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Recently, Mother Nature has greeted us with an overly generous amount of snow.

Just to give you an idea, the total average we get in Montréal for the month of January is 50 centimeters.

So far, this year, we got about 75 centimeters. I heard someone whispering that we’re January 28th, and that’s right. But guess what’s coming our way tomorrow.

Another significant snowstorm. And that very well might set the score to a whole meter, doubling our yearly average.

Thank you, Mother Nature! You can take a break now. Seriously, I wouldn’t want to sound ungrateful, but I consider we’ve had enough. And we certainly don’t need to break records in February either (please, do take notes, Mother Nature!).

So the picture above is my afternoon, well, the second part of it. The first was spent with Chéri, digging our car out of the snowbank, because we needed to take it (the car, not the snowbank) to the garage.

When we came back, I couldn’t stop thinking about tomorrow’s storm, and thought I have to go take care of the backyard.

See, our landlords usually take care of keeping a little trail open, from their back balcony to the backstreet behind our building. And we only have to keep our staircase clear. BUT, said landlords have left just before New Year’s Eve to go spend three months (read: the worst part of winter) in Costa Rica.

I could have relied on Mother Nature to send warm temperatures to melt some of the snow, but seen how upset she seems to be, I didn’t want to take chances.

So, for safety reasons (we need to be able to exit our apartment from the back in case of emergency) and to be nice to our landlords (I hope they’ll appreciate not having to dig their way after three months away from Freezingland) I decided to take matters in my own hands. Also, I figured that a cleanly shoveled backyard would discourage any badly intentionned person looking for a place to rob, since it wouldn’t look like the tenants were away, in a place where snow is something you don’t worry about. So I took the shovel out again, and went for it.

I agree that the picture isn’t impressive in any kind of way. Quite honestly, if I’d had enough energy left, I would have gone back downstairs to take more representative photos. But that snow was humid and dang heavy, and came up to mid-thigh (I’m not tall, but still!).

On the upside, when I came back to our apartment, Chéri had drawn me a hot and bubbly bath. Awwww, right?

Awwwws aside, you might wonder what the front of our building looks like, because let’s face it, we don’t have as much space to put the extra snow when we shovel it off our front balconies and stairs…

So here are some ”before” pictures.

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Tomorrow (that might be postponed, due to the new storm coming in less than 24 hours), the city will pick up and take away all of that snow to clear sidewalks and streets so people can walk and drive around, and park their cars.

I’ll try to catch one or two videos of the actual snow disposal procedure. It is quite usual here, but I understand that it isn’t in so many corners of the world. And I’ll post the ”after” pictures, when everything is clear again.

But for how long?

Seriously,  Mother Nature… Take your pills!