Springtime in the Rocky Mountains

[Jane Hendrix]

2010-2011 has been an especially snowy winter for Summit County, Colorado.  Up on Peak 7, at 10,000 feet elevation, where Klaus & I live and garden at Mountain View Experimental Gardens, the snow depth is between 3 and 4.5 feet! The calendar tells us spring arrived last month but our "Green Season" won't start until late May.  What do we see in our garden now?  How about Snowball Bush, Snowlover, Snow-in-Summer, Snow-on-the-Mountain and Snow "Drops" (not the plant -- actual snow flakes). 

To get the garden going earlier than nature's schedule, we remove the snow from the interconnecting garden paths.  We leave the snow on the beds to maximize moisture content.  Since the gardens are composed of a dozen raised beds of native rock construction, as the sun warms the lowest exposed rocks, the snow melts and gradually recedes, revealing the tenacity of plant life buried since November under tons of snow (but, thankfully, no ice).  The first to arise are the yellow sprouts of Puschkinia libanotica (Striped Squill).  They freely self-sow in the gravel paths.  Striped white buds begin to show after just 3 days of exposure. Cushion Drabas are emerging with yellow showing in their buds.  Arabis caucasica (Rockcress) also has a white bud.  And, yes, the Snowlovers (Chionophila jamesii), now purple in leaf, are resuming growth.

Winter is far from over, however. It snowed all day yesterday and is still snowing and blowing today. It took us a week to shovel out the garden paths and then the county snowplow filled in a long section with hardpacked snow from our road, stacking it to a height of over 10 feet!  We spent another 8 hours reestablishing that path before we could progress to the rest of the garden.  Below are photos taken a couple of days ago.  As you can see from the first photo, Mountain View Experimental Gardens is "officially" open to visitors for the 2011 season!

[Lori S.]

 
Okay, I'll stop complaining about our late snow storms!  They look pretty piddly by comparison!   

[Weiser]

Holy Molly!! That was a lot of work! My hats off too you!!

The snow packs in the Sierras are good too this year. High elevation stations are reporting from 8 -24 feet today.

[Hoy]

Seems you over there have got all the snow this winter. Here the ski resorts are afraid the snow won't last all the Easter
We are heading for our mountain cabin on Monday and reports tell that it is very little snow there. Maybe we get problems finding some to ski on

[cohan]

Yep, that's a lotta snow! I do not envy you moving all that! How extensive is the area you actually have to keep clear all winter?
After the non-stop shovelling this year, I am thinking we need to try very hard to get a snow-blower for next winter, but the sort that would be really useful are rather beyond my budget...lol.. however, 5 months of shovelling ( so far) and getting firewood (okay, that's probably at least 8 months...) have me worn out! Not sure if I have anything left in me for digging gardens!!

[Hoy]

Yep, that's a lotta snow! I do not envy you moving all that! How extensive is the area you actually have to keep clear all winter?
After the non-stop shovelling this year, I am thinking we need to try very hard to get a snow-blower for next winter, but the sort that would be really useful are rather beyond my budget...lol.. however, 5 months of shovelling ( so far) and getting firewood (okay, that's probably at least 8 months...) have me worn out! Not sure if I have anything left in me for digging gardens!!

Worn out, Cohan?? I thought you had developed huge shoveling and digging muscles

[cohan]

Worn out, Cohan?? I thought you had developed huge shoveling and digging muscles

It doesn't seem so, just lots of sore tendons....lol..actually, a few days back I was shovelling wet half melted snow away from the edge of the driveway, so it would not feed the mud/puddles, and that was truly brutal.. so glad we have dry snow most of the year..

[Jane Hendrix]

I have "huge" shoveling & digging muscles -- that is, for a gray-haired, 65-year-old gardener!  We could easily borrow our neighbor's snow thrower.  He's offered it several times.  However, Klaus likes to remove the snow from our driveway right down to the asphalt paving so the sun will melt any thin layer left behind and will also warm the driveway to aid in the melting of future increments of snow.

