In addition, I can usually chose to mow the lawn on a nice day, or a nicer time of the day. Walking back and forth across my lawn for an hour, on a sunny afternoon just isn’t that much of a problem.
Shovelling snow at 6:30AM, so I can come back inside and shower before going to work, hoping that the plows don’t come past again, and re-bury the end of my driveway, is MUCH worse.
This is the one exception. Nights like that, I try to avoid using the snowblower, and I shovel the driveway. The snow muffles all the sound. It’s like being in a Norman Rockwell painting.
Victorian Christmas card.
Do you live in a magically protected from storms part of NY? There are some weeks we need to shovel six times*, and I was lead to believe NY gets as much snow as we do.
*like the week before last when we had three storms that each required shoveling twice
As other people have said, shoveling snow sometimes has to get done in poor weather conditions or early in the morning or late at night. Mowing the lawn can always wait.
I was surprised by that comment too. I live in NY state, south of RealityChuck. I would say I shovel six times in a particularly MILD winter. This year, which has not been a mild winter, the count stands well above six.
And believe me, if there is any chance that the snow will melt later on in the day, I delay as long as possible–it’s not that I’m compulsive about GETTING OUT THERE AND GETTING RID OF EVERY LAST FLAKE GODDAMMIT.
My first husband had a heart attack while shoveling snow (he had to be resuscitated numerous times), and when he talked to his doctor later, that doc said the combination of exertion and cold, especially for otherwise sedentary people, was a recipe for heart attack.
Maybe not. I found this only after hunting for about 30 minutes and finally using the Dogpile search engine. The story itself says there is little evidence, so the hospital did its own research. But it’s only one hospital.
The info here, mostly symptoms, turned up in many different stories.
I consider shovelling much harder work because of the repeated digging, lifting and heaving of snow that could weigh anywhere from 10 to 30 pounds or more per shovel full (I use a scoop when I don’t use my snowblower), depending on the snow’s moisture content. And as I mentioned above, we’ve had so much snow this year that I had to shovel a path for the snowblower.
Cutting the lawn, at least with a power mower, is a walk in the park by comparison, especially if the mower is self-propelled (mine isn’t).
I most of the time love both. There are aspects that I don’t like, but I normally look forward to getting out there in my yard or relocating snow that is out of place. If I had to chose one over the other I would say snowblowing only because of maintenance issues with the equipment, broken shearpin is top on the list. Though mowing happens with too much regularity also which is bad.