Snow on Mother's Day

I don't know if this is typical, but I don't remember seeing snow around here in May. Now I will admit it did snow a tiny bit about a week ago, just a flake here and a flake there-----rather like friends. Oh, that is not right. But as of this moment there is still a pile of snow in our backyard about a foot deep and it will be there for probably another 5 days. (This is just a small pile with Ann and Chester guarding it.)



It is there in part because this is where the church piles their parking lot snow in the winter. This year it was probably 8 feet high by early March. The pile is tight up against the hedge and blocked from the sun---which has not been around much lately. It is also covered with a layer of dirt and old grass much like they used to cover ice in ice houses years ago.

I hate to admit it but I still recall a guy coming around selling ice when I was a kid in Sauk City. People still had those "Ice Boxes" instead of refrigerators. That is a bit hard to believe. In my time there were still ice boxes! Interestingly, up until twenty years ago folks used to call refrigerators "Ice Boxes" . Like, "Could you get me a beer out of the ice box." I also remember an old ice house across the lake in Montello over by Robinson's woods and close to Dibble's Point. It was broken down but still there. My old man pointed it out.

Strange how a person's thought can go from a pile of snow in May to and ice house. Just a thought. Rather gives away my age, I guess. Now I have a freezer in the basement that is cooled by power from the sun. Which is the most sustainable, the ice house or the sun-powered freezer? The most practical? The most affordable?