Spring Cleaning

Spring arrived this week.  Finally.

After a humbling winter, consisting of weeks-long temperatures in the tens-below-zero, we Wisconsiners refer to any consecutive days above freezing as spring.  I'm almost giddy as I make my twice-daily trudge to the outdoor wood stove while needing only a pair of knee-high muck boots and one jacket.

Along with the renewed sense of excitement and freedom that the receding snow cover brings - also comes the need to tidy up the view from the front door. 

Because I live on a remote stretch of town road that dead-ends at a river, I find alot of "party supplies" jettisoned from passing vehicles. Mostly the usual - cardboard beer boxes, mis-matched women's under garments, and two-liter bottles of urine. Occasionally, I'll get lucky and salvage a still-useable girlie magazine.

This year, my seven-year-old boys volunteered for clean-up.  Not so much to help make things look nice, but to scavenge for rusty junk to stash in their bedroom.  They got a little excited when they discovered a bear hibernating in a culvert near our mailbox.  A closer look revealed the animal was actually a black lab that met an untimely demise on the road before the county plow pushed it into the ditch.

Near the house, scattered piles of sawdust, bark, and branches from my fledgling wood cutting business are now soggy eyesores. I should just declare the mess as highly valuable mulch I could sell to green-friendly townies, but the tattered blue tarps will take a hundred years to decompose.

I don't remember the season's first snowstorm, but apparently it struck with a Pompeii-like suddenness.  Scooters, baseball gloves and various articles of clothing lay exactly where the kids left them last fall.

The dog's been busy doing her part contributing to the clutter.  Unidentifiable chunks of what I assume is formerly-living wildlife are nearly as numerous as the beer cans she's fished out of the garbage.  Picking up the cans would be a lot easier if I didn't have to dodge the landmines she's deposited on the lawn.  Luckily, water-logged turds are easy to scrape from the soles of my shoes.  ~L