Winter's last gasp

We had 20 centimetres of snow in Vancouver on Friday, with winds reminding me of the prairie blizzards of my youth. Snow swooped in white sheets across the windows, and on the roads, there was the usual traffic mayhem. A young man in a snowtire-free BMW skidded down the hill on our street, bouncing off  our car and our neighbour's, damaging all three. The resulting insurance claims were among thousands reported for the afternoon.

 On Saturday, the temperature rose and the sun shone -- time for photos to record what we hope is the last snowfall of the winter.

John couldn't resist taking a photo of a big snowball -- the base of a huge never-completed snowman perhaps? -- in a nearby park. I wondered if it could also serve as a metaphor for the big, seemingly immovable essay that I'm working on.

Birdbath boy in my back yard looks a little annoyed to find himself up to his shoulders in snow -- again.

The pillow of snow on the other birdbath gives a sense of the amount that fell on Friday.

My poor winter pansies look defeated under their snow layer. Every time they've tried to bloom this winter, they've been hit by severe cold, floods of rain or a blast of snow. Luckily, they usually recover and bloom well into the spring.