The Homeowner’s Winter Scramble: Why Every Surface is a Potential Green
There is a specific type of madness that sets in around mid-January for the dedicated golfer. It’s a combination of Vitamin D deficiency and the realization that your putting stroke currently has more rust on it than a 1974 Ford Pinto. When the snow hits, most people see a chore; the golfer sees a maintenance opportunity.
Priority Management
Shoveling the driveway is generally seen as a civic duty—a way to ensure the mail carrier doesn’t sue you and your car can actually reach the street. But for those of us waiting for the frost to break, the driveway is the only “fairway” we’ve seen in months.
If you have twelve inches of powder and a limited window of time, are you going to clear a path for the minivan? Or are you going to clear a perfectly straight, eight-foot line to a soup can you’ve frozen into the ice? The choice is obvious. The minivan has four-wheel drive; your putter does not.
The Domestic “Out of Bounds”
As seen in today’s cartoon, the conflict arises when the “Superintendent” (the spouse) has a different vision for the property’s curb appeal. There is a fundamental disconnect between “clearing the ice so nobody slips” and “clearing the ice so I can practice my lag putting.”
In the golfer’s mind, that single strip of concrete is a masterpiece of engineering. It’s a precision-guided lane of athletic development. To the wife standing on the porch, it’s just a job half-done by a man who has clearly lost his marbles to the winter blues.