Willow catkins show red and yellowish pushed out half an inch or more.

February 22

I measured the thickness of the frozen ground at the deep cut on the new Bedford road, about half-way up the hill. They dig under the frozen surface and then crack it off with iron wedges, with much labor, in pieces from three to six feet square. It was eighteen inches thick and more there thicker higher up, not so thick lower down the hill. 

Saw in Sleepy Hollow a small hickory stump, about six inches in diameter and six inches high, so completely, regularly, and beautifully covered by that winkle-like fungus in concentric circles and successive layers that the core was concealed and you would have taken it for some cabbage-like plant. This was the way the wound was healed. The cut surface of the stump was completely and thickly covered. 

Our neighbor Wetherbee was J. Moore's companion when he took that great weight of pickerel this winter. He says it was fifty-six pounds in Flint's, in one day, and that four of them weighed eighteen pounds and seven ounces. 

February 22, 2020

My alder catkins in the pitcher have shed their pollen for a day or two, and the willow catkins have pushed out half an inch or more and show red and yellowish.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 22, 1854

The frozen ground at the deep cut on the new Bedford road. See January 9, 1856 ("In passing through the deep cut on the new Bedford road, I saw that a little sand, which was pretty coarse, almost gravel, had fallen from the bank, and was blown over the snow, here and there.")

That winkle-like fungus in concentric circles and successive layers. See October 10, 1858 ("The simplest and most lumpish fungus has a peculiar interest to us, compared with a mere mass of earth, because it is so obviously organic and related to ourselves, however mute . . . T]he humblest fungus betrays a life akin to my own. It is a successful poem in its kind.")

Four of them weighed eighteen pounds and seven ounces. See December 29, 1858 ("Heavy Haynes was fishing a quarter of a mile this side of Hubbard’s Bridge. He had caught a pickerel, which the man who weighed it told me (he was apparently a brother of William Wheeler’s, and I saw the fish at the house where it was) weighed four pounds and three ounces. It was twenty-six inches long."); February 29, 1856 ("Minott told me this afternoon of his catching a pickerel in the Mill Brook once . . . which weighed four pounds . . . and I willingly listen to the stories he has told me half a dozen times already.”); May 4, 1858 (" A man told him that he saw a trout weighing about a pound and a half darting at a pickerel, and every time he darted he took a bit off a fin, and at last the man walked in and caught the pickerel, and it weighed five pounds"); April 3, 1859 ("I hear that Peter Hutchinson hooked a monstrous pickerel at the Holt last winter. It was so large that he could not get his head through the hole, and so they cut another hole close by, and then a narrow channel from that to the first to pass the line through, but then, when they came to pull on the line, the pickerel gave a violent jerk and escaped. Peter thinks that he must have weighed ten pounds.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Pickerel

My alder catkins in the pitcher have shed their pollen for a day or two.  See March 6, 1853 ("Last Sunday I plucked some alder twigs, some aspen, and some swamp willow, and put them in water in a warm room, Immediately the alder catkins were relaxed and began to lengthen and open, and by the second day to drop their pollen"); March 10, 1853 ("The alder's catkins — the earliest of them — are very plainly expanding, or, rather, the scales are loose and separated, and the whole catkin relaxed."); March 22, 1853 ("The very earliest alder is in bloom and sheds its pollen. I detect a few catkins at a distance by their distinct yellowish color. This the first native flower")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Earliest Flower

The willow catkins have pushed out half an inch or more and show red and yellowish. See February 19, 1857 ("Some willow catkins have crept a quarter of an inch from under their scales and look very red, probably on account of the warm weather.");  March 21, 1855 ("Early willow and aspen catkins are very conspicuous now . . . It would be well to observe them once a fortnight through the winter. It is the first decided growth I have noticed, and is probably a month old.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding

Willow catkins show

red and yellowish pushed out

half an inch or more.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Willow catkins show

red and yellowish 

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 © 2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-540222

Near Loring pond four houses and families now gone.

June 4

Surveying for J. Hosmer. Very warm.

While running a line on the west edge of Loring’s Pond, south of the brook, found, on a hummock in the open swamp, in the midst of bushes, at the foot of a pitch pine, a nest about ten inches over, made of dry sedge and moss. 

