Sticks in banks

I'm not referring to monetary banks but snow banks!
As you probably know if you live here - we have a lot of snow.  Well, during a walk to downtown, this elderly lady came over to us and started talking in Finnish.

This is odd because Finns do NOT go to strangers unless for very good reason (the rare social ones offer to hold the door open - or tell you you've dropped something)....and she seemed happy - so we had no idea what she was saying.

She then, picked up a branch and stuck it in the snow bank.  Then I thanked her (what else was I supposed to say?!) and she went on her merry little way.

We continued walking and noticed where the lady was coming from because on both sides of the path, there were branches sticking out in the snow banks!  

I could NOT for the life of me, figure out what she was trying to do.  And she spoke too quickly for me to try and decipher any of it.  So I asked a friend and she said that there are times when the cars are too close to the sidewalks and because you can barely see the sidewalks (thanks to all that snow) - sometimes people put branches along the edge of the road and tie reflective string to them so the cars can see pedestrians better.

But in general the pedestrians all wear night-reflecting tags of some sort so they are seen pretty well.

It seemed odd that the lady placed branches on the specific path we are on - because it is completely separate from the road! It's higher than the road....weird huh?