The Terrible Twins are at it again. Usually it's Jackie whose stomach is upset and he goes off his food in the morning, and usually recovers by evening. Yesterday as rarely happens, it was Jillie who seemed a bit unwell, not quite her usual self. Even so, she ate all her meals and treats with her usual gusto. But, unusual for her, this morning she was disinterested in food and that's not Jillie at all.

Even more puzzling, Jackie too had no interest in food alongside his sister. On the rare occasions when Jillie has a stomach upset she seeks out her own remedy to settle things down. She heads straight for one of the Alberta spruce trees in the garden, pulls off needles and ingests them. Jackie prefers grass. But he's not looking for grass today and wouldn't find any if he wanted to, since we're deep in snow.

When we came downstairs for breakfast this morning and saw how heavily the snow was coming down, we first thought they would balk at going out into the backyard, but they hesitated not at all and soon returned looking like little snowdogs. A brisk rubdown seemed to suit them just fine. And they kept asking to go out, Jillie in particular. Once, when Irving took them out he couldn't find Jillie, she just disappeared.

She eventually reappeared and he realized that despite her aversion to deep, soft snow, she had delved into it, while he was shovelling the walkways for their easier access and made her way behind one of the garden sheds to access the rock garden at the side of the house. She manouvered herself between the fence separating our back from our neighbours', to get at the spruce needles, then found herself stuck, so Irving shovelled her a little path to freedom.

Snow had started around four in the morning and a good deal had accumulated over the next few hours. Passing the front door before breakfast I saw a familiar figure on our porch, our neighbour Lynne, whose husband had been shovelling our porch and walkways at the front of the house this winter despite our protestations we could manage. This time Lynne was doing the shovelling, snow falling all about her and the temperature at -12C. We had a brief conversation, she insisted she was fine and enjoying herself. We hardly know how to respond.

Last night I had baked crisp cheese-filled croissants to accompany our evening meal of beef-carrot-mushroom stew that I served over cous-cous. Irving felt motivated after dinner to bake a bread of his own in his trusty old bread machine. Out came his recipe book, and he methodically assembled the ingredients, then went about putting on his bread. His affair, while I relaxed in the family room to do some reading. 

His bread rose, and it rose, and it only stopped when it became glued to the top of the bread machine. He had tons of fun prying the finished product out of the pan to cool off on top of our baking counter. He'd erroneously put in a tad too much yeast, but the bread was just fine, to his satisfaction. 

Although today the temperature was supposed to rise to -2C, a bit of a break from the steady -10 and -8 we've had of late, it's obvious that isn't going to happen. So we've decided to give our usual hike through the forest trails a break. By tomorrow the puppies will be feeling better, the temperature may or may not moderate, and the snow will most certainly have stopped, and we'll venture out as usual.