Spring

is starting to peek through.
winter ash skies leak light
anxious buds crack open (if only a hair)
and the first brave flowers creep up from frosty soil.

subtle hints,
but soon
Ohio just won't be able to contain herself.

meet hint one.
Ohio's first Spring Wildflower
the most dauntless of them all

Symplocarpus foetidus
aka Skunk Cabbage.

This strangely beautiful, albeit smelly, flower is the first to usher in Spring each year.
It blooms mid February - warming its flowers by producing and trapping heat within its hooded spadix.
And sitting snug, cozy in their enveloped fairy colonies, these flowers experience renewal long before the frog thaws and emerges from mud soaked sleep, before the pussy willow opens its first velvet bud, before the first underfur is loosed from the foxes coat.
Alone and content, they'll patiently wait for their neighbors to arise, and join them in greeting the equinox sun.