.
.
Snow Promised
The daytime temperatures here have been above freezing the last few days, but the precipitation that is moving across our region has fallen mostly as snow. The warm days are forecast to change on Thursday, when the temp is expected to drop into the single digits. It will stay in the single digits, even for the warmest point of the following days, through the entire weekend. Before that excitement arrives, we might get up to 7 inches of new snow.
With that in mind, I took some time to shovel the labyrinth last night in hopes of creating a more obvious path so it will be visible even if we get a half-foot of snow. I love how the pattern becomes more obvious with the snow. I knew I wouldn’t be able to finish before dark, so I stopped part way to take a picture.
It is inspiring me to try to make significant gains next summer getting the path well-defined, because it makes such a difference in the experience when you don’t need to think about the route along the way, and can, instead, focus your thoughts on the contemplative journey you have chosen. Having snow to very visibly define the pathway has showed me how valuable that is.
I’m thinking it won’t be feasible to keep shoveling down to the ground as the snowfalls get deeper and deeper through the winter. I would need to build walls of snow between each path, because there is nowhere to put the snow that is shoveled. I’m hoping to be able to just trod the path after each subsequent accumulation, now that I have established the base that defines the route.
It might be a snowshoe exercise, although I’m not sure it is wide enough for them to fit very well.
After I finished shoveling the whole thing, I took a picture, holding the camera up into the darkness. If you look close, you can see that the snowfall for the next phase of precipitation had already started.
I’m ready. Go ahead, let it snow!
.
.
.
.
Relative Something 