Change of Seasons

Last Wednesday, I first noticed a tinge of green, the color of an unripe apple, here and there on the hills. I had to look twice to see the faint undertone. Now the hills look like watercolors with soft washes of pale green highlighting the faded straw. Each day, the tide of verdure grows stronger, and last year’s grass looks more and more like foam on the cresting wave.

Of winter. This yearly miracle isn’t spring freeing a land locked in ice. It’s winter come to soften a land baked hard by summer.