أَعْجَبَنِي إِنْبَاتُ الرَّبِيعِ
The springtime's causing growth pleased me.
This is not a simple finite verb with a nominative subject. It uses inbāt (إنبات), a verbal noun, in a genitive or possessive-type construction with spring. Yet the idea of producing growth is still linked to the season.
The source's treatment of predicative, genitive, and causative relations prevents an unduly narrow rule. The rhetorical question concerns how an action-meaning is assigned, whatever the grammatical form conveying the relation.