The foliage is never more conspicuously a tender yellow than now.

May 22. 

Sunday.

May 22, 2019

 A warm, drizzling day, the tender yellow leafets now generally conspicuous, and contrasting with the almost black evergreens which they have begun to invest. The foliage is never more conspicuously a tender yellow than now. This lasts a week from this date, and then begins to be confounded with the older green. 

We have had rain for three or four days, and hence the tender foliage is the more yellow.

Swallows fly low. 

The Ranunculus bulbosus is abundant. 

I see that by the very severe frost of about the 15th, or full of the moon, a great many leaves were killed, as young oaks, cultivated grapes, butternuts, ferns, etc., etc., which now show brown or blackish.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 22, 1859

The tender yellow leafets now generally conspicuous, and contrasting with the almost black evergreens which they have begun to invest. See May 22, 1855 ("The deciduous trees leafing begin to clothe or invest the evergreens."). Also May 14, 1852 ("The deciduous trees are rapidly investing the evergreens, making the woods rich and bosky by degrees. ); May 18, 1852 ("They are now being invested with the light, sunny, yellowish-green of the deciduous trees."); May 26, 1857 ("The silvery leafets of the deciduous trees invest the woods like a permanent mist."); May 27, 1855 (" . . . deciduous trees rapidly investing evergreens."); June 9, 1852 (“The deciduous trees have filled up the intervals between the evergreens, and the woods are bosky now.”)

The foliage is never more conspicuously a tender yellow than now. See May 22, 1854 ("Now the springing foliage is like a sunlight on the woods. . .., the tender yellowish-green and silvery foliage of the deciduous trees lighting up the landscape."); May 18, 1852 (“This tender foliage, putting so much light and life into the landscape, is the remarkable feature at this date.”); May 18, 1851("The landscape has a new life and light infused into it. And to the eye the forest presents the tenderest green.”)


Severe frost of about the 15th. See  May 21, 1855 (“[C]old weather, indeed, from the 20th to 23d inclusive. Sit by fires, and sometimes wear a greatcoat and expect frosts.”); May 31, 1856 ("It has been very cold for two or three days, and to-night a frost is feared. The telegraph says it snowed in Bangor to-day. The hickory leaves are blackened by blowing in the cold wind.") May 31, 1858 ("There were severe frosts on the nights of the 28th and 29th, and now I see the hickories turned quite black");