God Laughs, and I Shovel Snow

Man makes plans, and God laughs.

I had expected to go out hunting this weekend, but it started snowing late Friday morning, and it started to stick around 4 pm.

By the time I woke up this morning, the snow was 20 inches deep in the yard, and it is still coming down. Where I hunt (about an hour away on a normal day) the snow is 40 inches deep, all of it delivered overnight. Amazing.

I have shoveled a path down the driveway and out to the street, which does not sound like much of a deal until you see how long my driveway is (about 250 feet) . I go out and clear another inch or so off every hour.

My dogs are 15, 12, and 11.5 inches tall, and the snow is deeper than they are tall, so I have shoveled a kind of race track around at the top of the driveway so they can pass each other, walk around a bit, and scoot off into little "parking spaces" on the side to pee and poop.

Or at least that was the idea.

They have not used my little "poop rooms" of course, choosing instead to dump right in front of the doorway. No worries. I was pretty sure they would laugh at my plans too. God is never alone when it comes to that!

I walked out to the street and down to Windy Run (in Virginia, creeks are called Runs), which goes down to Potomac Overlook Regional Park.

No one else was out other than the plows, and absolutely no one else was crazy enough to go off into the woods.

The path along the creek was close to impassable, with snow well over my knee and small trees bent parallel to the ground over the trail under the weight of the clinging snow.

One thing for sure -- the nursery business will be booming this year as a lot of people are going to have to replace a lot of broken trees and wrecked bushes.

It's hard to say how hard my own yard has been hit. I knocked snow off some bushes last night at about 10 pm, and again this morning. That should help a little.

In the middle of the night we lost a massive limb off the Magnolia tree next to the greenhouse, but luckily it just missed shattering glass. The other big magnolia in the front yard lost a sizeable limb this morning.

No complaints here, however, as we still have power, and our brand new furnace is cranking out heat to beat the band.

If we do lose electricity, I have a generator, and I am pretty sure I have a place to park all that frozen food in the refrigerator so it does not melt.

So no complaints -- just a reminder that Mother Nature always bats last.











Update: A hanger for private jets collapsed at Dulles airport under the weight of the snow (no one injured), and about 200,000 people in the DC area are without power (unbelievably, we are not one of them). According to the National Weather Service, Washington has gotten more than a foot of snow only 13 times since 1870, and two of those occassions have been this year. We got well over 16 inches in a snow storm on Decemeber 19th.

Meanwhile, just to keep us all on our toes, it looks like more snow may be on the way for Tuesday. Nice! Work from home time!
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