The Country Mice

So many harbingers of spring these days.

I saw a pair of robins near the front gate of our yard. One dark-breasted, one light — I’ll have to watch for signs of a nest.

A toad hopped across the asphalt drive two nights ago. The sky was too dark for identification but I felt so happy to think an amphibian still found the lands and forests clean enough for its survival. There are a few little ponds and creeks around our place — I wonder if there will be eggs?

The cherry blossoms, the forsythia, the daffodils, salmonberry blossoms, alder catkins… and…

… the skunk cabbage.

This lush and leafy vegetation is one of the first plants to bloom in the spring and grows in swamps and marshy areas. Given the abundance of rainfall the last number of months, small wonder they pop up, seemingly overnight, all over the island.

I think they’re kind of attractive, in fact. I like how large and prehistoric they look. I don’t detect much of an odour unless I’m the midst of a large number of them, but the scent is supposed to attract pollinators.

But alas, political correctness has even arrived in the land of the swamp as I understand the proper appellation for these productive plants is no longer skunk cabbage but swamp lantern.

Ever so much better.

All the little elves and gnomes, guided between the gnarled trees and weathers rocky outcrops, all the while holding aloft the blazing yellow blossom of the skunk cabbage swamp lantern.

Whatever it’s called I find I’m paying more attention this year.

It’s all beauty and it’s all so transient, whatever the moniker!