How enchanting to wake up to this white world! By all accounts I should be sick of snow. We’ve had white stuff on the ground for almost four weeks. But we didn’t have what you see above: the kind of snow that transforms, that turns an ordinary, workaday world into something beautiful and new.

But now, at least for a few hours, we do.

A nor’easter slammed through here yesterday on its way up the coast, and it left its mark. A heavy, wet snow bends the bamboo, covers the ground, and blankets the just-blooming tips of the witch hazel tree. Every branch and twig is embossed with a coating of pure white.

When I woke up yesterday the world was gray and ugly. It was mud season — and not unwelcome given the weeks of snowcrete we’d had to shovel and endure. With that in mind today’s weather is definitely a step in the wrong direction.

But I have to give beauty its due. I have to say, now this is snow.