Plant melons. Hear young bluebirds in the box. Did I not see a bank swallow fly by?
Cousin Charles says that he drove Grandmother over to Weston the 2d of May; on the 3d it snowed and he rode about there in a sleigh; on the 4th and the 5th, when he returned in a chaise to Concord, it was considered dangerous on account of the drifts.
P. M. – To Assabet by Tarbell's.
I see the second amelanchier well out by railroad. How long elsewhere?
The wild gooseberry here and there along the edge of river in front of Tarbell’s, like our second one, apparently as early as in garden, and will open in a few days.
I see a wood tortoise by the river there, half covered with the old withered leaves. Taking it up, I find that it must have lain perfectly still there for some weeks, for though the grass is all green about it, when I take it up, it leaves just such a bare cavity, in which are seen the compressed white roots of the grass only, as when you take up a stone. This shows how sluggish these creatures are. It is quite lively when I touch it, but I see that it has some time lost the end of its tail, and possibly it has been sick. Yet there was another crawling about within four or five feet. It seems, then, that it will lie just like a stone for weeks immovable in the grass. It lets the season slide.
The male yellow spotted and also wood turtle have very distinctly depressed sternums, but not so the male Emys picta that I have noticed.
The earliest apple trees begin to leave and to show green veils against the ground and the sky.
See already a considerable patch of Viola pedata on the dry, bushy bank northeast of Tarbell’s.
H. D.. Thoreau, Journal, May 7, 1858
Did I not see a bank swallow fly by? See May 7, 1856 (“Ahundred or more bank swallows at 2 P. M. (I suspect I have seen them for some time)”)
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