Dealing with the after effects of the holidays

Now I’m sure for most people that once the calendar changed to January all the holiday decorations were put away, the tree tidily disposed of (or put back in its box) and life returned to ‘normal’ aka your post holiday life and schedule resume. 

Me, on the other hand, I intend to keep my tree up till March. No, not really, it will last the week and then I will finally cave to the pressure of time and the gravity that keeps pulling the needles off; that and my dog keeps trying to chew branches off, creating a hole where fluffy branches once were.  What can I say? I enjoy the holidays and I like to enjoy the decorations for a full month once they’re put up. 

Of course, the alternate argument would be that maybe I should put my décor up a little earlier then to compensate for my one month rule. I can’t seem to put up my holiday décor until I have the perfect tree. Clearly, I am not a fan of fake trees, pre-lit or no. So until there’s a tree in the tree stand the rest of the works wait in their boxes. Well, this year I have boxes. Last year it was two pieces that hid in the furnace room and then shopping to stock said items took care of the rest. 

Let’s face the facts though; when I say deal with the after effects of the holidays what I really mean is how to deal with all of the snow that’s left. Well, unless you don’t live in the tropics of the land of balmy weather, you have snow (or you should).  Here, it seems like that all we do have is snow. Oh and we’re supposed to get more over the next couple of days.  The snow just sits on our yard and we can barely use the tractor-run snow blower to get rid of it. Pushing the snow is out of the question. Apparently that’s just NOT done here. Ha. 

It’s to the point that we ask ourselves, do we share and give some snow to the neighbors? Maybe the church would like another large pile of snow to add to their collection in the parking lot. What do you do with so much snow? Sadly, it’s the not the nice snow that you can make snowmen with; otherwise there would be a veritable forest of snowmen on our yard welcoming passerby. 

What to do with so much snow?