The biggest mistake I've made since moving to the country was making a plea to the weather gods for "lots of snow this winter".
I was raised in Montreal, Quebec, where weekly 30 cm snowfalls are a common occurrence. I even spent a part of my early childhood near Quebec city, where I can remember lovely winters with snowbanks towering over houses. The joys of winter... skying, snowshoeing, building forts and making friendly snowmen, slipping and sliding, tobogganing, examining the magical intricacies of snowflakes, getting your tongue stuck on the chain link fence, losing your boots in the snow to joyfully find them in the spring when the snow melted...
Ever since moving to Ontario I've missed the good old snowy winters of my youth. Back in Toronto, on occasions where I voiced my delight about the few and far between snow "storms" that would blanket the city, my happiness was met with bewildered frowns of disapprovement by my fellow Torontonians, who absolutely abhor the white stuff.Snowy winters in the country... beautiful and magical, right? An absolute winter wonderland...
Let me tell you that I will never wish for snow again (except for a few flakes on Christmas Day - maybe.)This winter brought us a fair amount of snow. Nothing like what I was used to back in Quebec, but enough to turn me into one of those people who have a deep-founded hatred for the stuff. Sure, it looks pretty for a minute. But it also makes your duck pen cave in onto your ducks. It leaves you stranded at home for fear of ending up in the ditch (see earlier post). It makes your piles of firewood wet and difficult to burn (unless you spread two layers of tarp over your stacks, which you then have to manoeuvre under like an idiot to collect armfuls of wood). It prevents you from going for walks in the forest because you can't afford snowshoes. It fills the ditches and covers the shoulders so that you can't walk safely down the roads. It makes your barn doors difficult to open and close. The horrid stuff covers your roof and then falls on your head in a big sheet of ice when you decide to finally venture out on a sunny day. You have to plow 100-feet of driveway over and over again. It also provides a wonderful cover for mice, moles and rats, allowing them to multiply happily and readily while they run amok in little snow tunnels, safe from hawks and other predators. Your small Jack Russell terrier doesn't even want to perform his ratting duties anymore because going outside means being swallowed in snow as though it was a big blob of quicksand. Shall I go on?
Okay, I will. The worst is when spring thaw is on its way and you breathe a sigh of relief, imagining how it'll soon be all gone. Then, 20+ acres of snow melts from the neighboring fields and heads straight for your old house in the form of lakes and giant spring rivers. This means you have to spend days digging trenches in the rain to re-direct the nasty stuff away and dig holes in your dirt-floor basement to collect the water that's seeping in through your 150-year old stone foundation. All your boots are so wet that your wood stove can't dry them in time for tomorrow's efforts. Your toes get that crinkly look like when you spend too much time in the bath except they're numb from being in freezing water. When the awful stuff melts, it also heads straight for your chicken coop and floods it, so that when you happily go feed your critters one morning, you find them walking in a stew of chicken poop and floating straw. All you can do at this point is add some more straw to the mess to soak it all up. Then, when it's all gone and some blades of grass are eagerly starting to turn green and you tentatively put a smile on your face, you wake up one morning to an ugly, cold, bland and bleary white landscape.
It was a hard winter in the country. This week is the first week of Spring and I should be overjoyed but I still can't find it in my heart. Maybe it's post-traumatic stress.
From now on, I shall be careful what I wish for.
