umpteen rounds with old man winter and still counting

I like to believe that I'm holding my own against the nasty winter that's got us by the collective throat. I'm probably fooling myself but I really think that, at worst, it's a split decision in what's shaping up to be a heavyweight death match. I do know that Old Man Winter and I were slugging it out toe to toe last weekend.

Winter was probably proud of the sucker punch he landed last Saturday. I'd been hacking away at the escape tunnel from the alley up to the back deck. We haven't had a clear shot at our garbage can since before Christmas what with the all the snow that's piled up back there. Miz Susan has kept a little patch of the deck cleared off for star-gazing and shaking out the kitchen rugs and whatever else she does out there when I'm not looking. But as far as being able to haul the trash out through the back yard, well...that just ain't been happening. We've been driving the garbage up the block and down the alley to get rid of it. I'm almost positive that the neighbors are starting to gossip about us taking on airs what with our treating our garbage like it was royalty.

Anyway, I'd made a half-assed start at working northbound from the alley over the past few weeks. I'd managed to hack out a trench maybe 20 feet long but the house still looked like it was miles away. I made some nice progress on Saturday and had cut the remaining distance in half. Satisfied with that little bit of work (being a firm believer in never finishing today what I can put off until tomorrow), I slung my two shovels over my shoulder and headed down the alley and back to the front of the house. I was going to play around in the street a little bit and try to shovel some of the slop up onto the boulevard. As I was shifting my hold on the shovels, the nice red plastic grain scoop that I'd bought at Seven Corners Hardware manged to work it's way loose, spin out of my control and somehow land a jab to my upper lip. I was spitting out blood in no time. I managed to subdue the shovels and went to work on the street. It was perfectly fitting that my lifeblood was dripping down into the slush that I was shoveling.

As this was going on, Jasper--the incredibly handsome and intelligent American Standard poodle across the street--made one of his occasional breaks for freedom from inside his house. Maybe he's really not all that intelligent or maybe he was having a bad day because he bought into my act of playing indifferent and he let me lasso him and take him home. Where I let Jasper's owner guilt me into heading off down the block where another of our neighbors was out chipping ice all by herself. Something about maybe we should all pitch in to help her since her husband was serving overseas. Not a bad idea though I seemed to be the only one who was offering any volunteer help that day. Maybe others had beat me to it because her sidewalk looked a hell of a lot clearer than mine.

My lip didn't get swollen up nearly as much as I'd hoped so I got robbed of any possibility of sympathy attention. On the other hand, I was well enough the next day to get out into the backyard and to finish the path to the deck. We can now take out our garbage without looking all snooty and we've got an extra escape route from the house in case of fire or bill collectors knocking at the front door.

Who knows? I may even try to run a path over to the compost barrel or the bird feeder. We've been feeling guilty about throwing our compost-eligible garbage away (even factoring in chauffeur service). And feeling guiltier about not keeping the bird feeder full. Never too late to start feeding the sparrows and occasional cardinals and chickadees.

Maybe they'll spread the word to some of the other birds and we'll be rewarded with a few more goldfinches and even a hummingbird or two in a few months. Spring is going to come again and, between me and winter, I'm going to make sure that I'm the last one standing. I don't care how many rounds this goes.