At around half-past five yesterday, Irving was contemplating this morning's breakfast and thinking he was a little tired of having pancakes Sunday morning for breakfast. The perfect time, he thought, to head out to Farm Boy which had bought the Rideau Bakery franchise when it went out of business and now sells all the traditional Jewish breads that the Rideau Bakery was famous for, in Ottawa. The timing is critical since if it's a round dinnertime, most people would be ensconced at their dinner table, not gallivanting around doing shopping.

Uppermost in his mind was to procure, beyond rye bread and bagels, challah. He yearned for French toast for a change and as anyone knows, without challah French toast just isn't as good as it can be. So, French toast it was, this morning. And since Jackie and Jillie always get a little dish of whatever we're having special for breakfast, they too appreciated it muchly.

Weather here in Ottawa can get a little tedious too, in winter. It's the season we welcome in late November when it storms onto the scene, shoving fall out of the way, with 'surprise' snowstorms, but it's also the season that has the impression that it's the only season worth caring about. When it gets old and hoary and cranky it refuses to even recognize spring.

And the fact it, we kind of forget what spring looks like, too. It certainly doesn't resemble the -5C temperature we had today, though it's the 'mildest' day we've had all week. Nor the rampant wind that makes any temperature below freezing feel like we've been transported to the Antarctic. And let's not even linger to think about the piles of snow accumulated over winter because if we do, we'll wonder what spring will do with it all...

 But there are unmistakable signs other than those that spring really is nigh. Take the sun, for example, it's riding much higher in the sky these days. Staying in view up there a lot longer too, giving us longer daylight hours, warming up the interior of this house with its heating rays, as a bonus. And even when we head out into a mean wind in freezing temperatures and tread on layer upon layer of snow, we can 'feel' spring, and 'smell' spring.

Moreover, we're taking bets that the trees and the fauna in the forest can, too. It's this time of year that we begin to see robins hanging around the creek. We had seen one yesterday, and today there was a veritable parade of them, celebrating their anticipation of spring. At least a dozen robins were flitting about one particular area close to one of the bridges, where if we're going to see them, it'll be there.

Irving theorizes that the area of the creek where we see the robins is their preferred late-winter hunting grounds. It's downstream slightly from a set of 'rapids' churning up the water as it flows through the floor of the ravine. The turbulence, he says, lifting up sediments and perhaps even live aquatic creatures that the robins swoop down to capture. Not as kingfishers do, but snapping minuscule plankton up from the surface of the water before it has the chance to settle back down again.

None of this is of any interest to Jackie and Jillie. They're focused on trotting along the trails, distracted only by the occasional sight in the distance of others doing the same. It's not the humans they have any interest in, but their canine companions. To whom our two rascals are sometimes gracious as long as they know the other dogs, or barking-nasty in those instances where another dog is new to the trails or to their acquaintanceship.

The icy blasts of wind that struck us head on as we made our way up the street toward the ravine entrance quickened our steps notably. The shelter the ravine provides from the worst excesses of a nasty wind on winter days is very much appreciated. We execute a little detour now to access the trail leading into the ravine, since the supporting incline to the snowpack was sheered away leaving a step-up onto a narrow ice-and-snow platform a tad too ambitious for even my good balance.

So, we make our way past it, as we go toward the group mailbox whose platform has been cleared post-snowstorm by a contractor, and onto a brief narrow path more readily accessed. Not the least bit unusual an adjustment we have to make at some point during the late-winter season when access to the ravine is blocked in by an excess of snow and ice toward season's end. Younger, nimbler limbs no doubt find it no problem to overcome. Slips and falls may bother them less, as well. For me, once is enough.

So in we went and the relief from the wind was instant. Not, however, relief from the cold itself. It could be felt stealing its way through our layers of sweaters under our down-filled jackets. Damp, Irving says, combined with the cold and the wind, always does it. Descending the first long hill, we see the creek is now fully open despite the cold, the water dark against the prevailing snowpack heavily tucked in all around it.

In the distance we hear a Pileated woodpecker furiously banging away at a tree, chipping off great shards of a trunk commensurate with its size and the strength of its beak. I keep hoping we'd get close enough to one of them some day for a good photo, mindful of the time years ago when one of the birds was really close and seemed not the least disturbed by our close proximity. That was before the age of the digital camera.

