The steel canopy that my husband erected over the deck, replacing the previous canvas types that we had used for many years, has its benefits and its setbacks. The canvas ones had to be taken down overwinter and hoisted back up in spring, and they lasted a few years before succumbing to wear and tear, and the steel-topped one doesn't require replacement and nor must it be removed in the winter.

The canopy affords us some protection from the extreme heat of the summer sun, enabling us to sit out comfortably and relax on the deck with our puppies. And it also serves an invaluable function in keeping the interior of the house cool where we enter the house from the deck into the breakfast room and beyond into the kitchen.

Except -- there's always an 'except', isn't there? -- for the fact that its weight-bearing capacity has its limits. Given that indelible fact, we now feel it wasn't all that great a decision to erect it on the deck. Since we've got a raised deck, the canopy sits a considerable height off the ground. So how to clear it of snow? Each time the canopy bears an accumulation of snow over six inches in depth it's supposed to be cleared off. Particularly in the knowledge that more snow will fall, thickening the load, increasing the opportunity for a collapse.

Yesterday the canopy boasted eight inches of snow. And the forecast was for freezing rain to begin in the early afternoon and to continue the remainder of the day. That snow with an additional burden of ice pellets would constitute an enormous weight. We've tried to think of alternatives to my husband, at age 81, mounting a ladder and scraping the snow off the canopy with the aid of a long-handled brush. Yesterday morning he went off to a local hardware store that had been advertising roof rakes. And he came back with just that; a well-designed shovel/rake with a long handle that included snap-on parts to lengthen its reach.

And it worked very well indeed; no ladder perched precariously over frozen layers of ice and snow on the ground to clamber up to reach the snow-and-ice-laden metal canopy roof. Just what the doctor ordered, so to speak. My anxiety quotient plummeted. The canopy was cleared nicely, and then the freezing rain came down, littering the environment with frozen bits of ice and snow.