Know what you mean about neighbors helping. Was scooping the very heavy wet snow from our walks and the young woman that lives next door came out with a scoop shovel to help me clear the invalid neighbors walk. Whiteout conditions, we weren't sure whether or not it was snowing sideways or just blowing. All the roads are closed, interstate and state highways. The city streets are impassable, really don't think there was more than 6 or 7 inches of snow but the winds piles the drifts like concrete walls. Fortunately, it isn't very cold, the radio said 24° so it is tolerable outside. I keep threatening to buy a snowblower but sure as the world if I do there will be a normal year with very little snow. Yesterday I was repairing my cold frame, today I can't find it.

I don't lust after too many expensive toys, but boy if I had the dough, a Bobcat would be sitting outside my back door. I've used them in the g'houses when an acquaintance was kind enough to lend it to us on occasion. Our deere has a front end loader and as you said is parked most winters facing out and ready to roll.

I've lived in Tyler, Texas all my life and seen very little snow. Nothing to come close to what you Jaz and Gandle mention. I just can't imagine conditions like that. Although it certainly looks really beautiful! For many years I taught pre-school. Once I worked with a teacher who came from some place with lots of snow. She said it is a real expierence trying to get three year olds bundled up in snow suits so they can play outside.

Universal truth about bundling small children:
The moment you get them layered, wrapped, booted and capped they need to pee urgently. All of them. Always. This is especially true if the bundling includes a difficult to close hooded coat held on with tightly zipped long mittens and a scarf that encircles the neck a few times... on top of overall-style snow pants!

Ain't that the truth? I think in snowy weather that is what I hate most about winter. The snow really is beautiful, and you learn to just work with it/around it but the hours spent and the hassle of bundling up, unbundling, bundling up, unbundling gets very tedious in no time at all. I hate coats and spend a good deal of time outside year-round in my work. I layer with sweaters, wear union suits and a watch cap........or canvas carhardt bibs.

Last night was amazing. We got 12 inches in a crazy windy blizzard that included thunder and lightening. The drifts were between six inches and 2 1/2 feet in the driveway. Steve couldn't get the blower through it, so a neighbor offered to loan Steve his big boy blower as soon as he finished clearing someone else's driveway. Steve was keeping an eye on him and then lost track of him, so he got his coat on to go over to the neighbor's house... only to find him already working on our driveway.

It's 37*. Giant flakes are still falling on the very wet snow. You can't walk through it without snowballs self-propagating as you kick through the drifts. I can't get the dogs to come inside... Izzy has been carrying around a broken-off mega icicle all week, alternately chewing on it and playing keep-away with the other dogs over it. She keeps trying to bring it inside, but I won't allow it. I fear her pet icicle may die a horrible death today.

What a beautiful and interesting day! I'm grateful that unless I choose to do so (probably on foot, to walk the beasts) I needn't go anywhere in it. Hope the rest of you fared well in this chaos, however it landed on you in your particular neck of the woods!

Been there, done that & while I miss snow on December 24th & 25th, big snow storms late in the season are just flat out depressing. The later they come, they more depressing they are. I cannot tell you how many pictures from my childhood were taken on Easter Sunday in front of a mound of snow. If I'm going to be outside at the end of February, it's much more fun to be pruning my roses.

5 - 7" forecast for tonight. If its only 3, we don't bother to shovel the drive (no sidewalk), we just drive up and down it. Today, we moved the cars around and left the snowblower at the front by the door.

It's usually everyone for themselves on this small street: two houses have plow service. We've done one neighbour's drive when they were on vacation, but usually he has no trouble: he has three teenagers as a labour force . . .

Despite all the reports calling for ice, icy rain, sleet, and freezing rain to begin about midnight, the freezing drizzle waited for daybreak. After glazing the branches and wires, and shining up the steps and sidewalks, the ice changed into snow. The falling snow was gorgeous... big, fat flakes falling in such quantity you couldn't see farther than the end of the driveway (about 100' in my case). Looking rather like a scene from a movie, it continued for hours; near noon I realized we had about 4", which had accumulated in less than four hours. By late afternoon, the falling snow changed back to ice and then gradually stopped. By that time, we had about 6" of very wet snow, the kind that is so heavy even the strongest young men only pick up a few inches at a time when heaving the snow shovel.

The nice thing about snow on the weekend is that it's the weekend. The snowplow came by just before dark, pushing 2 foot tall ridges to block the driveways and leaving a wide trail of sand behind him. This means I go to work on Monday... not like the last storm, falling during the workweek which seemed to prevent our street from seeing a plow until long after the event. The last storm was mostly ice, which packed quickly into concrete-strength ridges resistant to snowblades and apparently impermeable to both chemicals and sand. Four days after the event, I was driving with caution along icy road-lanes narrowed by peninsular mounds of snowy iceblocks pushing into the right lane. This morning, the pavement was clear, occasionally wet but nowhere icy. A complete contrast.

The dh is a shoveling fool. He absolutely has to have clear dry pavement. All the drive, all the sidewalks. And our drive is 150' long with the garage apron. And he does it by shovel. Then he does the elderly lady's walks across the street. Then he does the drive and walks of the recently widowed lady down the street. Then he does the neighbor's, who has a corner lot and a snow blower but has been under the weather. Then he makes fun of the neighbor's on the other side who are younger but who have deplorable shoveling habits. All is done by shovel alone. He has the cool push shovel, not as cool as Jaz mom's but cool. And when we get ice, we have a coal shovel to break it up. I too am infected with the all snow must go mentality. Good thing we don't live in the snow belt. I tell him that when he is old and senile but still physically strong, an unfortunate trait in his family, I shall keep him busy just by handing him a shovel and sending him out. I shall put a name tag on him and people can bring him home.

So your infection is less severe than his? You hand him the shovel but remain in the house? They do say women are smarter, but then if they depend on men to do the dumb stuff then are they really superior?

Bboy, the pointedness of your words baffle me. I don't know how it is at your house, but at ours, when my husband is out shoveling and I am not, I'm not inside laughing at how "superior" I am to him... We're a team, and I'm just working on another mutually beneficial project. Or not. We don't keep score.

I sometimes laugh at men and their antics. But not so much out of smugness as affection. I sensed admiration and kind-hearted amusement in Tibs' words... not the judgment and condescension it appears you are understanding.

Who is this "they" to whom you refer?
Since when is snow removal "the dumb stuff?"
Does a mutually agreed upon division of labor make anyone "superior" --- or does it just make a marriage more efficient and serve as a voluntary reinforcement of the existing bond?
Who has multiple snow shovels anyway?

Why did your post sound so mean? Am I misunderstanding? Or is it possible your interpretation clouded by anger?

oh my goodness, I didn't mean to start a war of the sexes. I said I suffer from the same mentallity of complete snow removal, I shovel as much. When he is working, I do it. This last snow, the dd did it once, I did it twice and dh did it once, all in the same day to keep it from building up. And when he is out shoveling I am inside fixing him something hot to eat and drink when he comes in. We even shovel together. Ah, now that is true love.