a much too early spring

[kareina]

For much of November we have had lovely winter weather. There were a number of good snow falls. Last weekend we had enough snow that I spent seven hours outside shoveling over the course of the weekend, and it was grand. On Thursday instead of the soft, gentle snowfalls we had been having we had a proper snow storm, with much wind. So much wind that we wound up with waist high snow dunes crossing the yard in some places, while in others the ground was scoured nearly bare of snow. Consequently, I didn't bother trying to do much shoveling on Thursday--only cleared the path between the door and the lamp at the edge of our driveway several times, as the snow dune kept filling it up again. The final time I cleared that path on Thursday was at midnight, when the wind was dying down, which meant that it was still clear when I got up the next morning. Good thing it was, too, since when the wind died down the warm weather swooped in after it, and on Friday we reached highs of +4 C, which meant much melting and the snow drifts turned very wet and slushy.

I am so glad that David and I have a tractor, and that we had no plans for Friday, as that meant after he got home from work we could spend several hours cleaning up all of the wet, slushy snow from the driveway before it froze again on Saturday. He drove the tractor, I used the snowblower to cut through the big drift in front of the doors to the shed in which it lives, and the shovel to clean up the areas that were hard to do with the tractor (like behind my car), and to clean us the stuff that spills out from the side of the tractor scoop. Luckily, we managed to get it all cleaned up before it froze again, and even more luckily, we got a tiny hint of snow today, to cover up the dismal grey of the ice that was left between the dunes. Can we please just stay winter now till spring, and get some nice soft snowfalls, without any rain or melting thereafter?

In other news our folk dance group had our last session of the year tonight, and ended as we always do, by inviting the musicians and everyone else in the local folk dance organization to join us. As a result we had seven musicians and 14 dancers, and it was a delightful evening. While I love all forms of dance, Swedish folk dance is my favourite, and the Swedish folk music played here in Norrbotten is the best music of it all. This is truly one of the biggest reasons I am still in Sweden after 7 years when I usually move every three.

Comments

[katerit]

I never did like thaws such as you describe - they are dreary.

The folk dance night sounds delightful.