I noticed it ten days ago on the drive to Kentucky. I was heading west on I-64, about an hour outside Lexington, when something caught my eye. It was the pasture to my right. It was as if someone had taken a green crayon (“spring green” by Crayola) and scribbled furiously on the grass.

One minute it was brown and dull, winter’s leftover. The next it was verdant and bright, an advertisement for spring.

Nothing else had changed; the highway was still gray and the sky was still blue. But I had crossed some sort of line. The stealthy greening that had been happening for weeks — some of that time beneath the snow — had suddenly revealed itself.

 Meteorological spring had long since passed, but this was the real thing.