Springtime in Minnesota

Pardon my thumb

Springtime in Minnesota is the season of ... slop. Water, lots of water, appears where water should not be. The snowbanks begin to melt from the bottom up and under the top two feet of snow you find another foot of slush. My home is particularly susceptible to spring melt. Our lot sits at the low point of a downhill cul-de-sac and a hill slopes toward the house from the woods in the back. Perfect geology for forming lake #10,000 & 1.


In years where we get normal (or twice normal) snowfall, in order to avoid really ugly water issues, I must create a drainage ditch from my backyard to the street. As a kid, I used to love playing in the rivers running down the streets from the snow melt.  Contests to see who could get their popsicle stick raft to go the farthest, the champion watching it careen down Arnold Hedlin's hill on the south end of town. This thrill has lost its splendor somehow. (I know you rural folks are chortling, having to deal with the worse issues but yours is mud. You have my condolences, but my own issues are just slightly more than I can handle.)

Plan 1. Perhaps it is my increasing frailty but this year the snow fall seems beyond the pale. Armed with my trusty shovel, I start a trench from the street to the backyard.  Quite quickly I discover that my boots are an effective water collection system as I sink to my knees and into 18" of very cold liquid.  The water level in my boots soon covers my feet.


Plan 2. I put on my snowshoes trusting them to keep me from submersion into the watery quagmire. For a while it seems to be working but soon I find my snowshoes sink 2 feet below sea level and nigh impossible to extract. My balance isn't what it used to be and with a tug on the snowshoes I find myself lying (I checked the grammar) on my back with the ice cold water coursing over me. You cannot imagine how hard it is to extract snowshoes and stand up from a prone position when the snowshoes are locked like concrete in freezing slush? I have enough trouble just getting out of bed but here I had visions, if not of drowning in my backyard, perhaps freezing into an ice block to be discovered intact by archeologists in a thousand years or so.  But I manage to crawl, sloshing about 15 feet to the ash tree and pull myself erect.

Plan 3. Carol suggests a roof rake. I find the it in the garage. Every Minnesota home owner has a roof rake. No, not for leaves, for pulling mountains of snow off the roof. I find with the 20' reach of the rake, I can find firm footing and pull the slush aside to create a decent drainage ditch. Hallelujah.

I told Carol how much fun I was having. Heh. heh.

Copyright © 2019 Dave Hoplin