Snow anyone?

We get so much snow here in H town. It doesn't help that we have a north facing front yard and also live in the corner of a turn. When the snow plow comes along we get what seems to be a bit more than our fair share of snow left in front of our home. Next year we will be able to prepare for it more though. We didn't shovel out our entire driveway area in the street and well...now it is too late and we just have to wait until it melts. Now when it does snow we stay on top of it so that it doesn't encroach into the limited space that we do have to enter and exit our driveway. After one snow storm we didn't get around to shoveling the snow right away and we had a nice thick layer of ice on the driveway for a while. It took me over a week of daily salting and shoveling at it to get rid of it.
The sidewalk presented a bit of a problem for a while as well. You can see along the front of our roof there are little heaters that melt off the snow and are there to help prevent ice build up. Well... we didn't turn them on when we should have or at all for that matter. It wasn't long before we had a HUGE section of ice along the front of our home. I'm talking about a sheet of ice that was 6 inches thick. No I'm not exaggerating either. There was also a huge ring of ice around the front gutter as well that was at least three inches on either of it. The gutter is visible in the picture, it is located in front to the right of the garage door and our address sign. The ice started a foot above the curve in the gutter and went all the way to the ground. While it was cold this wasn't such a big deal but when it started to get warm...well that is a whole other story.
We had a little bit of a warm spell where the temps were in the upper 40s and so the ice and snow started to melt. Every morning there was layer of ice an inch thick on the sidewalk. Since the gutters were frozen, the water melted and it ran straight onto the steps and sidewalk. One day I stepped on our first step and my foot slipped right out from underneath me, causing me to land on my left leg leaving quite the bruise from my foot to my knee. (Ouch!) So I had enough and decided to get rid of the ice. It took over a week to remedy the problem but finally, I was able to get the ice off of the drain. B had to get up on the ladder to hack at the ice on the roof, it took several hours of working at it with the hammer. I also shoveled three feet of snow off of the little square between our sidewalk and home, in hopes that the less snow there is the less ice we will have to deal with. Under the snow I found a nice thick layer of ice. Since then we have used our heaters regularly and with constant shoveling we are avoiding dangerous ice patches. While I really don't care for snow. I still love H town and its beautiful winter wonderland qualities. I still hope spring comes sooner than later.