Clearing the decks

Yesterday I took away a lot of snow from the edge of the deck, but there was a layer of ice left. Today Jan discovered she could lift the ice in a large plate if she was careful! There's been a lot of moving ice to clear the paths as well as the deck.
Then we moved out of the garden to where the forest was felled and burned a whole lot of forestry rubbish. It was a lot of work lugging branches and logs to the fire. 
By the end of the day we were very tired and very smoky. We stood on the front door step (you can't do this if you live in town) and stripped off all our clothes before moving inside for showers!
Extras show one of the fires we made, and some more signs of spring. The first flowers in our garden (Hepatica), and some Small Tortoiseshell butterflies. Wikipedia says these butterflies are in decline so it's lovely that we have seen lots of them this spring, and that these two seem intent on making some more!