A long walk this weekend made me catch my breath. Everywhere I looked were green shoots, tremulous buds. High up in the woods, a pinkish haze of near-budding boughs. Every year I notice this: that for trees, spring starts at the top. Reckoned by calendar and temperature it is still winter, but the lengthening days, the bold plants reasserting themselves, the warmth in the air — all these speak to a shoulder season of green promise and yellow possibility. A season in its own right, a season of potential — almost-spring.