Winter has finally loosened its icy grip, as they say, and Seattle is melting faster than the Wicked Witch of the East. Yesterday morning at this time, we were still well and truly snowed in.
About 5 am, there was an enormous racket going on outside. What next, thought I? Well, The City of Seattle owns a grand total of 3 snowplows, and they apparently outsourced snow removal to private contractors. Gee, imagine the taxpayer bill on that?
Anyway, a construction worker was scraping the street up and down in a random way with his giant road grader. Snow removal clearly not his day job. He shoved massive piles of snow in front of the alley entrances, so the folks who park behind their houses couldn't get out. And for those lucky ones who must park on the street, a giant berm of ice, so our cars could neither come or go. He also covered up the storm drains. Thank you very much, Mayor Jenny Durkin.
OK, I thought. Don't panic. It's Seattle. It will eventually melt, and someday you will actually get to leave your home again.
And melt it did. Before long, I noticed a deep lake forming under my car from blocked drainage. So I grabbed my trusty little toy snow shovel (now broken) and soon opened the snow dam.
I hadn't had so much fun since I was building creek dams with Marji and Dave. The satisfying thing about water is it always does what it's supposed to do: run downhill into Puget Sound.
When John got home from work, he shoveled out a chunk of the ice barrier so he could park his car again.
But an unhappy looking olive tree. Time will tell.
And one obvious casualty. My pretty old fashioned blooming verbena crushed by the snow.
In Memoriam
But beneath it all, we are still a vibrant Seattle green.
Life goes on.
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