March Sadness

Enough already.

While the calendar admittedly says winter runs from December 22 (the winter solstice and shortest day of the year) to March 21 (the spring equinox when you can purportedly stand an egg on its end); the weather folks have a much more agreeable idea: ‘meteorological winter’ is the months of December, January and February. Meteorological spring begins March 1. Let the crocuses bloom!

For the past two years, New England has abided by the ‘meteorological’ calendar. In fact, winter – at least precipitation-wise – was almost a no-show. My snow blower was dutifully hauled out and placed its ‘ready for duty’ position at the front of the garage where it gathered cobwebs for three months. We never had enough snow to matter; and what fell, invariable melted in a few days. We had worse winters in Virginia.

The view, of lack of it, from the
screened porch during the blizzard.

While it isn’t the winter of 2014-2015 (120 inches of the white stuff; the last of which didn’t melt until mid-April), this winter has produced about 60 inches of snow. And, the temperatures in February were much below-average 20 out of 28 days. I was greeted on the first day of meteorological spring by two inches of fresh snow. I was welcomed this morning by temperatures in the low teens. As this is written, the outside mid-afternoon temperature is all the way up to 28, and the little weather widget in my computer says to expect one-to-two inches of snow tomorrow.

The snowblower on skis.

Admittedly, we did get some melting over the weekend. As readers of this blog know, for environmental reasons, we do not have an asphalt driveway. We want the precipitation that falls on the property to stay on the property; not go down a storm drain. The asterisk to this otherwise agreeable declaration of eco-friendly awareness is that snow blowers are designed for asphalt and concrete. Put one to work on a surface covered with pea gravel, oyster shells, or stone dust, and you will be rewarded with a spray out the chute of, yes, snow; but also, the aforementioned gravel, shells and dust. Which you will be picking out of your garden for the next four months.

Down to bare slate

My snowblower is mounted on short lengths of skis, elevating the machine’s maw about two inches above the surface. As a result, it leaves the gravel in place. It also leaves two inches of packed snow. On Sunday, it was warm enough to (almost) completely melt the snow on the driveway. This morning, the driveway was again coated in white. I shoveled the sidewalk down to bare slate. I just grumbled at the idea of hand-shoveling the driveway.

Medfield, which is southwest of Boston, had two big storms last month: 16 inches at the beginning of February and 24 inches in the Blizzard of ’26 on February 22 to 24. The snow from both storms is still there. If I go out the front door (I say ‘if’ because apparently it is against the law to use your front door in New England, though it is tacitly agreed you must shovel the sidewalk), I walk through a two-foot-wide trench that still has two feet on snow on either side – and this is after compaction.

The trench to the feeders

In fact, I have multiple trenches on the property; suitable for my own private re-enactment of the Battle of the Somme. There is one from the side door of the garage to the bird feeders 20 feet away. And, of course, the snow has to be dug away from the feeders so as to thwart our high-IQ squirrels that would otherwise leap from the top of the snowbank onto sunflower-seed heaven. There is a side spur that leads ten feet to our home’s generator because, if the power goes out and the generator goes on and finds its outlet vent is packed in snow, it will promptly shut itself down, negating the purpose of having spent $11,000 to have uninterrupted power during a storm.

Yet another trench leads from a corner of the driveway down four steps and ten feet to get to our composter bins (which also had to be dug out).  And a final trench leads from the garage side door twenty feet to the driveway because, if I am taking a bag of kitchen scraps to the composter, I don’t want to have to unnecessarily put up the garage door; allowing frigid air to further freeze the pot-bound shrubs and perennials huddled in a corner of the garage against the quasi-warm wall of the house.

Did I mention digging out the mailbox?

I am all too aware I am grousing about what are politely known as ‘first-world problems’. On Cape Cod, there are still 50,000 people without electricity more than a week after the last flakes fell. World Central Kitchen has set up food wagons in Yarmouth and Hyannis. I should count myself lucky and shut up.

But this is the winter of my discontent. It has gone on too long and was too ferocious to appreciate. My Wednesday walking group cancelled several weeks because of the cold or excess of snow (and on one memorable week, we walked through thigh-deep snow for 90 minutes before admitting defeat). And the seven-day forecast? Snow, rain, and overnight lows below freezing.

Basketball fans are getting amped for March Madness. Me?  It’s March sadness.