The first tinge of green.

March 17.

A remarkably warm day for the season; too warm while surveying without my great coat; almost like May heats. 

The grass is slightly greened on south bank-sides, — on the south side of the house.   The first tinge of green appears to be due to moisture more than to direct heat. It is not on bare dry banks, but in hollows where the snow melts last that it is most conspicuous. 

Fair Haven is open for half a dozen rods about the shores. If this weather holds, it will be entirely open in a day or two.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 17, 1854

The grass is slightly greened on south bank-sides. See March 17, 1857 ("No mortal is alert enough to be present at the first dawn of the spring, but he will presently discover some evidence that vegetation had awaked some days at least before."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: greening grasses and sedges

Fair Haven is open for half a dozen rods about the shores. . . . See March 18, 1853 ("The ice in Fair Haven is more than half melted, and now the woods beyond the pond, reflected in its serene water where there has been opaque ice so long, affect me as they perhaps will not again this year. “); March 22, 1854 ("Fair Haven still covered and frozen anew in part.”)