We also saw a robin down near the creek and felt pangs of pity for the bird that is a  live-feeder normally. At this time of year we more frequently see robins, sometimes in little groups over the past few years. Some, it seems, decide not to migrate south for the winter any longer. We also, for the first time in the winter, saw a rose-breasted grosbeak down by the water. The forest is awaiting spring release from its too-long winter sleep.

The trails have been broadened, the snow tamped well down after the last several snowfalls early in the week, so footing is really excellent. Gone, the enchanted look of the entire landscape, including the forest canopy, covered in a deep frosting of newfallen snow. Gone, for the time being, that is. It's still early March, and throughout the month and into April we'll be treated to more snowfalls until the weather is fully committed to warming into spring.

Jackie and Jillie nose their way along the trails they are just as intimate with as any corner of the house they live in with us. They're looking for thin little twigs to take possession of, irresistible to little chewing maniacs. But they're also alert of course to a multitude of 'messages' awaiting them here and there and everywhere; wherever a raised surface presents itself.

Jackie's progress is particularly mesmerizing as he moves left and right, right then left repeatedly, endlessly in his regular devotion to detail. He is intent on ensuring that no message goes unsniffed; all the neighbourhood dogs' little notes of ownership as stewards of all they survey as they make their way through the forest trails.

 

It's sad and more than slightly unfortunate that for a wealthy democracy in the western hemisphere Canada is in a parlous state. Not unusual with a Liberal government, but this particular government under Justin Trudeau has exacerbated the usual tensions between various parts of the country, succeeding in alienating the west from the east. He's gone his father one better in the extent of the damage he has overseen. He has also on several occasions interfered with the justice system which is supposed to be neutral, reflecting the law of the land. Advantaging friends at public expense another nail he's hammered home. 

He uses taxpayer-funded federal treasury at his whims which steer toward his advantage at the polling booth. During the current novel coronavirus crisis afflicting the world community he has made decisions reflecting poorly on the image of a wise and reflective leader. A scattergun approach to handling the country's economy through the meltdown of COVID-19 has resulted in Canada spending more than any other G20 nation, and having less to show for it, while leaving future generations with the problem of paying off a massive debt.

His decision-making over how best to protect Canadian lives threatened by the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been faulty and faulted leading to failure. Canada is now far, far behind other countries in their vaccination progress resulting from the Trudeau government's poor reasoning and lack of attention to the real world of politics impacting social-welfare outcomes. Government departments under his rule have become shabby in their principles; the Canadian military a case in point where corruption, harassment and failure to address the needs of military personnel has become scandalous.

He smiles through every one of the missteps and false calculations he has made. From embarrassing Canada with his outrageous costumery on a state visit to India, and while there flirting with Indo-Canadian criminals and violent separatists, to his unabashed use of blackface as a thespian attention-seeker, much less his manhandling of a female journalist, explaining that away by baldly stating that men and women 'experience' things differently.

His promises that might be of some advantage to Canadians have not been fulfilled, but under his mandate, Canada had the first federal laws legitimizing the growing and sale of cannabis, and legislated the de-criminalization of assisted suicide in the medical profession. The LGBTQ-2 communities' human rights were championed by this prime minister and genderless language is now the law of the land. I'm sure I've forgotten a great deal that distinguishes this man as an outstanding prime minister. 

His self-confidence and egotism are outpaced only by his lack of attention to the damage he has wrought in this country. With the considerable assistance of a largely incompetent cabinet. But he smiles and carries on, the man whose past experience as a drama teacher, snowboarding expert and eventually, thanks to the inheritance of that famous Trudeau name, a public speaker evidently prepared him for the responsibilities inherent in administering the affairs of a nation.

As for us ordinary folk, we're getting on, the more we see, hear, and experience under the Trudeau watch the more we wince in pain. The pain can be assuaged however, by taking ourselves out to the ravine with our little companions, Jackie and Jillie, for an afternoon tramp through forest trails on a winter March day with a high temperature of -8C, and winds gusting up to 30 mph. for a really 'cool' wind factor.

Jackie and Jillie couldn't give a fig for the politics and how it affects the social weal of this country. They love the country and all it provides them with, and take great joy in expending canine energy on these daily excursions. And so do we.

