How chestnuts are planted and new forests raised

December 31. 

I was this afternoon gathering chestnuts at Saw Mill Brook. 

I have within a few weeks spent some hours thus, scraping away the leaves with my hands and feet over some square rods, and have at least learned how chestnuts are planted and new forests raised. 
First fall the chestnuts with the severe frosts, the greater part of them at least, and then, at length, the rains and winds bring down the leaves which cover them with a thick coat. 

I have wondered sometimes how the nuts got planted which merely fell on to the surface of the earth, but already I find the nuts of the present year partially mixed with the mould, as it were, under the decaying and mouldy leaves, where is all the moisture and manure they want. A large proportion of this year's nuts are now covered loosely an inch deep under mouldy leaves, though they are themselves sound, and are moreover concealed from squirrels thus. 

It is a sort of frozen rain this afternoon, which does not wet one, but makes the still bare ground slippery with a coating of ice, and stiffens your umbrella so that it cannot be shut. Will not the trees look finely in the morning?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 31, 1852

Gathering chestnuts at Saw Mill Brook.   See December 27, 1852 ("I was this afternoon gathering chestnuts at Saw Mill Brook. I have within a few weeks spent some hours thus, scraping away the leaves with my hands and feet over some square rods, and have at least learned how chestnuts are planted and new forests raised."); See also August 14, 1856 ("Just beyond the last large (two-stemmed) chestnut at Saw Mill Brook”); November 28, 1856 ("To chestnut wood by Turnpike, to see if I could find my comb, probably lost out of my pocket when I climbed and shook a chestnut tree more than a month ago. Unexpectedly find many chestnuts in the burs which have fallen some time ago. Many are spoiled, but the rest,. . . are softer and sweeter than a month ago, very agreeable to my palate"); December 12, 1856 (“At the wall between Saw Mill Brook Falls and Red Choke-berry Path, . . see where they [squirrels] have dug the burs out of the snow, and then sat on a rock or the wall and gnawed them in pieces. I, too, dig many burs out of the snow with my foot”);  December 22, 1859 ("I see in the chestnut woods near Flint's Pond where squirrels have collected the small chestnut burs left the trunks on the snow."); January 10, 1853 ("Went a-chestnutting this afternoon to Smith's wood-lot near the Turnpike. Carried four ladies. I raked. We got six and a half quarts"); January 25, 1853 ("I still pick chestnuts.")


How chestnuts are planted and new forests raised. See October 22, 1857 ("Nature drops it on the rustling leaves, a done nut, prepared to begin a chestnut's course again.”)

Scraping away the leaves with my hands and feet over some square rods. See October 24, 1857 (“I get a couple of quarts of chestnuts by patiently brushing the thick beds of leaves aside with my hand in successive concentric circles till I reach the trunk . . .It is best to reduce it to a system.”)

A sort of frozen rain this afternoon stiffens your umbrella so that it cannot be shut. See
December 6, 1858 (“Yesterday it froze as it fell on my umbrella, converting the cotton cloth into a thick stiff glazed sort of oilcloth, so that it was impossible to shut it.”). See also See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The weather, New Year's Eve

Mother-o'-pearl tints and rainbow flocks in the western sky.

January 22. 

Saw, January 20th, some tree sparrows in the yard. 

Once or twice of late I have seen the mother-o'-pearl tints and rainbow flocks in the western sky. The usual time is when the air is clear and pretty cool, about an hour before sundown. 

Yesterday I saw a very permanent specimen, like a long knife-handle of mother-of-pearl, very pale with an interior blue with the rosaceous tinges. Methinks the summer sky never exhibits this so finely. 

When I was at C.'s the other evening, he punched his cat with the poker because she purred too loud for him. 

R. Rice says he saw a white owl two or three weeks since. 

Harris told me on the 19th that he had never found the snow-flea. 

No second snow-storm in the winter can be so fair and interesting as the first. 

Last night was very windy, and to-day I see the dry oak leaves collected in thick beds in the little hollows of the snow-crust. These later falls of the leaf.

A fine freezing rain on the night of the 19th produced a hard crust on the snow, which was but three inches deep and would not bear.

