So much light and life in the landscape at this date.

May 18.

The landscape is most beautiful looking towards the sun (in the orchard on Fair Haven) at four.

First, there is this green slope on which I sit, looking down between the rows of apple trees just being clothed with tender green, - sometimes underneath them to the sparkling water, or over through them, or seeing them against the sky.

Secondly, the outline of this bank or hill is drawn against the water far below; the river still high, a beautifully bright sheen on the water there, a fine sparkling shimmer in front, owing to the remarkable clearness of the atmosphere (clarified by the May storm?).

Thirdly, on either side of the wood beyond the river are patches of bright, tender, yellowish, velvety green grass in meadows and on hillsides. Those great fields of green affect me as did those early green blades by the Corner Spring -like a fire flaming up from the earth. 

Fourthly, the forest, the dark-green pines, wonderfully distinct, near and erect, with their distinct dark stems, spiring tops, regularly disposed branches, and silvery light on their needles . They seem to wear an aspect as much fresher and livelier as the other trees, - though their growth can hardly be perceptible yet, - as if they had been washed by the rains and the air.

They are now being invested with the light, sunny, yellowish-green of the deciduous trees. This tender foliage, putting so much light and life into the landscape, is the remarkable feature at this date. The week when the deciduous trees are generally and conspicuously expanding their leaves.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 18, 1852

This tender foliage, putting so much light and life into the landscape . . .See May 18, 1851("The landscape has a new life and light infused into it. And to the eye the forest presents the tenderest green.")