Thursday, December 23, 2010

Icycle Time


When I first moved to Vermont I found it strange to find signs posted on houses or buildings warning about the icycles.   I had never thought of icycles as downright dangerous before.  Until, of course, you get stabbed in the shoulder or conked on the head by one.  I'm not talking little baby icycles here.  Icycles in this part of the country can get pretty huge.

Our icycles here in my Quebeckian environs don't come with warning signs but can be equally jabby and daggerish.  You just have to be careful where you walk.   The ones hanging from various sections around our roof aren't gigantic but there are a lot of them.

Icycles, like the snow on the ground, seem a permanent fixture, for four or five months of the year at least.  If we do get a bit of a warm spell (meaning not frigid), the road snow may melt but the piles on the ground remain, just getting added to with each new snowfall, till late March (or in some years, April (and in one year, there was still some around the first days of May, about which time you get really, REALLY anxious for Spring). 

Got two seed catalogues in the mail this week, for springtime planting.  They do that (send them out so absurdly early) just to torture you.  "Dream on, ha ha.  Dream on....").

And so it goes.  C'est l'hiver.  But it won't really go, for a long, long time yet.  Meanwhile, best to just enjoy it.  Even those toothy looking icycles.

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