I live in a condo complex. I have a stand-alone house with all the advantages of a condo. All the outside work is handled and I never worry about winter. My driveway and sidewalk and front porch are hand shoveled right down to the blacktop or concrete. They do a great job of plowing the roads.
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BUT, they do not shovel the back decks and why should they? It has never been an issue before. I have no need to go out there in the winter and when it snows it usually melts in a few days. Not this winter. We've had so much snow and it's been so cold that very little has melted. When it did melt it turned to ice. I had about 3 feet out there with a crust of ice on top. Since roofs have been collapsing throughout the state and since the governor went on TV telling people to clear off their flat roofs and decks, I got concerned. Even though my deck is only three steps up from the ground, it would be a mess if it collapsed. So today I hired a young man to shovel it off. He was out there about 5 hours, dripping sweat. He first had to break through the ice and then shovel the heavy snow beneath. This picture shows it almost finished. I measured 32 inches of hefty, wet snow.
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Here it is finished. This shows shows a small part of it, since it is a big deck. That is ice that's left. It looks so much prettier with all the snow, but now I don't have to worry.
His shovel broke about 3/4 of the way through and I went down to Home Depot to buy a new one and they were SOLD OUT. Same thing with Loew's. I got on the phone and found a hardware store in a neighboring town that had 5 left and I went right over. I've lived in this house use for 10 years and never needed a shovel before. Now I will keep my deck shoveled and not let it get to the stage it was today. There was no way that I could have done this myself.
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My other adventure of the day was to try to knock down some of the impressive icicles. The screen hooks on outside of the window and is hard to get off. I managed to get it off and then it slipped from my hands and dropped below. Stupidly I knocked the icicles off and they crashed below. Of course, right on the screen. This is what it looks like. I think it is toast. I didn't do any more windows. The icicles will just have to stay there.
Guess what it's going to do on Saturday and next Tuesday and Thursday. You know it's SNOW! Enough!