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| April 6, 2018 |
A moist, foggy, and very slightly drizzly morning.
It has been pretty foggy for several mornings. This makes the banks look suddenly greener, apparently making the green blades more prominent and more vividly green than before, prevailing over the withered ones.
P. M. – Ride to Lee’s Cliff and to Second Division Brook.
It begins to grow cold about noon, after a week or more of generally warm and pleasant weather.
They with whom I talk do not remember when the river was so low at this season. The top of the bathing-rock, above the island in the Main Branch, was more than a foot out of water on the 3d, and the river has been falling since.
On examining the buds of the elm at Helianthus Bank, I find it is not the slippery elm, and therefore I know but one.
At Lee's Cliff I find no saxifrage in bloom above the rock, on account of the ground having been so exposed the past exceedingly mild winter, and no Ranunculus fascicularis anywhere there, but on a few small warm shelves under the rocks the saxifrage makes already a pretty white edging along the edge of the grass sod [?] on the rocks; has got up three or four inches, and may have been out four or five days.
I also notice one columbine, which may bloom in a week if it is pleasant weather.
The Ulmus Americana is apparently just out here, or possibly yesterday. The U. fulva not yet, of course. The large rusty blossom-buds of the last have been extensively eaten and mutilated, probably by birds, leaving on the branches which I examine mostly mere shells.
I see, in [one] or two places in low ground, elder started half an inch, before any other shrub or tree. The Turritis stricta is four to six inches high.
No mouse-ear there yet.
I hear hylas in full blast 2.30 P. M.
It is remarkable how much herbaceous and shrubby plants, some which are decidedly evergreen, have suffered the past very mild but open winter on account of the ground being bare. Accordingly the saxifrage and crowfoot are so backward, notwithstanding the warmth of the last ten days. Perhaps they want more moisture, too. The asplenium ferns of both species are very generally perfectly withered and shrivelled, and in exposed places on hills the checkerberry has not proved an evergreen, but is completely withered and a dead-leaf color. I do not remember when it has suffered so much. Such plants require to be covered with snow to protect them.
At Second Division, the Caltha palustris, half a dozen well out. The earliest may have been a day or two.
The frost is but just coming out in cold wood-paths on the north sides of hills, which makes it very muddy, there only.
Returned by the Dugan Desert and stopped at the mill there to get the aspen flowers. The very earliest aspens, such as grow in warm exposures on the south sides of hills or woods, have begun to be effete. Others are not yet out.
Talked a moment with two little Irish (?) boys, eight or ten years old, that were playing in the brook by the mill. Saw one catch a minnow. I asked him if he used a hook. He said no, it was a “dully-chunk,” or some such word. “Dully what?” [I] asked. “Yes, dully,” said he, and he would not venture to repeat the whole word again. It was a small horsehair slip noose at the end of a willow stick four feet long. The horsehair was twisted two or three together. He passed this over the fish slowly and then jerked him out, the noose slipping and holding him. It seems they are sometimes made with wire to catch trout. I asked him to let me see the fish he had caught. It was a little pickerel five inches long, and appeared to me strange, being transversely barred, and reminded me of the Wrentham pond pickerel; but I could not re member surely whether this was the rule or the exception; but when I got home I found that this was the one which Storer does not name nor describe, but only had heard of. Is it not the brook pickerel? Asking what other fish he had caught, he said a pike. “That,” said I, “is a large pickerel.” He said it had “a long, long neb like a duck’s bill.”
It rapidly grows cold and blustering.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal April 6, 1858
On a few small warm shelves under the rocks the saxifrage may have been out four or five days. See April 7, 1855 ("The saxifrage on the rocks will apparently open in two days; it shows some white. "); April 10, 1855("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 also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Saxifrage in Spring (Saxifraga vernalis).
At Second Division, the Caltha palustris, half a dozen well out. See March 30, 1856 ("[I]n this warm recess at the head of the meadow, though the rest of the meadow is covered with snow a foot or more in depth, I am surprised to see . . . the Caltha palustris bud, which shows yellowish; and the golden saxifrage, green and abundant")
The very earliest aspens have begun to be effete. Others are not yet out. See April 9, 1856 ("Early aspen catkins have curved downward an inch, and began to shed pollen apparently yesterday.”). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Aspens
This was the one which Storer does not name nor describe, but only had heard of. Is it not the brook pickerel? See May 27, 1858 ("De Kay describes the Esox fasciatus, which is apparently mine of May 11th."); February 23, 1859 ("I see, just caught in the pond, a brook pickerel which, though it has no transverse bars, but a much finer and slighter reticulation than the common, is very distinct from it in the length and form of the snout. This is much shorter and broader as you look down on it.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel
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| April 6, 2018 |
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