The first thing my husband did this morning when he left our bed and left me in it, was to get out to the backyard to clear the snow off the deck, off the stairs leading to the snowy garden below the deck, to clear some of the walkways so Jackie and Jillie could wander about a bit when they and I got up. The next thing he did was to clear about a half-foot of accumulated snow off the porch at the front of the house. We could see where squirrels and rabbits had left their prints on the snow and particularly their scrabbling at the nuts, seeds and cubed bread that had been left there overnight, and there was nothing left. So when the porch was cleared, a new batch of nuts, seeds and bread was laid down.

Soon we saw squirrels returning, and a pair of beautiful scarlet cardinals. The last thing we did the night before was to dress warmly and get outdoors to the back of the house. Snow had fallen steadily since mid-afternoon and there was about a foot of light snow on top of the metal canopy that sits on the deck. That canopy isn't supposed to have more than six inches of snow sitting on it, otherwise the potential for collapse is a grim reality. So my husband, using a roofing rake for that very purpose, and a ladder, scraped the snow off the canopy and I shovelled it off the deck, where it fell in great fluffy swoops. There was hardly anywhere to shovel it to; the accumulated snow in the garden is now so high it reaches the floor of the deck at a height of just under five feet.

Fortunately, the temperature had risen from its daytime -12C, to a more tolerable -8C, so it didn't seem too cold. When we were hiking through the forested trails in the ravine yesterday afternoon the wind felt like icy lashes across our face at -12C. Last night there was plenty of wind whipping the snow about, but it did so at a higher elevation, and was exquisitely beautiful to see, swirling skeins of snow, incandescently bright catching the night light from lamp posts and our own light posts in the back. We were finished by shortly after midnight; it had taken us an hour.

But we knew that only half the projected amount of snowfall had come down by that point, that the snow would continue overnight and into the morning hours, which meant that though the canopy had been scraped clear of snow, more snow would be accumulating shortly. And in fact by morning the same amount of snow that we'd cleared off the canopy had once again covered it by the time we were having breakfast.

And that's another story. The temperature has kept rising, so we're now at about 2C, with occasional bursts of sun through the snow-cloud cover which keeps sending sprinkles of snow onto an already-overladen landscape. Those conditions, however, allow some of the snow to begin melting off the canopy. All the walkways in the back that I had shovelled last night were once again filled with snow, a lot of it not just what had fallen directly, but including what the wind had picked up from rooftops and spiralled down below.

We found the gate to the backyard was frozen shut and it took some effort to free it up. To enable my husband to get the snowblower out to the front of the house. Once that was done he discovered that the snowblower, a large beast of a mechanical contraption, refused to travel over the thick layer of ice on the pathway at the side of the house leading to the front, after he had finished clearing out the paths in the back. Which called for hand shovelling to try to coax the beast to find traction, difficult even with chains over its wheels.

Unknown to my husband I had gone out to the front of the house earlier while he was struggling in the back and I began shovelling out the front walkway to the porch. I had never seen the snow so high. I had to shovel it away incrementally, layer by layer, top to bottom, coming away with a full shovel each time, and having to fling it to the sides of the pathway already at a height of three-and-half feet, and growing steadily. Eventually it was done, so that if my husband wasn't able to get that beast out to the front of the house, at least he wouldn't have to shovel there by hand.

We were bereft of our morning newspapers. The publishers had a note to those clients anticipating the usual daily home delivery, that today's newspapers would be delivered tomorrow, with Thursday's editions. There were just too many issues, from getting delivery trucks on the road, to enabling the paper deliverers to wade through unplowed residential streets, unplowed driveways and walkways, a spectacularly difficult aspiration given the results of this snowstorm. And don't I miss my morning newspapers!