In the garden, which we don't open until mid-March or early April, the paths are narrow and winding.  It would be more difficult to wield a powered snow thrower through there than to shovel them by hand.  Also, I start at the the driveway in a berm of shoveled snow that's usually ten feet high.  I have to first break through that compacted berm and then the snow is a mere 4 to 5 feet deep in the rest of the garden.  No snow thrower could bust through that berm -- not even a plow blade mounted on a pickup truck!

A standard snow shovel isn't strong enough to bust through the hardpacked snow.  We each have a heavy, D-handled, flat-bladed, steel garden spade.  We started out with a traditional ice-chopper that looks like a hoe that's not bent at the end.  It didn't last through the first winter.  Of course, in the middle of a winter like ours, you can't get replacement implements like ice-choppers and even snow shovels -- all sold out!  So I grabbed gardening tools and tried each one until I settled on the flat-bladed spade.  It cuts through that hardpacked snow like a hot knife through butter!!


We have to be careful when clearing the garden paths because volunteers of desirable species like to set up camp in the gravel outside the safety of the rocked beds -- another reason why we shovel by hand.  The last reason is -- are you sitting down, Cohan? -- it's FUN!  The sky is cerulean blue, the air is crisp and cool,the only sounds are the birds singing in the trees, and hot coffee and tea are just steps away from the work site in a warm & cozy kitchen.  I get a complete workout and feel no guilt about finishing off my dinner with a bowl of chocolate ice cream!

[stephenb]

I have "huge" shoveling & digging muscles -- that is, for a gray-haired, 65-year-old gardener!  We could easily borrow our neighbor's snow thrower. 

Good for you! I have a 60m drive I clear by hand and intend to continue as long as I can - we use what we call a "snøskuffe" (snow shover) http://www.bad.no/sitefiles/site54/shop/snorydder-stor-modell-nr-9088-fiskars4.jpg
Do you have these?

[Lori S.]

we use what we call a "snøskuffe" (snow shover) http://www.bad.no/sitefiles/site54/shop/snorydder-stor-modell-nr-9088-fiskars4.jpg
Do you have these?

Oh, yes, that is standard equipment across the Canadian prairies!  (In the city, though, sidewalks are supposed to be cleaned down to the concrete - snow shovel work - so the big scoop is not so useful for us.)

[Jane Hendrix]

I've seen that implement but it wouldn't work for us because even if we could push our snow across our driveway, when we would get to the edge, we would have no place to store the snow after the first storm.  The driveway would become narrower as our 8-month winter progressed.  In fact, the worst part about hand-shoveling for us is when the storage piles get so high that new snow thrown upon them rolls back down at us and hits us in the back, on the head or falls into our nicely-cleared path!  Part of the shoveling process ultimately entails carrying each shoveful up to 75 linear feet where there may still be a place to dump more snow.  And repeat.  And repeat.  And repeat.  After 6 hours of this type of shoveling, interrupted only by an hour for lunch, I not only have achieved my "aerobic exercise" quota for the week but also my "strength training" and I will have "hiked" the equivalent of several miles, albeit on level ground.

In snow years like this one, I have to climb up to the top of the 10-foot-high snow piles and cut off several feet at their tops so we can throw up more snow from forecast future snowstorms.

[RickR]

No snowblower here either, although that's not saying much.  We had ninety inches of snow this winter, I think the sixth snowiest on record, and I too walk shoveled snow down the road.  However, it's not because I have to: no man-made  10 foot piles here.  I do it so I don't have high piles that cause drifting of more snow that I would need to remove. 

I can't imagine the drifting you must get, Jane!

