The season is more backward in New Bedford

April 15. 

Wednesday. Leave New Bedford. 

I had been surprised to find the season more backward, i. e. the vegetation, in New Bedford than in Concord. I could find no alder and willow and hazel catkins and no caltha and saxifrage so forward as in Concord. 

The ground was a uniform russet when I left, but when I had come twenty miles it was visibly greener, and the greenness steadily increased all the way to Boston. Coming to Boston, and also to Concord, was like coming from early spring to early summer. It was as if a fortnight at least had elapsed. 

Yet New Bedford is much warmer in the winter. Why is it more backward than Concord? 

• The country is very flat and exposed to southerly winds from the sea, which, to my surprise, were raw and chilly. 
• Also the soil is wet and cold, unlike our warm sandy soil, which is dry the day after a rain storm. 
• Perhaps, as the ground is more bare in the winter, vegetation suffers more after all. 
• One told me that there was more cloudy weather than here. 
• It seemed to me that there was a deficiency of warm hollows and sheltered places behind hills and woods, which abound with us. 

On such cliffs as they have facing the south, vegetation was much more backward than in like positions with us, apparently owing to sea-turns and chilly south winds.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 15, 1857