Welcome, spring! Are you almost here?!

Before the storm...

It's 55 degrees today where I live in New York.  Tomorrow it will probably be over 60!  Very nice, considering the brutal winter we've had this year.  You can go outside in a sweatshirt, the birds are singing, the sun is shining, etc.  All while we still have over two feet of snow on the ground!

I love the photo to the left.  It was taken at dusk out of my garage door after I cleaned up the snow from the start of a big storm.  The light in the sky was heavy and gray, and you could almost feel the storm coming in.  We got pounded that night with over a foot of snow.  I've seen this type of light many times this winter late in the day before overnight storms...

I didn't mind the harsh winter this year.  In my opinion, I don't have much purpose for winter without the beauty and fun of the snow, so bring it on!  :-)

My greeting in front of the garage door, blocked with 20 inches of snow!

That being said, it was a lot of work cleaning it all up!  This winter, I was typically met with a scene like this when I opened up the garage door.  A blocked door with swirling winds and blowing snow.

Of course, I learned the hard way about the new laws in the U.S. that were implemented in 2010 that increased the amount of ethanol in our gas.  Why does this matter to me?  You can't store your power equipment with gas in it during the off seasons anymore.  The new fuel turns gummy in the fuel lines and carburetor and makes the equipment run very badly.  Of course, not knowing this ahead of time, my snow blower was one of my pieces of equipment that I left the gas in over last summer and all of this snow was that much harder to clear because the machine was not running right.

Clearing the driveway after a storm of more than a foot of snow...

Eventually I got it running better, which helped me cut a path through the multiple storms that dumped over a foot of snow, like this one at left.

The kids had a lot of fun with the first few storms because there was so much snow that it was funny to try to walk and play in it.  But then we got another storm.  And another.  Soon the snow was too deep for sledding.  The sleds didn't move!

Then we got an ice storm on top of it all and that turned everything into a solid block of ice and snow.  The fun was over.

Me, at work, on one of our smaller storm cleanups...

As the winter progressed, we ran into another problem.  Many school cancellations.  In a stroke of genius (insert sarcastic sigh), our school system only planned for one snow day this year.  Huh?  I don't really understand the logic of that, but go figure....

Now the kids will have their spring vacation chipped into so that we can return days to the school calendar.

Was it me who said I wanted all this snow?!  :-)

So as we roll toward the end of February, I can say now that I've had my fill of winter.  The storms were fun, everyone got to play around a lot, and now it's time for spring.  I especially began to feel this way today with a classic day of "spring fever".  The high temperatures and the birds singing brought that on... 

The birds want their bath back...

So I end this winter photo essay with a picture of our birdbath.  It's buried up to the dish in snow and it's tipping over due to the soft ground underneath it.  In some of the past winters, it was so mild that the birds were able to splash around in the bird bath most of the winter.  Not so this year.  They land on the frozen snowcap on top of it and look around as if to say, "What the hell?  Where's the water?".

Soon, my friends...........soon.