Blog

I had a pretty good week last week as I finished planting all of my daffodils. I even felt so good that I ordered a couple of yards of mulch to cover the areas where I planted the bulbs. But no sooner had I finished spreading about half of the mulch when I looked across the street and there was my neighbor busily putting up his snow fence! He is a savvy outdoors type of individual and an avid fisherman and gardener. So now I feel that I am behind in the race to beat old man winter at his game.

I took the trash up the road to the Town of Gorham transfer station and as you can see from the pictures, they are ready for the first blast of winter. The salt spreaders are ready to be attached to their trucks at a moment’s notice as well as the snow plows. The snow fences are still there at the barn and have to be deployed at strategic points in fields where the winds drift a lot of snow across the road, but I am sure that when the first blast hits, this work will quickly get under way.

The barn at the Town of Gorham is about one quarter filled with a salt/sand mix. It’s a part of living in the Finger Lakes that I don’t enjoy as it is impossible to keep your car looking nice during the winter months. But the folks who commute to work each day or the bus drivers which take the children to school expect the roads to be plowed and salted so they can maintain their usual schedule of leaving from home each day.

Now that I am retired, I don’t have any rigid schedule to meet and it sure takes a lot of pressure off of worrying about the daily commute. The driveway will be cleaned after the storm is over but never before the second cup of coffee! I still have one more detail to take care of before the first storm hits – the snow blower that sits in front of the car must be moved to its winter place between the cars in the garage and gassed up for the season. Like I said before, it’s always a race to be prepared for winter in the Finger Lakes, but it’s a race that you don’t want to lose!