The surface of the great out of doors was a skating rink yesterday. When little Riley went out to the backyard, he kept splatting on his face, his legs attempting to find the security of a reliable surface, but unsuccessfully. Freezing rain was coming down, and although the temperature had moderated from the frigid conditions we've been cowering under for far too long, the combination wasn't quite as tolerable as we could manage.

Well, we could manage, with the cleats strapped on to our boots, but Riley would never be able to negotiate his way about the ravine in those rather inclement conditions. So we had to forego a ravine walk on Saturday, leading to a bit of disgruntlement. Conditions didn't seem all that appealing, in any event, particularly when the freezing rain by afternoon had turned to plain old, very cold but extremely wet, rain.

Concerns for the snow pack being washed away with all the problems associated with an icy covering over everything aside, what did happen was some flooding here and there. A farmer in Quebec awoke this morning to find the cows in his barn standing in three feet of freezing water. Road crews had been out trying to free up catch basins for water flow, but thick snow covering over everything made that extremely difficult, so flooding was inevitable and some areas of the city are coping with quite adverse conditions. We've gone from frozen water pipes driving homeowners to distraction to basements filling with water.

Not us, in particular needless to say, but some areas of the city. The municipal winter-weather budget has been thrown completely out of whack; it was consumed by the remediation reaction required by the time November had come and gone and we'd slipped into a snowier-than-usual, colder-than-usual Ottawa winter. We can recall equally cold and snowy winters but that's another story.

Today when we set out for our ravine walk it was after a full half-day of swirling light snow. And since it's also continuing on the mild side, just hovering nicely on freezing, the snow is wet, heavy and gives great traction on the previous ice layers. The creek at the bottom of the ravine has been released from its ice covering and is dark with detritus.

On our ravine walk we came across a couple of women we've known for quite a long time, walking no fewer than six dogs; a young golden retriever, five black and also chocolate retrievers, and one even larger mixed-breed dog, all friendly, all happy to be out and about in the woods, chasing elusive squirrels.