Cold Snap
The cold snuck up on me this year. I live in Minnesota, so you might think cold wouldn’t be surprising. Yet in the seven and a half years I’ve lived here, I haven’t found Minnesota to be the daunting tundra that so many believe it to be. Yeah, it gets a little colder for a little longer in winter, and it’s a little less hot in summer, but the climate is not much different from the other two places I lived the longest, Philadelphia and central Ohio, the latter of which had a MUCH worse winter last year than we did here. In fact, last year Minnesota had a very late first snowfall. So when the weather people began predicting snow this week, I thought, I’ll believe it when I see it. Sure enough, on Tuesday it was wet and cold, but the temp stayed in the mid-thirties F. and never dropped to freezing. Wednesday, though, was something else.
The change in weather wouldn’t have been a problem, except that I was unprepared for the last minute preparations to clear out our yard; today is the last collection day for yard waste by our trash service. My husband G. Grod, as is his habit, left all the leaves till last weekend. Unfortunately, he was only able to clean up the front yard, not the back and sides. Tuesday I went outside in the snizzle with Drake, who was miraculously open to playing in the yard while I hauled ten bundles of hydrangea stalks out to the trash, and raked the back yard. I put off bagging the leaves, though, and they sat out that night. The bad news is they got covered with a thin layer of ice and snow. The good news is that it formed a protective coating so my leaf piles didn’t blow away in the gales of wind.
By yesterday, it was below freezing (hovering just below 20 F during the day, with a wind chill of about 1. Yes, one.) and there was both snow and ice. I began my morning like a responsible home owner, by shovelling and sweeping my steps and walks. I followed this with a scattering of salt for the ice. Drake was not nearly so amenable to staying put while I did this as he’d been the day before (funny, how being fenced in can make watching him SO much easier), though, so imagine a pregnant woman running half a block down icy sidewalks after her toddler, several times, as punctuation to the shoveling/salting. Good times.
During Drake’s nap, I attended to my frozen leaf piles, and filled six bags by hand. I then turned my zeal on the hostas, and cut them back using a small hand clipper, which I don’t recommend. (Last year, G. Grod tried the weed whacker and it didn’t work, so if anyone has a recommended method/tool for cutting down hostas, I’d love to know for next year.) The hostas took up two more bags, and I decided to be done. Everything else will have to wait for a spring clean up.
November 17th, 2005 at 9:06 pm
Couple of things. First, I know how to cut down the hostas: you use your gas powered mower. It’s just that we don’t have one.
Second, and you can check the weather websites on this one, the last several weekends have been rainy, which is why I couldn’t get to the leaves. I had raked several times since the leaves started to fall, but the front yard was covered thouroughly pretty late in the season. Even last weekend, when I could only get to the front, it was raining again before I finished. And it is dark by the time I get home from work, so weeknights aren’t any good either.
No fair complaining about the husband on the internet.