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The Garden Guru

Sleding and Gardening

Jim Boxberger Jr.
Posted 12/30/22

What ever happened to sleigh riding? We have plenty of snow this year to get outside and enjoy the winter yet you never see kids out playing in it. When I was a kid, my friends and I would be out …

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The Garden Guru

Sleding and Gardening

Posted

What ever happened to sleigh riding? We have plenty of snow this year to get outside and enjoy the winter yet you never see kids out playing in it. When I was a kid, my friends and I would be out making snow forts, igloos and sleigh riding all day or until our feet froze off. I know it was a different time, there weren’t video games, social media and hundreds of channels of television to occupy ever minute of a childs day.

While hosting family for the holiday, I made sure I got my neice and nephew out to do some sleigh riding. We went to my aunt's house in Liberty as she has a great hill on the side of her house. It was a brisk eighteen degrees on Christmas day, but all bundled up we went sledding. We had a great time and when we got tired out we went in and played cards with my Aunt. Of course later that day when we got back home, the kids were back on devices for the rest of the evening, but at least they got some exercise. As for me, it tired me right out and by eight o'clock I could barely keep my eyes open. 

So what does this have to do with gardening? Not much, but as I have written about before, the snow is an important factor in insulating the ground below from the harsh temperatures we have had lately. Now we don't need to have the record breaking snowfall amounts that have had in Buffalo, but a foot of snow would be nice. 

The more snow we have, the less frost we will get in the ground and the faster the ground will be able to warm up in the spring. Not to mention all the little critters hibernating in the ground that get an extra blanket on for the winter. And with as cold as it was last weekend, who couldn't use an extra blanket? 

The snow will also provide for a better maple syrup season in February and help increase ground water supplies in spring. When you think of winter, you think of snow, but people also associate snow with cold, but that is not always the case. 

The last ten years or so, we have received more snow in March when the temps are warmer than in January when it is much colder. So it is possible to enjoy the snow without those subzero temperatures. Although some people don't seem to mind the cold at all, like all the fans not wearing shirts at the recent football games in the freezing temperatures or Santa Claus for that matter. 

Temperature can be a funny thing, where a damp, cloudy day in the forties can feel colder than a sunny, dry day in the upper twenties. It is all perception, in the summer we keep our A/C in the house at sixty-eight degrees, yet if the house drops below seventy in the winter we turn the heat up. 

Next month I will be down in Florida visiting my mom and if we get a day in the sixties down there, she'll be wearing a winter coat and I'll be walking around in shorts and a t-shirt. Likewise if it gets up to the nineties, she be fine and I will melt as I am not used to those temperatures. 

Unfortunately, by the time I get used to the temperature down there, I'll be back up here, freezing again.

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