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

Mother-o'-pearl tints in the western sky about an hour before sundown. . . .Methinks the summer sky never exhibits this so finely. See January 22, 1852 ("One mother-o'-pearl tint is common to the winter sky half an hour before sundown."); See also December 18, 1852("Loring's Pond beautifully froze . . . it was so exquisitely polished that the sky and scudding dun-colored clouds, with mother-o'-pearl tints, were reflected in it as in the calmest water."); December 26, 1855 ("The sun is gone before five. Just before I looked for rainbow flocks in the west, but saw none,"); December 27, 1853 ("I look far, but see no rainbow flocks in the sky."); December 30, 1855 ("Looking up over the top of the hill now, southwest, at 3.30 P.M., I see a few mother-o’-pearl tints, and methinks the same or rainbow tints in the drifting snow there, against the bright light of the unseen sun. Only in such clear cold air as this have the small clouds in the west that fine evanishing edge. It requires a state of the air that quickly dissipates all moisture. It must be rare in summer. In this rare atmosphere all cloud is quickly dissipated and mother-o’-pearl tinted as it passes away."); January 9, 1854 ("Looking for rainbow-tinted clouds, small whiffs of vapor which form and disperse, this clear, cold afternoon"); January 13, 1852 ("Here I am on the Cliffs at half past three or four o'clock. . . .I see. . .in the west, flitting mother-o'-pearl clouds, which change their loose-textured form and melt rapidly away, even while I write."); February 13, 1860 ("It is surprising what a variety of distinct colors the winter can show us . . .There is the red of the sunset sky, and of the snow at evening, and in rainbow flocks during the day, and in sun-dogs."); February 24, 1860 ("some [clouds]most brilliant mother-o'-pearl. I never saw the green in it more distinct. This on the thin white edges of clouds as if it were a small piece of a rainbow.").

Rice says he saw a white owl. See  March 1, 1854 ("Have heard of two white owls, — one about Thanksgiving time and one in midwinter.")

Harris told me on the 19th that he had never found the snow-flea. See January 22, 1860 ("The snow-fleas are thickest along the edge of the wood here, but I find that they extend quite across the river . . . This must be as peculiarly a winter animal as any. It may truly be said to live in snow."). See also January 1, 1853 ("Agassiz told him that Harris [ the librarian of Harvard University, and one of Thoreau's professors] was the greatest entomologist in the world. "); January 15, 1852 ("For the first time this winter I notice snow-fleas this afternoon in Walden Wood . . .Their number is almost infinite."); February 2, 1854 ("As it is a melting day, the snow is everywhere peppered with snow-fleas.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Snow Flea

Last night was very windy, and to-day I see the dry oak leaves collected in thick beds. See January 8, 1852 (" I notice that almost every track which I made yesterday. . .has got a dead leaf in it.."); January 15, 1856 ("Seeing the tracks where a leaf had blown along and then tacked and finally doubled and returned on its trail, I think it must be the tracks of some creature new to me."); January 31, 1856 ("The fall of these withered leaves after each rude blast, so clean and dry that they do not soil the snow, is a phenomenon quite in harmony with the winter.") January 7, 1857("[E]ach track of the fox has proved a trap which has caught from three or four to eight or ten leaves each, snugly packed; and thus it is reprinted.")

The crust sparkles with a myriad brilliant points.

February 8

9 A. M. —To Fair Haven Pond. 

A clear and a pleasanter and warmer day than we have had for a long time. 

For two or three weeks, successive light and dry snows have fallen on the old crust and been drifting about on it, leaving it at last three quarters bare and forming drifts against the fences, etc., or here and there low, slaty, fractured ones in mid-field, or pure white hard-packed ones. These drifts on the crust are commonly quite low and flat.

 

February 8, 2020

But yesterday’s snow turning to rain, which froze as it fell, there is now a glaze on the trees, giving them a hoary look, icicles like rakes’ teeth on the rails, and a thin crust over all the snow. At this hour the crust sparkles with a myriad brilliant points or mirrors, one to every six inches, at least. This crust is cracked like ice into irregular figures a foot or two square. 

Perhaps the snow has settled considerably, for the track in the roads is the highest part. Some heard a loud cracking in the ground or ice last night. 

I cut through, five or six rods from the east shore of Fair Haven, and find seven inches of snow, nine inches of snow ice and eight of water ice, — seventeen of both. The water rises to within half an inch of the top of the ice. 

Isaac Garfield has cut a dozen holes on the west side. The ice there averages nineteen inches in thickness. Half the holes are five or six rods from the shore, and the rest nine or ten, the water from three  to seven feet deep. In some places more than half the whole depth is ice. The thinnest ice is 17 inches; the thickest, 20+. The inner row invariably the thickest. The water rises above the ice in some cases.

The snow begins (at noon) to soften somewhat in the road. Coming home at twelve, the ice is fast melting on the trees, and I see in the drops the colors of all the gems. 

The snow is soft, and the eaves begin to run as not for many weeks. Thermometer at 3.30 P. M., 31°.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal. February 8, 1856

Yesterday’s snow turning to rain, which froze as it fell, there is now a glaze on the trees. See February 7, 1856 ("Begins to snow at 8 A.M.; turns to rain at noon, and clears off, or rather ceased raining, at night, with some glaze on the trees."); See also February 6, 1857 ("Down railroad to see the glaze, the first we have had this year, but not a very good one.");  February 8, 1852 ("Night before last, our first rain for a long time; this afternoon, the first crust to walk on."); February 26, 1854 ("This morning it began with snowing, turned to a fine freezing rain producing a glaze, but in the afternoon changes to pure rain.") and  Yesterday's ice storm today.

