We didn't get very far this morning backing the truck out of the garage and onto the driveway on our way to do the grocery shopping. Only here in Ottawa can anyone get stuck in their own driveway. The temperature dipped to -20C last night, and the wind howled like a banshee all night. In the early evening we could hear it in the fireplace; during the night it lashed its fury against the bedroom windows. At 7:30 am this morning the temperature had risen to -17C, and the wind was still ferocious and would be, for the entire day.

The combination of overnight rain, milder temperature two days earlier, and then more melting occasioned by yesterday's full sun left us this morning with a skating rink in our driveway, the result of a steady fall in temperature yesterday. And just about everywhere else was iced over as well. It wasn't so bad in the backyard; more of an uneven ice crust, so negotiating the walkways with care meant one wouldn't slip. But the driveway? Irving had backed up too close to the snowbank at the side of the driveway and one of the truck wheels got embedded. The simple expedient of pulling ahead and turning the driving wheel slightly should have done the trick, but the tires spun on the ice.

Waiting for the weather to moderate, the temperature to rise before digging out the wheel, Irving went outside in the early afternoon to do just that, though it was still -10C, and the wind was icily stinging. He found a note on the truck windshield. From Melanie, our neighbour directly across the street. The note asked Irving to let her know when he was ready to dig himself out; she was prepared to  help.

When we first realized that someone was shovelling our porch and walkway I instantly thought of Melanie though we later discovered it was Dan and Lynne, next door who had begun shovelling us out after every snowstorm. What incredible neighbours. Melanie is very retiring, introverted and mostly quite reserved. Over the years she has developed a relationship with Irving; they like to talk to one another.

Melanie is hugely intelligent and sharp-minded, and she has the energy and stamina of a team of women. I still recall long ago soon after they moved into the house vacated by other neighbours we missed when they moved to the States, that when she was heavily pregnant with their second child she clambered up a ladder to wind a string of Christmas lights on the pine growing on their front lawn. Her husband Mustapha is a big strapping man, but Melanie is the one who does everything around the house. Mostly, I imagine, because she enjoys it, from mowing the lawn to shovelling snow and everything in between.

A year ago her life took a dreadful turn when Mustapha was diagnosed with inoperable cancer. He's undergone treatment, but the cancer had already spread and though chemotherapy had reduced some of the spread, evidently the cancer has now reached his brain. Their boys, mature adults now, no longer live at home; they have their own homes. 

Before he knew it, as he began preparing to do some serious shovelling of compressed snow and ice, the result of a winter-long snow clearance that built up pretty hard and tall snowbanks, there she was, walking up the driveway, evidently on the lookout, and prepared to help. Without her help Irving says he could never had freed the tire and been able to finally drive the truck back into the garage ... and it took time.

Me, I was busy in the kitchen. Baking cookies. Irving had suddenly recalled cookies I used to bake aeons ago for the children. And so I set about baking thimble cookies. They're pretty simple, basically similar to shortbread but in cookie form and a few additional ingredients. The dough is soft and pliable and it's rolled into balls which are then depressed in the centre, and jam plunked into the depression. 

 And I had other things to do, because I was preparing a vegetable casserole for dinner with eggplant, zucchini, tomato, oregano, thyme, tomato sauce, Panko and Parmesan cheese. It's mostly the quick pre-frying of the eggplant and zucchini that's a bit time-consuming. But come dinnertime all I have to do is draw the casserole out of the refrigerator and put it into my little countertop convection oven for 40 minutes.

I used that same little oven last evening when I roasted a turkey breast for dinner, serving it alongside mashed sweet potato and frenched green beans. Now that's quick to prepare other than scraping the skin off the yam and cutting it into pieces to cook. It's the kind of meal I appreciate preparing when I've had a busy day, and yesterday was a busy day.