What Lies Beneath

A couple days ago it poured and was about 5 degrees above zero - the result being a swift reduction in snow, a large amount of water moving very quickly toward the ocean using the roads as the most direct means of travel, and a back yard that looks like it was the solitary victim of a dog shit-storm.
That the temperature plummeted to below zero and it snowed a little in the night is to basically say all plans to remove said soggy shit-storm are effectively halted. Huzzah. My clever plan to remove all the mooshy presents from the backyard has been foiled due to the now frozen poopsicles trapped in time like so many little brown mastodons. The Ice Age has returned to Oak Street.

The exposure of said frozen delights is a problem in a few ways. Fortunately the lack of heat and flies reduces the gross factor to almost nil (unless you are looking directly at the mayhem). Neighborly embarrassment aside the main issue is that the dogs now realize that there is poop like ... everywhere. They can't turn around without encountering a delightful surprise. Raimi especially finds this most unacceptable. This means he is rarely, if ever, found anywhere but on the deck. To get to the back gate, which they can now reach since the snow has melted, he very delicately tip toes down the side of the house - his over-large schnoz pointed delicately away from the offending piles of poop.
The reason we have reached epic proportions of fecal matter is that in the months of January and February I would say it snowed every single day. Snowing every single day means that there were successive layers of snow and poop gathering like a particularly un-appetizing cake. And when it snowed it didn't do it half-heartedly ... it usually donated an inch or two of icing to this masterpiecece. The dogs didn't poop half-heartedly either - they are large dogs and thus their contributions to the cause are also large - Esme made up for her lack of size by simply increasing her frequency. The yard was so pretty for so many weeks, gentle drifts of bright white icing ... but I knew there was an evil presence lurking just below the surface.

So, until the weather sees fit to grant me a few days of uninterrupted warmth in order to shift the shit(so to speak), the neighbours will just have to follow Boy's example and turn their gaze from the horror and pray for sun ... lots and lots of sun.