The garage in winter

A more mundane photo there may not be.

All the stuff cram-jammed into the garage for winter hibernation. Actually, it's more like a migration than anything else. The winter stuff gets moved forward, near the door and the summer stuff moves toward the back. In the spring, the dance steps reverse.

We call the orange machine a snow blower, although I think it's technically a snow thrower. This particular one is made by Ariens, and they call it a Sno-Thro. No matter what one calls it, it beats shoveling by hand. Said implement also visible in the photo. It turns out the Sno-Thro isn't particularly good at clearing snow off of stairs, if you can believe that!

Our National Weather Service tells me that the average snowfall for this area is 63 inches (160cm) per year. What they don't say is how many times a season we get 10 or more inches ( 25cm) in a given storm. It's not too bad shoveling a few inches of snow by hand, but when it gets to be more than about 8 inches (20cm) it can be a real back breaker. When I shoveled by hand I would get up several times a night so I didn't have to try to move the whole storm all in one go.

People in the hill towns just west or south of me are going to laugh reading this. They get over 80 inches a year (203cm) on average and think us sissies!