7.30 a. m. — Snow-fleas lie in black patches on the ice which froze last night. When I breathe on them I find them all alive and ready to skip. Also the water, when I break the ice, arouses them.
In the winter we so value the semblance of fruit that even the dry black female catkins of the alder are an interesting sight, not to mention, on shoots rising a foot or two above these, the red or mulberry male catkins, in little parcels dangling at a less than right angle with the stems, and the short female ones at their bases.
When I read of the catkins of the alder and the willow, etc., scattering their yellow pollen, they impress me as a vegetation which belongs to the earliest and most innocent dawn of nature; as if they must have preceded other trees in the order of creation, as they precede them annually in their blossoming and leafing.
In the winter we so value the semblance of fruit that even the dry black female catkins of the alder are an interesting sight, not to mention, on shoots rising a foot or two above these, the red or mulberry male catkins, in little parcels dangling at a less than right angle with the stems, and the short female ones at their bases.
When I read of the catkins of the alder and the willow, etc., scattering their yellow pollen, they impress me as a vegetation which belongs to the earliest and most innocent dawn of nature; as if they must have preceded other trees in the order of creation, as they precede them annually in their blossoming and leafing.
For how many aeons did the willow shed its yellow pollen annually before man was created!
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 11, 1854
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 11, 1854
Snow-fleas lie in black patches. See February 2, 1854 ("As it is a melting day, the snow is everywhere peppered with snow-fleas, even twenty rods from the woods, on the pond and meadows."); February 9, 1854 (". There are snow-fleas, quite active, on the half-melted snow on the middle of Walden.") Compare March 10, 1856 ("The past has been a winter of such unmitigated severity that I have not chanced to notice a snow-flea, which are so common in thawing days. "):See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow-flea
They must have preceded other trees in the order of creation, as they precede them annually in their blossoming and leafing. See April 28, 1852 ("This may, perhaps, be nearly the order of the world's creation . . . Thus we have in the spring of the year the spring of the world represented"). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Earliest Flower
February 11. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 11
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality."
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024
tinyurl.com/hdt540211
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