Betsy and I drove out to Broadmoor today to walk the trails. Unlike in Boston and Cambridge, however, which experienced rain and melt in the past week or so, the walkways out in the far suburbs — especially in the wooded shade — are not cleared of ice. We tried for 20 minutes, then laughed at our slippery efforts and quit.

We left Broadmoor and headed to the Margaret C. Ferguson Greenhouses at Wellesley College, free and open to the public every single day of the year. Perhaps 10 miles at most from the Hub, in the midst of this New England winter it’s another world, indoors. Cacti, succulents, orchids, fish, ferns, flowering trees, forced bulbs, water, and two other women, who, in their own words, were “trying to learn to sketch.” And it seemed to us as though they had found the right place.