I think it must have been a duck’s nest. This pond and its islets, half flooded and inaccessible, afford excellent places. 

Anthony Wright says that he used to get slippery elm bark from a place southwest of Wetherbee’s Mill, about ten rods south of the brook. 

He says there was once a house at head of hollow next beyond Clamshell. 

He pointed out the site of “Perch” Hosmer’s house in the small field south of road this side of Cozzens’s; all smooth now. Dr. Heywood worked over him a fortnight, while the perch was dissolving in his throat. He got little compassion generally, and the nickname “Perch” into the bargain. Think of going to sleep for fourteen nights with a perch, his fins set and his scales (!), dissolving in your throat! ! What dreams! What waking thoughts! 

Also showed where one Shaw, whom he could just remember, used to live, in the low field north of Dennis’s barn, and also another family in another house by him.

English hawthorn from Poplar Hill blossoms in house.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 4, 1856

[A duck's nest] found, on a hummock in the open swamp, in the midst of bushes, at the foot of a pitch pine. See June 23, 1857 ("Found a black duck's nest Sunday before the last, i. e. the 14th, with perhaps a dozen eggs in it, a mere hollow on the top of a tussock, four or five feet within a clump of bushes forming an islet . . . in Hubbard's great meadow.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the American Black Duck

Anthony Wright says that he used to get slippery elm bark from a place southwest of Wetherbee’s Mill. See June 6, 1853 ("A slippery elm (Ulmus fulva) on Lee's Cliff, – red elm . . . It has large, rough leaves and straggling branches – a rather small, much-spreading tree, with an appearance between the common elm and iron-wood."); July 17, 1857 (" To Lee's Cliff. The young leaves of the slippery elm are a yellowish green and large, and the branches recurved or drooping."); April 6, 1851 ("On examining the buds of the elm at Helianthus Bank, I find it is not the slippery elm, and therefore I know but one.")

“Perch” Hosmer. See November 18, 1851("Deacon Brown told me to-day of a tall, raw-boned fellow by the name of Hosmer who used to help draw the seine behind the Jones house, who once, when he had hauled it without getting a single shad, held up a little perch in sport above his face, to show what he had got. At that moment the perch wiggled and dropped right down his throat head foremost, and nearly suffocated him; and it was only after considerable time, during which the man suffered much, that he was extracted or forced down. He was in a worse predicament than a fish hawk would have been.”)

English hawthorn from Poplar Hill blossoms in house. See June 2, 1856 ("English hawthorn will open apparently in two days.")

A duck's nest found on

a hummock in the swamp, made

of dry sedge and moss.

Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A nest of dry sedge and moss

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 ©  2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560604

To Wetherbee's old oak lot.

November 2

November 2. 

As several days past, it has been cloudy and misty in the morning fairer and warmer, if not Indian summer, in the afternoon; yet the mist lingers in drops on the cobwebs and grass until night.

Wetherbee's oak wood is now bare and the leaves just fairly fallen. This is probably one of those woods, like Ebby Hubbard's, which was never cut off but only cut out of. It is said that Wetherbee left them for the sake of mast for pigeons. The trees are unusually large and old. Indeed, I doubt if there is another here abouts of oaks as large.

The trees would average probably between a hundred and fifty and two hundred years. Such a wood has got to be very rare in this neighborhood. 

Such a wood, at the same time that it suggests antiquity, imparts an unusual dignity to the earth. I think it would be worth the while to introduce a school of children to such a grove, that they may get an idea of the primitive oaks before they are all gone, instead of hiring botanists to lecture to them when it is too late.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 2, 1860

Wetherbee's oak wood ...I doubt if there is another here abouts of oaks as large. See October 20, 1860 ("I examine Ebby Hubbard's old oak and pine wood. The trees may be a hundred years old."); November 5, 1860 ("Blood's oak lot. . . .This wood is a hundred to a hundred and sixty years old."); November 10, 1860 ("Inches Wood . . .as fine an oak wood as there is in New England,").

One of those woods, like Ebby Hubbard's, which was never cut off . . . See December 3, 1855 ("I see one or two more large oaks in E. Hubbard’s wood lying high on stumps, waiting for snow to be removed. I miss them as surely and with the same feeling that I do the old inhabitants out of the village street.")