May 12, 2026

Good morning!

It’s Tuesday, and having confirmed the fate of our tulips, we’ve laced up our shoes and made our way down the long dirt road to see how that part of this world fared while we were gone.

Immediately, we noticed the brilliant green, freshly unfurled skunk cabbage leaves. Not a true cabbage at all, the Symplocarpus foetidus has the nifty ability to generate heat—melting surrounding snow or ice so that it can bloom while everything else is still frozen. (The process is called thermogenesis, if you’re looking for a new vocabulary word.)

The skunk cabbage gets its name from the plant’s rather pungent perfume some might call skunky or even putrid. But to early spring pollinators catching their first whiff after a long winter, it’s irresistible—and that’s what counts.

“See those green cabbage buds lifting the dry leaves in that watery and muddy place. There is no can’t nor cant to them. They see over the brow of winter’s hill. They see another summer ahead.”

—Henry David Thoreau

Onwards,

Clara