The Green Veil
T his "middle ground" time of year between winter and spring can be one of the most fascinating and frustrating: it's so neat to watch the shadow of new life preparing to burst on the scene, and frustrating that it's not quite here yet. My mama has a term for that shadow of coming that I absolutely love: "the green veil." You can see the veil get greener as the trees' buds swell into leaves, the dead grass starts to give way to the new shoots peeking just above the surface, and as the crops take root in the newly-tilled fields. That last part was a sight I didn't grow up with, but treasure more and more as I get older. We moved to a rural area from Surburbia, USA in the late spring of 2011, and missed the phenomenon by several weeks. Actually, we landed on the old family dairy farm smack in the middle of tornado season, surrounded by the bugs and stifling humidity of early May. If I remember correctly, the soybean crop across the highway was already