[cohan]

Very impressive, Jane! A 6 hour day I hope is only during your opening up season? With two of us shovelling like mad people (my friend refuses to do anything at a reasonable pace, and I have to keep up!), we  usually wrap up in 90 minutes to a couple of hours, and after that I hardly want to go to work..lol
I actually don't mind shovelling snow,normally,  it has just seemed very relentless this year--not huge amounts at a time, but we need to shovel whenever there are a few inches, or it will get packed and rutted and be much worse..
I've never measured the distance we keep clear, would be interesting to do-- a wild guess maybe 100m of driveway ( I could be over or under) though about 1/3 we don't clear every time (nearly though) as its less used.. that includes parking area, which is extra wide with room for turning around, also extra wide at the mouth of the gravel road for turning in.. then a dog run area for my mom's dog, a half dozen paths to various parts of the property, from 10 to maybe 50 metres long, a couple of areas where woodcutting is done, the area around the mailbox on the road, so the mail carrier can pull in and out without getting stuck! and occasionally my mother's roof..
Now that there is melting, we have to go back and do extra shovelling around the driveway to reduce melting onto the drive causing mud troubles.. We are just about exactly at the 5 month mark for lasting snow this winter...
5cm forecast for tonight-- I'm hoping it stays under the shovelling threshold  Now if it would warm up enough that I don't have to cut firewood...lol (I should be doing that in the summer, but then there'd be no time for gardening at all!)

These shots show part of the driveway, and part of one of the paths in early january..interesting how low the snowpiles look compared to now...lol.. still nothing like Jane's, fortunately

[Jane Hendrix]

Cohan, you get mail delivery?  Wow!  No one in the Breckenridge area has the "luxury" of mail delivery.  Everyone has to go to the post office in town and get it from his or her post office box.  It's a 10-mile round trip for us down a steep, winding road.  We alternate with our neighbor.  We have her PO Box key and she has ours.  We usually make just one trip a week to town to resupply with groceries (fresh stuff).  Our neighbor goes to church on Sunday and sometimes makes a second trip during the week so we might get our mail 3 times a week if we're lucky.  During this month, our neighbor is on vacation so we are picking up her mail and getting ours just once a week.

You have a long driveway to maintain.  90 minutes to a couple of hours times two isn't too bad but working that hard under pressure could have a negative impact on you.  Klaus and I work steadily but we don't push ourselves to exhaustion.  The 6-hour day is one of several of that duration in order to open the garden paths for the first time.  Then, when it snows on those shoveled paths, it's been taking me about an hour to reestablish them.  Klaus takes care of our two decks, the stairs, the driveway, the walkway to the utility box and the roof.  It takes him between one and two hours to reshovel the driveway when we get 10 inches or more of new snow. 

I still have two more garden areas to open up but today we decided to take a break from snow shoveling and have our first cookout of 2011 -- a hotdog roast.  It was sunny as a got things ready in the kitchen but then the clouds rolled in.  Below are photos of Klaus and me cooking hot dogs over our first fire of the year.  The green house is our next door neighbor's.  You can usually see the 12,000-foot-plus snow-covered peaks of the Tenmile Range behind that house but the cloud cover was low this afternoon.


In the last photo, Klaus is finishing his last hot dog as the snow is starting to come down.  It was about +32F (0C) at 1 p.m. today.  After we ate, I went snowshoeing and cut down an 8-inch-diameter dead spruce tree that was blocking one of our trails.  Also saw pine marten and red fox tracks in our back yard.

[Hoy]

Jane, I really am impressed by your "snow-work"! When we are at our cabin in the mountains wintertime I have to clear snow from the entrance and make paths to use when we move around the cabin. And I really like it! - for a short while. I have found garden spades to be useful when the snow is hardpacked but use a broad bladed light spade when the snow is light and dry.

The type Stephen showed I use when I remove snow from the roof!

Have you made your fireplace that tall so you don't need to bend or is it to find it in the deep snow?
We often cook outdoors in winter - more often when our daughters were younger but we usually do it when we are away from the cabin on a hike.