A little green hemisphere of moss.

December 1

It is quite mild and pleasant to-day. 

December 1, 2025

I saw a little green hemisphere of moss which looked as if it covered a stone, but, thrusting my cane into it, I found it was nothing but moss, about fifteen inches in diameter and eight or nine inches high. 

When I broke it up, it appeared as if the annual growth was marked by successive layers half an inch deep each. The lower ones were quite rotten, but the present year's quite green, the intermediate white. I counted fifteen or eighteen. 

It was quite solid, and I saw that it continued solid as it grew by branching occasionally, just enough to fill the newly gained space, and the tender extremities of each plant, crowded close together, made the firm and compact surface of the bed. There was a darker line separating the growths, where I thought the surface had been exposed to the winter. 

It was quite saturated with water, though firm and solid.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 1, 1850

It is quite mild and pleasant to-day.  See December 2, 1850 ("If there is a little more warmth than usual at this season, then the beautiful air which belongs to winter is perceived and appreciated.") See also  November 29, 1852 ("November 29, 30, and December 1 have been the mildest and pleasantest days since November came in.”); December 2, 1859 ("Nov. 30, Dec. 1 and 2 were remarkably warm and springlike days, — a moist warmth.”)

I saw a little green hemisphere of moss. See February 7, 1858 ("Little mounds or tufts of yellowish or golden moss in the young woods look like sunlight on the ground."); February 8, 1857  ("It is exciting to walk over the moist, bare pastures, though slumping four or five inches, and see the green mosses again."); April 25, 1857 ("The dense, green, rounded beds of mosses in springs and old water-troughs are very handsome now, — intensely cold green cushions.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Mosses Bright Green

December 1. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, December 1

Hemisphere of moss 

looks as if covers a stone – 

yet nothing but moss.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A little green hemisphere of 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 ©  2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-501201