On the side of the meadow moraine just north of the boulder field.

February 24. 

February 24, 2018

I see, at Minot Pratt’s, rhodora in bloom in a pitcher with water andromeda. 

Went through that long swamp northeast of Boaz’s Meadow. Interesting and peculiar are the clumps, or masses, of panicled andromeda, with light-brown stems, topped uniformly with very distinct yellow brown recent shoots, ten or twelve inches long, with minute red buds sleeping close along them. This uniformity in such masses gives a pleasing tinge to the swamp's surface. Wholesome colors, which wear well. 

I see quite a number of emperor moth cocoons attached to this shrub, some hung round with a loose mass of leaves as big as my two fists.

What art in the red-eye to make these two adjacent maple twigs serve for the rim of its pensile basket, in weaving them! Surely it finds a place for itself in nature between the two twigs of a maple. 

On the side of the meadow moraine just north of the boulder field, I see barberry bushes three inches in diameter and ten feet high. What a surprising color this wood has! It splits and splinters very much when I bend it. I cut a cane and, shaving off the outer bark, it is of imperial yellow, as if painted, fit for a Chinese mandarin.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 24, 1858

I see, at Minot Pratt’s, rhodora in bloom in a pitcher. See May 17, 1853 (“The rhodora is peculiar for being, like the peach, a profusion of pink blossoms on a leafless stem.”); May 18, 1857 ("Pratt says he saw the first rhodora . . . out yesterday")

Boaz's Meadow. See November 11, 1857 ("That cellar-hole off northwest of Brooks Clark’s is where Boaz Brown used to live, and the andromeda swamp behind is “Boaz's (pronounced Boze's) meadow,” says Jacob Farmer, who has seen corn growing in the meadow. "); November 18, 1857 ("There is the meadow behind Brooks Clark’s . . .. The stream which drains this empties into the Assabet at Dove Rock. A short distance west of this meadow, but a good deal more elevated, is Boaz's meadow, whose water finds its way, naturally or artificially, northeast ward around the other.")

Panicled andromeda, with light-brown stems, topped uniformly with very distinct yellow brown recent shoots . . . with minute red buds sleeping close along them. See November 23, 1857 ("The panicled andromeda is upright, light-gray, with a rather smoother bark, more slender twigs, and small, sharp red buds lying close to the twig"); December 11, 1855 ("I thread the tangle of the spruce swamp, admiring . . . the great yellow buds of the swamp-pink, the round red buds of the high blueberry, and the fine sharp red ones of the panicled andromeda."); January 25, 1858 ("The round red buds of the blueberries; the small pointed red buds, close to the twig, of the panicled andromeda; the large yellowish buds of the swamp pink."); February 13, 1858 (" I observed that the swamp was variously shaded, or painted even, like a rug, with the sober colors running gradually into each other, by the colored recent shoots of various shrubs which grow densely, as the red blueberry, and the yellowish-brown panicled andromeda")  See also February 17, 1854 ("In these swamps, then, you have three kinds of andromeda. The main swamp is crowded with high blueberry, panicled andromeda, prinos, swamp-pink, etc.. . . and then in the middle or deepest part will be an open space not yet quite given up to water, where the Andromeda calyculata and a few A. Polifolia reign almost alone. These are pleasing gardens.")

Emperor moth cocoons attached to this shrub, some hung round with a loose mass of leaves. See February 19, 1854 (“The light ash-colored cocoons of the A. Promethea, with the withered and faded leaves wrapped around them so artfully and admirably secured by fine silk wound round the leaf-stalk and the twig they are taken at a little distance for a few curled and withered leaves left on.”)

What art in the red-eye to make these two adjacent maple twigs serve for the rim of its pensile basket. See January 13, 1856 ("What a wonderful genius it is that leads the vireo to select the tough fibres of the inner bark, instead of the more brittle grasses, for its basket, the elastic pine-needles and the twigs, curved as they dried to give it form, and, as I suppose, the silk of cocoons, etc., etc., to bind it together with!"); May 27, 1854 ("I find the pensile nest of a red-eye between a fork of a shrub chestnut near the path.")  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Red-eyed Vireo

On the side of the meadow moraine just north of the boulder field.  See November 3, 1857 (“Follow up the Boulder Field northward, and it terminates in that moraine.”); March 8, 1855 (“I cross through the swamp south of Boulder Field toward the old dam.”); April 21, 1852 ("In the pasture beyond the brook, where grow the barberries, huckleberries, — creeping juniper, etc., are half a dozen huge boulders, which look grandly now in the storm, covered with greenish-gray lichens, alternating with the slatish-colored rock. Slumbering, silent, . . .I look down on some of them as on the backs of oxen. A certain personality, or at least brute life, they seem to have."); November 3, 1857 (" It would be something to own that pasture with the great rocks in it")

February 24. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 24

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,

On the side of the meadow moraine just north of the boulder field.

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