Another fine clear morning with, as usual, little frost.
6 A. M. — To river.
I see afar more than one hundred rods distant, sailing on Hubbard’s meadow, on the smooth water in the morning sun, conspicuous, two male sheldrakes and apparently one female. They glide along, a rod or two apart in shallow water, alternately passing one another and from time to time plunging their heads in the water, but the female (whom only the glass reveals) almost alone diving. I think I saw one male drive the other back. One male with the female kept nearly together, a rod or two ahead of the other.
Therien says James Baker sold his wood-lot south of Fair Haven Pond, about twenty-five acres, chiefly white pine, for one hundred and twenty dollars an acre, and that there was one hemlock whose top and branches alone yielded two and a half cords.
The buds of the earliest gooseberry in garden now first begin to show a little green on a close inspection.
l P. M. — To Fair Haven Pond by boat.
A strong south wind and overcast. There is the slightest perceptible green on the hill now. No doubt in a rain it would be pretty obvious.
Saw a tolerably fresh sucker floating. Have seen two halves two days before which looked very ancient, as if they had died in the winter. There are three or four small scallops in the dorsal fin.
Another dead muskrat, equally old with the two others I have seen this spring,—as if they had died at the time of the great freshet in February.
At Lee’s the early sedge; one only sheds pollen. The saxifrage there to-morrow; one flower is partly expanded.
I measure the hemlock mentioned above. The circumference at the butt, a foot from the ground. was 9 10/12 feet, at ten feet from the ground 8 10/12, at the small end, where it was cut off, 1 1/2 feet. Length, 40 feet. Its diameter diminished very regularly the first twenty-five feet.
As for the early sedge, who would think of looking for a flower of any kind in those dry tufts whose withered blades almost entirely conceal the springing green ones? I patiently examined one tuft after another, higher and higher up the rocky hill, till at last I found one little yellow spike low in the grass which shed its pollen on my finger.
As for the saxifrage, when I had given it up for to-day, having, after a long search in the warmest clefts and recesses, found only three or four buds which showed some white, I at length, on a still warmer shelf, found one flower partly expanded, and its common peduncle had shot up an inch.
These few earliest flowers in these situations have the same sort of interest with the arctic flora, for they are remote and unobserved and often surrounded with snow, and most have not begun to think of flowers yet.
Early on the morning of the 8th I paddled up the' Assabet looking for the first flowers of the white maple and alder. I held on to the low curving twigs of the maple where the stream ran swiftly, the round clusters of its bursting flower-buds spotting the sky above me, and on a close inspection found a few which (as I have said) must have blossomed the day before.
I also paddled slowly along the riverside looking closely at the alder catkins and shaking the most loose, till at length I came to a bush which had been weighed down by the ice and whose stem curved downward, passing through the water. and on this was one looser and more yellowish catkin, which, as I have said, on a close examination showed some effete anthers near the peduncle.
The morning of the 6th, when I found the skunk cabbage out, it was so cold I suffered from numbed fingers, having left my gloves behind. Since April came in, however, you have needed gloves only in the morning.
Under some high bare bank sloping to the south on the edge of a meadow, where many springs, issuing from the bank, melt the snow early, — there you find the first skunk-cabbage in bloom.
I see much yellow lily root afloat, which the muskrats have dug up and nibbled.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 10, 1855
Another dead muskrat, equally old with the two others I have seen this spring,—as if they had died at the time of the great freshet in February. See April 5, 1855 (" There is a strong muskrat scent from many a shore. See a muskrat floating, which may have been drowned when the river was so high in midwinter, —for this is the second I have seen, —with the rabbit.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash
These few earliest flowers . . . are remote and unobserved and often surrounded with snow, and most have not begun to think of flowers yet. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Earliest Flower
At Lee’s the early sedge; one only sheds pollen. See April 7, 1854 ("On the Cliff I find, after long and careful search, one sedge above the rocks, low amid the withered blades of last year, out, its little yellow beard amid the dry blades and few green ones, — the first herbaceous flowering I have detected. . . . It must have been so first either on the 5th or 6th.”)
As for the saxifrage, when I had given it up for to-day, having, after a long search in the warmest clefts and recesses, found only three or four buds which showed some white, I at length, on a still warmer shelf, found one flower partly expanded, and its common peduncle had shot up an inch . See
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