shovel off

I have been thinking about this for a while, and this is the first good opportunity that I have had.

Maybe a month ago I was in the car with a coworker, who is also a good friend, as he stopped by his house to pick something up. When we approached his house he commented about how annoying it was to have a house that faces the north. I did not get it at first, so he pointed out that all of the houses on one side of the street had snow in the driveway and all of the houses on the other side of the street did not. The shade from the houses with driveways on the north kept the snow from melting as fast as the snow on the other side of the street. This might be a commonly known pitfall of owning a house that faces to the north, but I had not contemplated it seriously until now.

One thing that I have loved about living in the Kansas City area is that snows don't often stick for long. In other places I have lived, such as Michigan and South Dakota, a snow could be expected to stick for weeks or months on end before they melted away. This is the sixth winter we have been in our house, and I have probably shoveled the driveway fewer than five times in that stretch. Most of those times when I went to the trouble have been because we were going to have company and I did not want them to have to walk through the snow. Otherwise, it has just rarely seemed worth the effort if I have known that the snow would melt to a manageable level within a day or two.

I now know that it is possible that my experience may not be identical to my neighbors across the street. This was something I have considered today, since I had to hurriedly brush a couple of inches of snow off my car this morning. It is a bother to have to clear off my car, but the situation could have been worse. I could have to actually shovel my driveway at some point as well.