Early arbutus, Lantern Hill

It's been raining off and on all morning, but right after lunch, the precipitation lightened to a minor drizzle and I hazarded a run to the dump. Afterwards, my reward is often a trek up nearby Lantern Hill, and though I had misgivings about the wisdom of hiking the slippery trail, I really needed the exercise, so, waterproof Fuji in hand, I headed up the slope. I did, of course, have an agenda besides a quick workout—I wanted to see if the recent stretch of warmer weather had brought a wildflower found on the rockier parts of the hill to bloom. In places that a diminutive beauty called the Trailing Arbutus finds amenable to growth, the member of the Heath family is relatively abundant. But those areas are relatively rare, so you have to pick your spots to locate the low-growing, leathery-leaved plants. A back trail up Lantern Hill has the right conditions for Epigaea repens, and even though the hiking would be tricky on the wet rocks, I took that route... gingerly. Turns out I was a little early for the main event, but I did get a preview, which made any walking risk more than worth it.