She is one of our oldest friends. We go back, as the saying goes, a long way together. We knew one another just as we entered our teens, schoolmates in high school, at just about the same time that Irving and I met one another and became fast companions. Several years later, she met the boy who was to become her first husband, and they and we would often go around together. 

There was another mutual friend, whom we both knew. My contact with both had lapsed for many years until about fifteen years ago we re-connected through email. The time distance between us is 70 years, but the geographic distance is another factor. They remained in Toronto while Irving and I moved to Ottawa. We last saw them in person about six years ago.

Over all those years we had certainly changed, but it was still possible to see the teen in the septuagenarian. At that time, when we sat together, discussing the trajectory of the years that had passed and how we all were then, six years ago, one signalled to me her concern over the other, of diminishing physical capabilities. And now the one who had been concerned for the other, is no longer alive.

While the remaining one now uses a walker to get around, but hasn't really left her apartment but for a few doctor appointments in the past year, during COVID. Her daughter has done her mother's grocery shopping and drops it off for her. Because my friend is fairly computer-literate and is also a devoted telephone-user, she speaks to her friends, and sends emails, but sees no one.

And now, tomorrow, she is scheduled for heart surgery, for valve replacement. I could hardly believe that the procedure she'll undergo no longer requires open-heart surgery, but can be done with minimally-invasive surgery which means recovery time is infinitely easier and faster. Still, as with any serious surgery, the risk-element to mortality is high. We've discussed her situation via email, and tomorrow she undergoes surgery.

As for us, it's been another routine, ordinary and wonderful day. We're back into sub-freezing weather again, with night-time lows nudging -20C, and icy winds. Yesterday's new snow is now entirely disappeared off the trees in the forest, sheered away by the strong winds. We set out with Jackie and Jillie in mid-afternoon for the ravine, and walking up the street noticed that municipal works had been busy, removing some of the snowpack lining the street.

The street becomes progressively narrower through a winter, when municipal plows clear the road and send the snow flying into driveways and builds up large snowbanks alongside the street. Not only does the street become narrower over time, but sight-lines are also impaired. In sheering away some of the snowpack, however, the slope that leads into the trail toward the ravine has been compromised. The height of the trail from the road reflects the amount of snow that has been trodden down to create a dense challenge of height that requires a vigorous leap to reach its level.

So we made our way around the group mailbox where a narrow alternate trail has been formed because a contractor comes around after snow events to clear away the snow in front of the mailboxes, and it's a bit safer using that as an option. All the while the wind bit fiercely trying to gain its own entrance -- inside our winter garments, serving to speed our pace in the knowledge that the forest offers some protection from the wind.

The meanness of the weather contributed to people deciding to remain at home, or at least avoid trekking out to the trails, a result of which was that we  hardly met anyone else out other than a few people with their dogs. At one point we came across a quite amusing little scene, where someone had hung a fairly large cut-out of a decorative 'snowflake' and suspended it from one of the trees adjacent the last of the bridges fording the ravine's creek, which is beginning to freeze over again.

It will have ample opportunity, since the forecast for the next three or four days is for daytime highs around -7C to -9C. with of course, winds to match.... 

The somewhat different combination I tried out yesterday for dinner was fine. Irving preferred it that way, though I thought they were both good. This time I left out the mozzarella cheese at his request, and added zucchini to the eggplant/tomato/tomato sauce combination, and retained the oregano and thyme. And I sprinkled the casserole before putting it into the oven with panko and Parmesan. We both 'cleaned' our plates.

When we herded Jackie and Jillie out for the final time before bedtime last night we were surprised though we shouldn't have been, to see that about five centimetres of snow had already fallen. We hadn't even realized it was snowing again. The temperature had risen steadily throughout the day from -17C in the morning to -2 by the time we went up to bed. In total, the snow amounted to another 11 cm of snow to add to the winter snowpack.

We had things to do to keep us busy after breakfast; me cleaning the bathrooms and Irving downstairs to work on  the second of a pair of stained glass windows to fit into shutters he had made for one of the upstairs bedroom windows. Before that, he had decided it was time for a trim of his beard and hair. The little hair he has left on his head gets buzzed off regularly; his preference.

There's something about living together most of our lives; when one of us does something the other invariably does as well. We do share thoughts often, but actions also prompt reaction. It's like the contagion of yawning, for example. Before I cleaned our bathroom I hauled out scissors and trimmed my hair, too. It seems to me that whenever I look in the mirror I see a trimming waiting to happen, and I hate to disappoint that expectation.

