A Blizzardy Winter's Day

Is "blizzardy" a real word?  If not, I have decided that it should be.

After nearly two weeks of temperatures in the single digits, here in Wisconsin we experienced a slight "warm-up" to the 20s and 30s last week. Then the snow came.
I don't know the exact amount at this time that we got, but we had a very severe blizzard yesterday that lasted well into the night with very high winds, drifting snow, and no visibility. I had heard that Tuesday we got about 6 inches of snow and that the blizzard we were expecting was going to dump another 12-16 inches.

Last week, during our "thaw", I had taken some pictures in my yard. The snow has hidden everything under a soft blanket of silence, including my Adirondack chairs, which I should really get some covers for.

A once vibrant sun garden of coneflowers, bee balm, rudbeckia and butterfly weed shows no trace of the bright sunny colors that grew here over the summer. A few dried stalks, remnants of the pods that form on the butterfly weed in the fall, are all that's left.

The trees are bare; sketched starkly across a leaden sky. I wouldn't mind winter so much, I suppose, if it was more sunny. Here in Wisconsin, most of our winter days are like this. Dull, overcast and grey.

The only really pretty things to be seen are the new icicles that are growing off the roof.

Melting ice dripping from icicles above have imprisoned a few dried stalks of last summer's hostas. Underneath this layer of ice and snow, my hostas are fast asleep.

After yesterday's storm, I looked out my back door and saw the drifts were up to the handrails of the back porch steps. Some were even higher, coming up almost to my chest.

Snow drifts shaped by the wind clustered around the garage. The squirrel feeder is on a pole that is about 5 and a half feet tall; the pointed drift next to it is nearly as tall as the pole.

The ardorous task of clearing began........

I took the shovel, while Erik started with the snowblower.

Erik and I double-teamed the front walk. To the left  is our where our driveway would be. It is nothing more than a wall of solid snow.

It would be nice if the snowblower would just go on by itself and clear the rest of the sidewalks. This is the front sidewalk, which wasn't that deep. We live on a corner lot and our lot is shaped like a long rectangle, so the sidewalk on the south side of the house stretches on for eternity and was buried in drifts well over the top of the snowblower. It took over 3 hours to get ourselves dug out!

After our snow adventures, one of the things I like best is to have some hot chocolate.......

With marshmallows!

Delicious!!

Thanks for stopping by!

I'll be linking up with A Southern Daydreamer for Outdoor Wednesday!