kareina

However, as I walked out the door to head over there I saw a thing that was much higher on the priority list...

I mentioned in yesterday's post that one of our sheds had a mini avalanche yesterday while I was at work, but the debris pile hadn't yet frozen when I got home, and it only barley covered the path to the hot tub, so I dug it out promptly after I got home (eyeing the other shed roof, which isn't as steep, carefully as I did, since it would be embarrassing, not to mention painful and potentially fatal to get caught by snow coming off of one roof while cleaning away snow from the first).

I wound up staying up much too late last night, mostly goofing off on the computer after I finished shoveling, but also having a nice video call with my mother, who is looking great, despite having had ten very exciting days medically speaking. But she is now home at Amber's house in San Francisco and they plan on taking her back to Seattle on Saturday, and she is very happy to be out of the hospital. Not surprisingly, today was a rather slow day. I didn't sleep in as late as I expected (I woke after only 5.5 hours), but I did take it easy after getting up. During "business hours", I only did a couple of loads of laundry, did some reading in Swedish while listening to an audio book, mixed up a new batch of muesli (it has been nearly 4 months since last I needed to do that), checked email and FB, and replied to one work message.

Then I noticed that it was nearly 17:00, and Phire practice starts then, so I decided that I needed the exercise and ought to go. When I stepped out the door I realized that the little bit of snow that had fallen last night had melted on the previously exposed paving stones at the base of our steps, and, having no where to drain, created a small puddle. So, of course, I delayed leaving long enough to chop the ice at the edge of the paving stone to break a channel to the grass, and then used the push broom to encourage the water to drain.

As I was doing that I heard a sound from the second shed, and looked over on time to see it lose a small portion of its snow (only about 2 x 1 x 0.4 meters), and realized that the side of the roof that faces the morning sun had lost all of its snow over the course of today, and the side that faces the evening sun was in the process of losing it, a bit at a time. So I walked over an looked, and, sure enough, while most of the slabs of snow that had come down so far had landed well away from the path, a bit of it had fallen right into the path. Of course, there was still a fair bit of snow poised and ready to come down over the path. So I got a long stick and tried poking at the snow from a safe vantage point on the side of the shed, but nothing I did made a difference. Therefore I decided that it wasn't ready to come down, and I could start digging out the path again.

By "digging out the path" I mean "use the shovel to break a slab into smaller chunks, then use my hands to pick up the chunks and toss them aside". I was able to remove a fair bit by standing off to the side, where, if anything more came down, it wouldn't land on me, but, by the time it would have been necessary to stand in harm's way, the snow on that corner of the roof had glided partway down the roof. Where it had been flush with the roof edge when I started clearing, now it was hanging a good 40 cm past the roof edge. Not liking the look of that, I stepped well back, and started throwing snowballs at it, till it finally broke off, and I could resume clearing the path. Of course, that still left one final chunk of snow still attached, so I kept an eye on it, and when it had finally shifted in its turn till part of it was unsupported I once again retreated and tossed snow balls (well, more often small slabs of roof snow, since it didn't need any packing, but was already quite coherent and solid), till it finally gave way. Then I was able to get in and dig the path out properly:


(the view from the front)


(the view from behind)

Why do I even care about keeping that path open? It isn't like we are making frequent use of the Frostheim Hot Tub, which lives behind the sheds. However, having done all of the landscaping last summer to flatten the area behind the sheds and create drainage so that we don't get a lake between and in front of the sheds when it melts I was very glad that I noticed when the snow came down, and that I could do something about it promptly. If that had been allowed to sit overnight it would have frozen at the base, creating an ice damn that would have let a lake form anyway, since the water wouldn't be able to flow over it to drain down hill.

On Monday, as I have already mentioned, we bought a house. We borrowed a good camera from a friend so that we could take photos of everything, so that in later years we will have something to compare when we wonder if any given thing we notice has always been like that. Did we remember to bring the camera with us when we went to the house on Monday? No, of course not. How about Tuesday? Nope, not even. Today is Wednesday, and today we remembered. Of course, part of that remembering may be that we finally have a bit of snow to make the photos prettier.

( photos of the house )

The big moving day will be Friday, when lord_kjar's brother will bring his huge trailer to move most of the things in just a couple of trips. However, in the meantime I have been enjoying a leisurely method: pack a few boxes of kitchen toys, bring them over, up pack them, put them away. I did this yesterday during the day with one car load of boxes, and in the evening we packed up another car load of boxes. This morning we both drove over before work, he helped me carry in boxes, took a few photos and went to work. I happily put stuff away, then went for a walk. I am going to love living in this place.

Here is a ( map of the path I took for today's walk. )

Now I should put down the computer and pack a bit more kitchen stuff. It would be fun to have that all done and unpacked on the other end before Friday and the moving of the heavy stuff...