I think it is so quaint that in Canada our national weather office of Environment Canada will issue an alert, as it did yesterday, for a "winter storm watch". In Canada, winter storms happen with unsurprising regularity in December, January, February and March. They often begin in November by which time if the cold is unremitting, the winter's worth of snowpack will be launched.

We have even, on occasion, experienced snowfalls in April. Sometimes sizeable ones. And when it snows, it is something to watch indeed. A veil of shimmering white descends. If it is also windy, which it often is, that wind plus the cold will resemble gale-force emphasis when it ploughs through the atmosphere, raking up the accumulated snow on treetops and rooftops, sending it in wide, crazy circles accumulating  throughout the landscape.

We were busy yesterday with the snow, true. The canopy on the deck is now a permanent one. Perhaps not the best of choices we made when we bought it with its permanency in mind. Its infrastructure is sound but instead of a removable canvass top it has a complex stay-in-place metal top. And too late we saw the manufacturer's advice, that it would be best to sweep snow off the metal top if over six inches accumulates.

Given that a week earlier we had snow followed by freezing rain that left a nice thick cap of frozen snow and packed ice on top of the metal canopy, we thought it might be best to remove it, since it, plus the twenty centimetres we had been warned was imminent, might collapse the structure. Out we were, in the raging wind, whipping snow and minus-8 C. temperature yesterday afternoon, my husband on a ladder, reaching over onto the canopy top to chop away at the ice and release the top from its burden.

Just in time for the new snow to take its place. And the day-long snowfall necessitating that the backyard pathways be shovelled clear from time to time to make way for our puppies, and the front walkways as well. By the time we went to bed last night the landscape was heavy with snow. When we awoke in the morning, even more had fallen.

Which meant more shovelling, and more work for that indefatigable snow thrower maneuvered by my husband. Which still left plenty of hand shovelling to be undertaken. So that's us with an additional 20 cm. of snow. This morning's forecast warned the Atlantic Provinces that some areas will be hit by up to 70 cm. of snow. Now that's a winter storm warning to heed.