May 5
May 3d and 4th, it rained again, especially hard the night of the 4th, and the river is now very high, far higher than in any other freshet this year; will reach its height probably tomorrow.
Hear what I should call the twitter and mew of a goldfinch and see the bird go over with ricochet flight.
The oak leaves apparently hang on till the buds fairly expand.
Thalictrum anemonoides by Brister's Spring on hillside.
 |
| False Hellebore. April 28, 2019 |
Some skunk-cabbage leaves are now eight or nine inches wide near there. These and the hellebore make far the greatest show of any herbs yet.
The peculiarly beautiful clean and tender green of the grass there!
May 5, 2022
Green herbs of all kinds, — tansy, buttercups, etc., etc., etc., now make more or less show. Put this with the grassy season's beginning.
Have not observed a tree sparrow for four or five days.
The Emerson children found blue and white violets May 1st at Hubbard's Close, probably Viola ovata and blanda; but I have not been able to find any yet.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 5, 1854
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 5, 1854
The river is now very high, far higher than in any other freshet this year; will reach its height probably tomorrow. See May 7, 1854 ("Our principal rain this spring was April 28th, 29th, and 30th, and again, May 3d and 4th . . . The causeways being flooded, I have to think before I set out on my walk how I shall get back across the river.")
Skunk-cabbage leaves . . .a nd the hellebore make far the greatest show of any herbs yet. See note to April 26, 1860 ("The hellebore now makes a great garden of green under the alders and maples there, five or six rods long and a foot or more high.It grows thus before these trees have begun to leaf, while their numerous stems serve only to break the wind but not to keep out the sun. It is the greatest growth, the most massive, of any plant's; now ahead of the cabbage. Before the earliest tree has begun to leaf it makes conspicuous green patches a foot high."). See allso A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Skunk Cabbage
Green herbs of all kinds . . . now make more or less show. See May 6, 1860 ("As the leaves are putting forth on the trees, so now a great many herbaceous plants are springing up in the woods and fields.")
The grassy season's beginning. See April 9, 1854 ("As yet the landscape generally wears its November russet."); April 14, 1854 ("There is a general tinge of green now discernible through the russet on the bared meadows and the hills, the green blades just peeping forth amid the withered ones"); April 23, 1854 ("How thickly the green blades are starting up amid the russet! The tinge of green is gradually increasing in the face of the russet earth."); April 28, 1854 ("Perhaps the greenness of the landscape may be said to begin fairly now . . . during the last half of April the earth acquires a distinct tinge of green, which finally prevails over the russet."); May 26, 1854 (" The season of grass, now everywhere green and luxuriant.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Brown Season
The Emerson children found blue and white violets May 1st at Hubbard's Close, probably Viola ovata and blanda; but I have not been able to find any yet. See April 23, 1858 ("Saw a Viola blanda in a girl's hand."); April 19, 1858 (Viola ovata . . . Edith Emerson found them there yesterday"); May 7, 1852 ("That little early violet close to the ground in dry fields and hillsides, which only children's eyes detect"); February 5, 1852 ("I suspect that the child plucks its first flower with an insight into its beauty and significance which the subsequent botanist never retains.")
May 5. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 5
The peculiarly
beautiful clean and tender
green of the grass there!
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The grassy season's beginning
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
https://tinyurl.com/hdt-540505
No comments:
Post a Comment