Winter Decends on the Front.


Snow that falls after my birthday tends to stay for the duration of the season. No melting. Happened again this year. See the pic above? It's my front yard garden on November 6.

One of the best surprises I got from my front yard garden is the fact that it's beautiful all year round. Okay, maybe not all year round -- it looks like dog barf in the early Spring.

But look at it! It's fun, interesting, flowery even! No flat dunes to be seen. My mother would probably say it looks like crap and dead with lots of dead crap... but I think it looks nice, and I intend to enjoy it while it lasts -- until an unexpected dumping of snow buries it until spring. Yearly snowfall here is very unpredictable. Some years, there will be barely enough snow for a decent snowman. Other years, there's enough to be creative.

Anyway, my winter front yard experience hasn't been all lovely.
Last week, I did some shoveling. The snow was wet and fairly easy to clear, but the stairs had a thin, immovable layer of ice. Very dangerous. I decided to sprinkle grit on the offending areas with the cat litter Roomie keeps in a container in the garage just for that purpose.

Well, apparently, the cat litter was of the CLUMPING variety. Cripes, it started to melt into the ice, creating this horrible muddy mess! It looked like diarrhea! Not exactly the look I want for the front of my house. It's frozen in place now. Frozen diarrhea on my stairs. Lovely.

On a high note, while I shoveled, Mini made a snowman. It has since lost its carrot nose (I suspect the local bunnies), and we think it may have been pee'd on (I suspect Arthur's dog).

Hmm. That didn't end up being much of high note, eh? Sorry.

Take Two: Brad Pitt in Troy. Ahhh. Better.

3 comments:

  1. I actually have dead things in my back garden, and quite enjoy them over the winter, too. I guess we're hungry enough for any kind of visual relief that we'll take interesting dead over immaculate white.

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  2. As an attempt to avoid choking up your comments with my bitter ramblings, I've decided to shamelessly copy your subject & do my own post (that WAS one of the maine points of starting my own, remember?) It's a good subject, and hey, I have a yard too!

    I will say: remember the bacon bits used at the U of M campus? I wonder where you'd get those? I've seen them used at my work, and thought I'd rather use them on my wooden stairs than salt. They'd be a bitch to land under your feet in the spring/summer, though. Or inside if they get tracked in!

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  3. @wyliekat:
    I agree... especially with our winters being so long.

    @harmzie:
    can't wait to read it! you and max have made such great changes to your yard... if you can, please let us know what you've planted so far. I'd love to read that.
    as for the bacon bits, I'd like to get my hands on those too, although the non-clumping cat litter we usually use serves the same purpose -- we don't track much of that stuff into the house, and we sweep the walk asap in the spring. The darker colour of the bacon bits just appeals to me more.

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