Our backyard garden sheds resemble ice cream cones, their roofs piled high with snow. Not unusual, they get to look just like that every winter. And finally, the level of the snowpack at the front of the house now resembles how the garden looks winter after winter. But this has been a really strange winter. Not that weather in Ottawa isn't always strange, surprising us with instant changes, unexpected yet based on experience, totally expected.

The street and its houses look well fortified with formidable heights of snowpack mounds mounted along every driveway and around each of the houses. That's a lot of shoveling. Though most households own snowthrowers -- a must in this city of overwhelming snowfalls and a growing elderly population --  there's always a lot of hand shoveling to do as well. It can be pretty exhausting. Even for those households who sign contracts with snow removal companies, anything less than 5cm of snow won't bring them out, necessitating that the homeowner proceed with shoveling on their own.

We had a superabundance of snow fall on Tuesday, and while we were all attempting to clear up from that days'-long snowfall, the following day brought more snow. We had an intermission on Thursday; bright clear skies and a warming sun. This morning when we awoke it was to find that it was once again snowing. Serious snow, not flurries. So, after breakfast out went my husband once again, to clear up the walkways, clear out the driveway, using both the snowthrower and shovels to complete the job.

I stayed indoors to tend to my Friday morning baking and cleaning up, in that order. Planning, of course, that we'd venture out with Jackie and Jillie into the ravine for an afternoon walk. Shortly after my husband came back into the house, snow-clearing completed for the nonce, rain began. The temperature had soared to 3C, and it was raining. In clearing away the snow, layers of ice underneath were revealed. Slippery stuff, dangerous to negotiate. So rain, and as usual the temperature will fall once again and the creation of new ice layers will commence.

Yesterday's clear skies mandated a trip to the ravine, after having missed our usual daily excursion the day before. It was tough going. Not so bad for Jackie and Jillie with their dainty little feet pumping exuberantly along. But our boots slipped in the depths of new snow and slid about in a manner that on occasion seemed to resemble what happens when you twist an ankle, though we managed not to.

And the landscape? Incomparable. The sheen of the undisturbed new snow sparkled softly in the sun wherever it penetrated within the forest confines. The tunnel-like trail was narrower than ever, tramped down partially by those who had been out before us, so that while the minor, connecting trails were a real trial to traverse, the major trails provided some relief, having been tramped down slightly more thoroughly.

Long-shot views from the hilltops looking down into the valleys of the ravine were breath-taking. The conifers, packed with snow looked precisely how they are often captured in idealistic-appearing winter scenes, only in this instance one is not inspecting a photograph, as expressive as they can be, but an actual landscape whose indescribable beauty is truly breath-catching.

The snow on either side of the newly-created runnels is deep and still soft, so whenever one of our boots inadvertently stretched a little over the tamped-down areas, that boot plunged deeply into the snow. When Jackie and Jillie on occasion made an effort to go off-trail, curious to look about in a less rigid manner, they were soon engulfed in the snow, leading them to speedily return to the channel again.

It takes a day or two before enough people have been out with their dogs to help make the trails passably hard and flat so passage is tremendously eased. The rain won't have penetrated much given the depth of the snowpack in the ravine itself. As often happens, the combination of snow-depth, ice and rain and flash-freeze will have its impact on the street and on driveways, leaving the forest floor relatively unscathed.