"Winter from Hell"

According to the chief climatologist of Environment Canada in the Ottawa Sun, anyway. The kids were home on two days this week because the buses were cancelled. Yesterday the schools were shut, which is the first time that has happened this winter (poor kids who live near them are usually expected to turn up, even if all the buses are cancelled).

Apparently there's another big storm heading in for Saturday, so all the families heading off for a Spring Break holiday abroad might have problems leaving the country this weekend. They don't have an Easter holiday here, just Good Friday and Easter Monday off, and the (inappropriately named) Spring Break, which is all of next week. So they won't be getting a lot of 'instructional time' this month, one way or another.

Yesterday's storm started off with ice pellets, for a change, but then turned into snow again. It made shovelling it off the path harder, as the ice pellets form a hard, caked layer under the snow. I had a vivid Technicolor dream last night about all the snow melting and spring flowers and vegetables emerging from beneath it. Even my subconscious is yearning for spring! This image from Flickr was the closest I could find to my dream, so I'm putting it here to cheer the blog up a bit and make a change from the never-ending views of ice and snow.

Image from QuintanaRoo on Flickr.