Saturday, December 27, 2014

Snow in Paradise...

Snow in Paradise...  The storm on Christmas day left us with 6 to 8 inches of snow, with a layer of ice underlying it because of the initially warmer temperatures.  The first consequence of this was that I needed to plow our driveway – all 18,000 square feet of it!  I purchased a nice snowplow for my little Kubota, and this was the first time I really needed it.  The snowplow has a hydraulic “flipper” to change it's angle, and it's mounted to the loader (in front), so it's really easy to use.  The tractor's four-wheel drive makes it behave solidly even on the ice.  I've never used a snowplow like this before, so I had some learning to do.  One thing I learned: the curves and variable width of our driveway don't make plowing it easy :)  About a week ago I installed snow stakes along the sides of my driveway, knowing that the snow was coming.  It's a darned good thing I did, because without them I wouldn't know where the edge of the driveway was!

The dogs had a ball in the snow, except that toward evening when it was a bit warmer, they started to have trouble with ice accumulating between their toes.  I actually had to carry poor Mo'i in from one walk, as the ice was making it painful for him to walk.  I've ordered a set of dog boots for him, as this will be a recurring need.

We made a drive into town this morning, and the roads were quite slippery.  However, people were driving slowly, and appropriately so.  They've obviously seen this action before :)  Later I drove to the post office to pick up our mail (we don't have rural delivery here).  The post office is on a side street up a gentle hill, and it's street was very slick.  I watched a car turn about 45° as it came down toward me.  The driver was totally calm and unflapped; she just turned into the skid and recovered when she got traction again.  If that had happened in California, the driver would have completely freaked out :)

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