Roof Rage

Two days ago I broke our new roof rake in the snow. Today we found staining on some of our ceilings. (With so much ice, it's a slam dunk case as to what caused it.) Now it's time to get more weapons to fight this ice monster.  First purchase today:  new roof rake.  (Though it's unuseable while the snow is so icey.)

Second purchase:  the hardware store claims these pucks help to melt the ice on the roof.  It's an understatement to say they're rather toxic.  As hard as we tried to garden organically last year, this is an about-face.  But you know what they say about desperate times . . . . .

Brad tossed 120 of the pucks onto various parts of our roof.  I think he would admit it was kind of fun. Fortunately, the temperature was in the low 30s and we had no wind.  (You might notice the attractive yellow Playtex gloves he's wearing.  That was so he didn't ruin a good pair of regular gloves due to all the chemicals in the pucks.)

Our next line of defense are these old stockings that I filled with ice melt.  That's one hanging over a major trouble spot.  I just learned about these the other day.  The idea is that the ice melt inside will create a trough for the water to flow through.  The only difficult part is positioning them after you toss them on the roof.  (No way can we use a ladder.)  See how the ice from the higher roof creates a continuous ice dam down to the lower roof?  That's the kind of stuff we're dealing with.

Two more ice stockings in a trouble spot in the back roof.  That's solid ice you're looking at, so I am expecting that it is wishful thinking that they'll do any good.  We'll have to see . . . .

Brad in the front yard tossing pucks.  See how deep the snow is?  The snow is so hard that it's probably deeper than that.  With the icey precipitation we got overnight, the snow is crispy.

This snow is high from snow blowing.  That's Allie, standing on the fence next to the driveway.  She can go right over the top as the snow has completely covered the fence.

I have to admit, even though this weather is causing frustrating problems for us with our house, I'm not sick of winter yet.  So this is not a "spring is just around the corner" photo.  Rather, it is to share my amazement that the rhododendron exist all winter fully exposed, that these leaves pop back to life in the spring, and these buds turn into beautiful flowers.  To me it's miraculous.