Two weekends ago Winter Storm Nemo moved its way across the Northeast and brought Boston to almost a complete standstill. Evan and I purchased a lurid green plastic sled from a local hardware store and careered down our hill, whilst those with cars seemed intent on defying the traffic ban, digging and shovelling with fury and dedication.

We watched as people snowshoed down the main road, pulling little ones behind them in carts and on trays. Good-natured folk in snow plows waited for kids to have their fun before clearing the streets, and we witnessed a team of half a dozen thirty-something guys nudge themselves slowly down a snowy embankment in a superhero-themed cardboard snowmobile. For those few days as we passed our neighbours in the narrow channels carved for us by machines, we said hello, smiling at the beauty and inconvenience mother nature had wrought on us.

In this final week of February, people's good humour appears stretched thin, and the prospect of further snowfall fills us with a sense of dread. The pristine roadside miniature mountains, if not covered in a film of black grit, have receded into odd little turrets and spires, almost organic in the way the cycle of melting and refreezing has shaped them.

**Photos taken in Bussey Brook Meadow and Arnold Arboretum.