Helping the spring along (1)

If you live in a place that gets a lot of winter snow then by this time of year a lot of that snow has become ice. On warmer days it turns wet, and it's slippery. In fact it's a pain in the ass, sometimes literally so if you forget the slipperiness!
So in our part of Sweden a common sound now is someone bashing the ice, trying to break it up.  Today, since I'm feeling fairly okay I decide to finish of the paved area outside our front door. I attack it with a two metre long iron bar, and because the bottom of the ice is no longer frozen it breaks up fairly easily. Then we cart it away to the back of the house where it can melt down the slope, into the ditch between us and the field.
This is "helping the spring along"! If it turns sunny we can put chairs out here and enjoy some spring sunshine. If it rains it'll drain away a lot more easily. If it snows it's easy to clear the snow away, and this time of year it'll melt in a few days anyway.
Of course, if we did none of this work it will have melted away anyway within a month, but it does feel good to attack the ice like this. In fact once you start it's almost addictive.
Jan has got started on the deck...