Now that we're closing in on the end of January, our wacky weather conditions continue. As they usually do. Nature asks for no advice from mere mortals. And since we've lived in this part of eastern Ontario for close to a half-century not that much has changed, really. We can recall one winter when we literally swam through drifts of snow, and another where snow failed to materialize until the Christmas season had passed.

When we first moved to Ottawa from Toronto so many years ago, our children were young and our initial concern was to outfit them adequately for a frigid, snowy atmosphere. Warn and stout winter boots, and hooded winter jackets, mittens, scarves and toques the like of which we never felt they required while we lived in Toronto.

When we were ourselves children in Toronto there was an occasional bumper snowfall, but nothing like what we began to experience here. Yes, there was skating, and there was sledding, but once in Ottawa the focus really was on winter sport. Not to avoid the cold and the snowpack at their seasonal height, but to make the most of it all, as a recreational resource.

It was here that my husband's ambitions to have us all enjoy the winter season saw full cooperation. Earlier, when we lived in Toronto, as a child from the inner city I had never owned a bicycle. My husband had one, and as a pre-teen he used to deliver prescriptions to households from a neighbourhood pharmacy. It was only when our children were old enough to have bicycles that we scraped enough scarce money together to acquire bicycles for all three, and my enterprising husband looked for discarded bicycle parts and put together a usable bicycle for me, then taught me how to ride it.

That having been done, he set about teaching all of us (while he was himself learning) how to ski after he  bought used boots, poles and skis at a second-hand shop for every one of us. The first home we had here was located within the green belt encircling the city, so we had easy access through our backyard directly into the greenbelt through a series of parks, which welcomed us at all hours, day and evening, to make use of it. Snowshoes came next, and finally skates. The children took to all these activities effortlessly. I was awkward, but my husband has limitless patience and plenty of encouragement did the trick.

Now, we simply hike through our nearby woods. And we're beyond grateful that it's so simple to access this area, adjacent the house we now own. Where once we spent limitless time at Gatineau Park, a short drive from our house with the children, hiking, canoeing (another of my husband's enterprises), picnicking, picking wild berries in season, we now rarely drive off to hike elsewhere than right here.

Yesterday began with bright sun and moderate temperatures just hovering on freezing again. We knew that was destined to change and quite quickly as happens here, with snow on the horizon.

Because we were uncertain when the snow (and freezing rain) would erupt, we decided to dress Jackie and Jillie in rainproof winter jackets, but we went through the ravine circuit we'd chosen for the day while the sun was still out for the most part. It did disappear before we left the ravine as the sky changed to overcast, but no snow, much less rain materialized. The moment we arrived back home, though, snow came tumbling out of that pewter sky.

My husband meant to clear the light metal canopy over our deck of the snow accumulated in last week's snowstorm that left about 6 inches atop the canopy, about the most it can safely hold, particularly if freezing rain is anticipated,which would make the snow wetter and heavier. So, while snow came down in great blobs he was out there on a ladder, using a looooong-handled snow-rake, clearing the snow off the canopy.

The snow came down so thickly it was as though some supranatural force had decided to pour an immense vat of dried curdled milk over an otherwise-unsuspecting landscape. I couldn't resist taking a video of it, but it hardly does justice to the spectacle, much less how entranced we felt, watching it and experiencing it, while Jackie and Jillie anxiously scrabbled at the patio doors to get out into the snowfray and enjoy it too.

They did, eventually, running mad circles around one another, diving into the swiftly-accumulating snow, to finally re-enter the house looking like fantastical like snow-dogs, anticipating a good toweling rub-down.