As snowstorms go, yesterday's was quite the doozy. We're so accustomed to them by this time of year it seems no big deal when a storm arrives in the wee hours of the night, makes itself comfortable and decides to overstay its welcome well into the evening hours of the following day. Mind, it helped that the atmosphere was mild. The last similar snowstorm a week earlier gave us freezing temperatures along with the storm and battering high winds. 

 

 

The clean-up is done, The snow piles a bit higher. Hard to imagine the gardens, but they're sleeping comfortably under all that snow. They've been around awhile too, and know from years of experience that the snow will melt, the frost leave the soil, and the moistened, freshly crumbly growing medium will awaken bulbs and perennials, inviting them to surface for another season of growth and the conceit of showing off.

 

 

It was very thoughtful of Mother Nature to send along the sun today. It sat majestically on its orbiting chariot of fire the entire day, mischievously glaring its invitation to the buoyant comforter below to blind our eyes with the scintillating magic of its illuminating presentation. I'm baking fresh croissants for dinner tonight to accompany a lentil-vegetable soup to create a little internal heat to balance out the equation. Yesterday's went down just fine.

 

In the forest we found few others around, although the tell-tale signs were there that at some point skiers, snowshoers, sledders, dogs and perhaps little family groups were out and about. The widened and flattened trails were testament to the popularity of the ravine frosted high with snow on a winter weekend.

Out on the street, walking back home after our forest foray, snow banks are so wide and  high you cannot see the bottom levels of the houses, only cliffs of snow jutting out beyond driveways. Our backyard is piled high with snow, but the pathways are clear.

 

Our oldest son called last night with an incredible story. Our daughter-in-law had been downtown engaged in volunteer work at a church-run soup kitchen. It's part of her pastoral work and she often takes on the job of preparing the food. It was late when she left to return home. She took the subway, got off where she catches a connecting bus that takes her close to home. At the bus stop people kept arriving, but no buses did. Toronto was also hit by the storm that had gifted us with about 25cm of new snow.

 

Evidently the TTC had decided in its wisdom to cancel the evening buses on that route. It was past midnight when our daughter-in-law decided to walk  home. Once at their condominium building she got on the elevator with her bicycle and couldn't get off. She was finally freed at 3:00a.m. when elevator technicians arrived and worked awhile to get the mechanics in operating order.

Toronto is not now the place we knew when we grew  up there. It has changed in so many ways. But one might expect that the largest, most populous city in Canada would be efficiently administered in service to the great metropolis it has become.