At this hour the crust sparkles with a myriad brilliant points or mirrors. See February 3, 1852 (“This snow . . . is two feet deep, pure and powdery. From a myriad little crystal mirrors the moon is reflected, which is the untarnished sparkle of its surface.”); ; February 13, 1859 ("A dry, powdery snow about one inch deep, from which, as I walk toward the sun, this perfectly clear, bright afternoon, at 3.30 o’clock, the colors of the rainbow are reflected from a myriad fine facets.");.January 12, 1860 ("Going from the sun, I see a myriad sparkling points scattered over its surface, — little mirror-like facets, . . .which has fallen in the proper position, reflecting an intensely bright little sun. Such is the glitter or sparkle on the surface of a snow freshly fallen when the sun comes out and you walk from it, the points of light constantly changing."); January 29, 1860 ("A parabola of rainbow-colored reflections, from the myriad reflecting crystals of the snow as I walk toward the sun.")

The ice there [Fair Haven] averages nineteen inches in thickness. See February 6, 1856 ("Cut a cake of ice out of the middle of Walden . . . On the 18th of January the ice had been about seven inches thick here . . . It was now 19 inches thick.")

The ice is fast melting on the trees, and I see in the drops the colors of all the gems. See February 8, 1857 ("My diffuse and vaporous life becomes as the frost leaves and spiculae radiant as gems on the weeds and stubble in a winter morning.") See also  December 6, 1858 ("Looking at a dripping tree between you and the sun, you may see here or there one or another rainbow color, a small brilliant point of light.");  December 11, 1855 ("Great winter itself looked like a precious gem, reflecting rainbow colors from one angle.")

The eaves begin to run as not for many weeks. See February 1, 1856 ("The eaves have scarcely run at all. It has been what is called 'an old-fashioned winter.'"); February 11, 1856 ("It is now fairly thawing, the eaves running; and puddles stand in some places.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring; The Eaves Begin to Run

February 8. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 8

Snow turning to rain 

froze as it fell – there is now 

a glaze on the trees.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

The crust sparkles with a myriad brilliant points.

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-560208

Morning snow turns to fine freezing rain with a glaze changing to pure rain.

February 26

This morning it began with snowing, turned to a fine freezing rain producing a glaze, — the weeds, trees, etc., are covered with the most of a glaze thus far, — but in the afternoon changes to pure rain. The wind rises and the rain increases. The rain is fast washing off all the glaze. 

February 26, 2017

Deep pools of water form in the fields, which have an agreeable green or blue tint, — sometimes the one, sometimes the other. The quantity of water which is fallen is by no means remarkable but, the ground being frozen, it is not soaked up. 

There is more water on the surface than before this winter.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 26, 1854

This morning it began with snowing, turned to a fine freezing rain producing a glaze, but in the afternoon changes to pure rain. See February 7, 1856 ("Begins to snow at 8 A.M.; turns to rain at noon, and clears off, or rather ceased raining, at night, with some glaze on the trees.")

Deep pools of water form in the fields, which have an agreeable green or blue tint. See Febrruary 14, 1854 ("I perceive that some of these pools by the Walden road which on the 9th looked so green have frozen blue.")

February 26. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 26

Morning snow turns to

fine freezing rain with a glaze

changing to pure rain.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Morning snow changing to pure rain.

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 ©  2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-540226

Black ice, Hard walking

January 12

It still rains very finely. The ground is covered with a black glaze, wet and shiny like water, like an invisible armor, a quarter of an inch or more thick. 

Coarse, hard rain from time to time to-day, with much mist, — thaw and rain. The cocks crow, for the ground begins to be bare in spots. Walking, or wading, very bad.

I see my snowshoe tracks quite distinct, though made January 2d. They pressed the snow down four or five inches, consolidated it, and now endure two or three inches above the general level there, and more white. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 12, 1854

Thaw and rain. The cocks crow, for the ground begins to be bare in spots.   January 12, 1855 ("Perhaps what most moves us in winter is some reminiscence of far-off summer . . .It is in the cawing of the crow, the crowing of the cock, the warmth of the sun on our backs.") See alao A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: The crowing of cocks, the cawing of crows

I see my snowshoe tracks quite distinct . . . two or three inches above the general level there, and more white. See January 8, 1860 (" Those [tracks] of the fox which has run along the side of the pond are now so many snowballs, raised as much above the level of the water-darkened snow as at first they sank beneath it. The snow, having been compressed by their weight, resists the melting longer. . . .There are a man's tracks, perhaps my own, along the pond-side there . . . like white stepping-stones"); January 25, 1857 (" I see the track of a fox or dog across the meadow, made some time ago. Each track is now a pure white snowball rising three inches above the surrounding surface,").

January 12. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 12

a wet black glaze like

an invisible armor

shiny like water

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 © 2009-2022