I was surprised by skunk cabbage today.  I hadn't even been looking for it because I usually take pictures of skunk cabbage in March or April.  I just looked up on the hillside to see what was leafing out, and the flash of yellow caught my eye.  Even standing this close to it, I couldn't smell the skunk cabbage, possibly because of the strong wind, my cold, or both. 

Other plants leafing out included snowberry, huckleberry, osoberry, blackberry, raspberry, thimbleberry, elderberry, and ocean spray.  I will have to get out there with my good camera some time in the next week or so, to catch that fresh growth.  I have said and will continue to say that the forest is just as beautiful at all the other times of year when no flowers bloom, but the arrival of flowers is a delight just as much as the arrival of snow or fall color.  From the standpoint of photography, the flower gives you something to focus on.  Endless bare branches make a nice pattern, but the eye wanders.  Flowers work on us for the same reasons they perform their functions in the ecosystem: they stand out.  In all the six acres of the forest right now, you would only find this bright yellow on the few blooming swamp lanterns.  Like lanterns, they seem to light up the swampy, dark forest. 

In addition to the swamp lantern, I found these odd little seedlings.  Each stalk is as thin as fishing line.  The seed husk sits on top of most of the stalks, each husk about the size of the tip of a ball point pen.  Some of the husks have fallen off to reveal three little things that might be the start of leaves.  I've never seen anything like it.  They could be from outer space. 

The wind roared through the tops of the trees, but down inside the forest, the wind was reduced to random little breezes that would barely move a leaf.  The heavy waves came around the bulkheads to the south coasting on the energy they had.  The whitecaps broke farther out, and the waves lost steam as they hit the beach at ELP. 

I grabbed five stones without looking, just feeling for stones the appropriate size.  Then I rolled them around my cupped hands and let one fall out.  The red one was the winner of the daily lottery, and became the day's stone.