One More Blizzard

Today, we officially hit 60 degrees.  Which is pretty much the warning that there's a bumpy road ahead.  

Minnesota is one of those places where the old saying "if you don't like the weather, wait a half-hour" is usually fairly accurate.  Spring weather, here, is usually something that's slipped loose from the chaos chain and rolls through.  I remember one year where we had a late April day with temperatures over 90 degrees - we cooked out.  Less than a week later, we got clobbered by snow.  About eight inches.  Yes.  It often happens like that.  

This winter, I'm not prepared to say "it's over" for a while yet.  I've got a running bet with myself as to whether the front or back yard will be snow-free first.  Both will undoubtedly beat Mt. Everest across the street where the school piles their snow onto a patch of ground about ten feet wide running the width of the parking lot.  This winter, they've lost the last row of spots as it is still, today, full to within a foot of the end of the white lines that mark the spaces.  Which means, if your average parking spot is 12 feet deep, 11 of those feet are covered in snow a good ten feet deep through the worst of it.  

I noticed tonight as I walked the dog that the snow pile has two ridges, the one closest to the street about 4 feet apart from the more recent ridge which got added to back in March when we got clobbered a few times, then the April 1 snowstorm just added insult to injury.  

My yard is mostly snow free.  The back yard has a portion which faces north with the sloped face which is pretty much shaded from the hedge and the tree in that part - it gets very little direct snow.  Which is not the story for the snow ridges in the front yard, one on the corner of the yard where plows typically just add a pile on the corner as an additional insult.  The ridge next to the driveway is nearly gone - it was five feet tall for much of the winter.  However the ice block which has grown and lives on the north side of the front steps will enjoy a lot of shade for a few more weeks, which is why I fully expect it to be the last bit to go.

But we'll get there.  And while we do, I'll be sanding our wooden outdoor furniture my wife dropped a lot of money on a few years ago, not realizing that it requires regular refinishing.  So I get to suffer.  We'll see how it goes.  Some of the stuff is starting to show it's age, especially since the threads on some of the fasteners are no longer holding tight to their joined pieces - which means things are going to start suffering failures.  Which will likely be all my fault, but I'll do the best I can to maintain it for the present, and look into larger fasteners to hold things together for a few more years.

Yes, if I'd build the stuff, it would be over built to hell.  But I guarantee you that it would last for a great deal longer.  I've come up with the basic idea to replace the ends of most of the outdoor furniture I build with replaceable feet - as in blocks of wood designed to be somewhat sacrificial, as in I know that end grain in contact with the ground will wick up a lot of crap and eventually begin to fail.  However, if I build the furniture in such a way that after two or three years I can remove the foot and replace it with a new one, well, the furniture will last that much longer - so my theory goes, anyway.  

I hope your spring is proceeding towards warmer weather as we get there.  Fingers crossed that the spring storms are done with the extreme damage.  I don't need many more branches taken out of the trees and hedges.  I have an idea on how to prop up the branches from the hedge which have suffered.  The basic idea is going to be I'm going to pick up an outdoor-rated 2x6 and cut it to length to prop up the droopy branch on the hedge.  I'm going to put a sort of a V in the top of the 2x6 to insure the branch stays on top, and I'm going to reinforce the 2x6 just below the V by screwing on a layer of 2x6 made out of the same board, this time with the grain running across the longer grain that typically runs the length of the board.  

The idea is that if I cut a large V shape in the top of a board to support a branch, the downward pressure of the branch, with wind moving the branch back and forth, might split down it's length as the strength of the board has been compromised by the V cut.  However, if I reinforce the V by placing a pair of board with the grain running across the vertical grain, those should keep the board from splitting down it's length.  That's the theory, anyway.  I'll let you know if I implement it and include some pictures so you can see what I did.  

Stay warm.