Drifts and Piles

Gee, more snow. Quite a bit more, in fact—this storm left about ten inches. As a result, the drifts in front of our house are getting kind of high. Today, after I finished shoveling, I got my camera and took a few pictures:

Here's the big pile at the corner of our driveway, with a secondary pile visible behind it. These are mainly from clearing the driveway and the sidewalk, plus what gets tossed in by the plows that has to be removed. (We live on what the city considers a key artery, so we never have to worry about the street being plowed, but the flip side of that is the excess that comes in whenever a plow passes.)

The pile in front is now about as tall as me, so six feet high. After the first big storm in December, I had a cleared space from the sidewalk in front of the steps out to the street (that dip in the middle to the right of the tree), but it got plowed in so many times I lost the will to keep it clear.

Here's the pile on the other side of the driveway. Technically this is in front of our neighbor's house, but he doesn't mind me throwing it there.

The driveway is long enough to hold four cars, but we have only the one, so we don't bother clearing the whole thing, because, hell, I'd still be out there. This leaves enough room for a second car to park behind ours, and a wide enough walkway for one of us and the dog.

This is the walkway on the opposite side of the house. Normally I do two shovel widths, but one was all I could handle today. This tends to turn into solid ice (from melting snow dripping off the roof) soon after a storm, so we tend to not use it until there's a thaw.

And this is the house of a neighbor that I have to pass each morning on the way to the bus stop. He owns a truck with a plow, and he usually uses it to plow the sidewalk after storms. This is less than ideal, since he can't clear around the pole with the plow and I guess he's too lazy to get out of his truck and use a shovel, but it's better than nothing. After the storm two weeks ago he didn't plow, so I've gotten to enjoy walking in the street each morning. Today it looks like he actually plowed snow from the street onto the sidewalk, making it worse, which makes no sense. I may have to send this picture to the city.