When we did finally set out for our daily ramble through the forest trails with Jackie and Jillie who certainly know priorities when such stares them in the muzzle, it was windy, heavily overcast and mild, at 0C. So we dressed a little lighter and didn't regret that we had. The wind was forceful enough to have sheered quite a bit of last night's snow off the forest canopy, and continued doing so as we traipsed the trails.

Hard to believe that spring is peeking around the corner; we just cannot see her promised presence through the weight and depth of the snow that is suffocating the forest floor. Yet we can hardly blame spring for her famous procrastination. It's like this every year; cantankerous winter and hesitate spring. Oh, and incessant snowfalls, interplaying with frigid sunny days and overcast milder days.

Today it's mild, tomorrow the daytime high will be -8C, which is a whole lot colder. In fact the forecast is to expect a succession of these truculent colder daytime highs. Winter refuses to forego his season, stringing us along and claiming precedence over all successors.

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.

 

 

I hadn't quite made up my mind how I'd use leftover rice I had cooked a few days earlier and left in the refrigerator until I decided, but last night it struck me that we hadn't enjoyed rice pudding for breakfast for awhile, and the rice would be perfect for that. So this morning I placed the rice into a small covered pot and into it put twice the volume of milk to rice after heating up the milk first. Then I set the rice to simmer in the milk for a half hour while we showered before breakfast.

When I came downstairs, the rice had absorbed all the milk and I put more in, along with a few tablespoons of sugar, tons of cinnamon and raisins, and let it simmer a bit longer while I sectioned oranges and peeled bananas to preface the pudding. At the table more, much more milk, cold this time, was mixed into the rice pudding in our bowls, and it was absolutely lovely. I should prepare it more often for our morning meal.

A mild morning, just hovering at 0C, overcast and very windy. Today is cleaning day so we spent hours cleaning the house, each to our separate tasks. When we were  young and first married and had our very own flat in a house owned by a family friend, we divided the housework. We were only 18 at the time. Irving did the cleaning up in our bedroom-sitting room and I did the kitchen, a very small kitchen to be sure, but our very own (rental). 

When we eventually bought a little bungalow of our own north of the city, things shifted a bit so that all the outdoor things that had to be done were his bailiwick and the indoor mine. We didn't really plan anything, it's just the way things worked out naturally, it seemed to us. We were both working and commuting daily from Richmond Hill where our house was, to downtown Toronto where our jobs were. Four years later our first child came along, then two others.

I became a stay-at-home mother, but when Irving arrived home after work we still shared things that had to be done, mostly relating to the children; changing diapers, bathing them, playing with them. Now we share our attention between two little poodles. Speaking of which, little Jillie was under-the-weather today, and didn't feel like having her breakfast.

Whenever we took her out to the backyard she would wend her way over piles of snow over to an Alberta spruce, and pull the needles off. Some dogs look for grass when they have upset stomachs, Jillie always preferred the small needles of an Alberta spruce and it seems to work for her. In mid-afternoon we set off for the ravine, and she was anxious enough to go.

By then the sun was full out and the temperature had dropped to -5C, the wind whipping tree masts about. Last night's rain had left puddles of melted snow close to the street catch-basins which left us wondering why at this temperature they hadn't frozen, as we skirted them. The snow that had been loose and lofty yesterday was now covered with a thin crust of ice. No complaints, it made progress on the trails in the forest more efficient.

Before we'd left the house there were a few episodes of snow flurrying in the wind. Oddly enough that snow was coming down even though the sun was blazing its way across the sky. An odd intersection of sun and snow that we occasionally see in the summer too, when sun and rain appear together in the choreographed surprise of an unexpected weather treatment.

Because of the rain having melted some of the snowpack, the creek was fully open and burbling its businesslike way downstream, swollen from the melting snowpack. All was still, otherwise. No one else out on the trails but ourselves; the entire ravine at our appreciative disposal. Jackie and Jillie feel that to be the natural order of things.

When we arrived back home Jillie felt quite recovered and was anxious to have her afternoon treat. Today that consisted of cut-up green beans, red bell pepper, halved grape tomatoes and strawberries; colourful and absolutely to their liking. It was all gone in a snap. And to celebrate that all's well, brother and sister chased one another around the house until it was nap-time.