Breaking the Sabbath.

April 26.

April 26, 2018

Worm-piles about the door-step this morning; how long? 

The white cedar gathered the 23d does not shed pollen in house till to-day, and I doubt if it will in swamp before to-morrow.

Monroe’s larch will, apparently, by day after to-morrow. 

The white birch at Clamshell, which I tapped long ago, still runs and is partly covered with a pink froth. Is not this the only birch which shows this colored froth, as its sap is the most tinged and most inclined to ferment? —a sort of mother which is left on the bark and in the hole. 

Looked over hastily the first two hundred lines of Lucretius, but was struck only with the lines:  

 “But the custom of our ancestors also permitted these things on holidays: to pound wheat, cut torches, make candles, cultivate a hired vineyard, clear out and purge fish-ponds, ponds, and old ditches, mow grass ground a second time, spread dung, store up hay on scaffolds, gather the fruit of a hired olive yard, spread apples, pears, and figs, make cheese, bring home trees for the sake of planting on our shoulders or on a pack mule, but not with one harnessed to a cart, nor to plant them when brought home, nor to open the ground, nor prune a tree, not even to attend to sowing seed, unless you have first sacrificed a puppy.” 

This reminds me of my bringing home an apple tree on my shoulder one Sunday and meeting the stream of meeting-goers, who seemed greatly outraged; but they did not know whether I set it out or not that day, or but that I sacrificed a puppy if I did.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 26, 1856

The white cedar gathered the 23d does not shed pollen in house till to-day, and I doubt if it will in swamp before to-morrow. See April 23, 1856 ("Up Assabet to white cedars. . . . The white cedar swamp consists of hummocks, now surrounded by water, where you go jumping from one to another. The fans are now dotted with the minute reddish staminate flowers, ready to open.");  see also note to April 26, 1857 ("The white cedar is apparently just out. The higher up the tree, the earlier. ")