Signs of Spring

Spring has been in fits and starts here.  We've had precious few warm days. Many days of rain and wind. A few days of snow. As one of my co-workers pointed out, we are in the ugly duckling stage of the year-just after the beauty of white winter and just before the greening of spring arrives. Everything is brown and muddy. Well, driving to work today, I saw the first real sign of spring here in the farmland of Northwest Ohio-green winter wheat fields.  I can't explain it if you've never lived around them, but I can tell you this much-one day they are a pale, anemic green, then that afternoon or the next morning-poof!-supersonic green.  Lush, lovely, beautiful green of springtime has rushed into their short spears.  Soon those wheat fields will start growing like mad, bending and waving in the late spring sunshine.  There will be other growing and beautiful things then too-baby corn fields, daffodils, tulips, sweet peas, apple blossoms, and more.  But for now, like beautiful patches covering the bare spots, winter wheat fields are showing us that the warmth is coming.  While the rest of our world is still brown, dormant, and muddy, today the wheat fields are telling me to hold out hope.  Soon enough that spring warmth will creep northward and we too will share in its glory.

Getting greener by the second!