Warrior Month

In ancient Rome the tradition was that all wars began on the New Year which was in the spring. That's why March is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. However in 52 BCE Lucius Postumius Albinus, a Roman general, wanted to go to war against Spain, and rather than wait until March he just moved the New Year to January and began his war immediately. And that's when the New Year has begun ever since.

This week with a winter storm advancing on us Thursday Jan. 6 it certainly felt like war. Jane and I made our plans and prepared to do battle with Mother Nature. We have a 24 inch Airens snowblower that is capable of obliterating anything in its path, a couple of all metal Ames snowshovels, an old coal shovel that would have been my Grandfather Henri's weapon of choice, and enough other snowshovels to equip all of our grandchildren. We also just added a small Toro power shovel ( on sale at Menards) to clean up the areas the Airens cant reach.

To supplement this arsenal we also have a snow pusher and assorted brushes to clean off the cars and a roofing shovel with hardened teeth to break up the ice on the front porch. Even with all of this weaponry we only managed to fight the snow to a draw. We did reward ourselves for all this effort with a comforting meal of pork roast, sauerkraut, and dumplings cooked all day in our Crock Pot. We then retired to the living room to watch a couple of movies. We finished the day by watching the last of the snow fall from the comfort of our hottub before turning in for the night. We love winter.