The pitch pine has an ingrained sunniness especially valuable for imparting warmth to the landscape at this season.

March 19. 

Early willows in their silvery state. 

2 P. M.—Thermometer 51; wind easterly, blowing slightly. To Everett's Spring.

Going along the Turnpike, I look over to the pitch pines on Moore's hillside, – ground bare as it has been since February 23, except a slight whitening or two, — and it strikes me that this pine, take the year round, is the most cheerful tree and most living to look at and have about your house, it is so sunny and full of light, in harmony with the yellow sand there and the spring sun. 

The deciduous trees are apparently dead, and the white pine is much darker, but the pitch pine has an ingrained sunniness and is especially valuable for imparting warmth to the landscape at this season.and is especially valuable for imparting warmth to the landscape at this season. Yet men will take pains to cut down these trees and set imported larches in their places! The pitch pine shines in the spring somewhat as the osiers do. 

I see in the ditch by the Turnpike bridge a painted tortoise, and, I think, a small shiner or two, also several suckers which swiftly dart out of sight, rippling the water. We rejoice to see the waters inhabited again, for a fish has become almost incredible.

Myriads of water-bugs of various sizes are now gyrating, and they reflect the sun like silver. Why do they cast a double orbicular shadow on the bottom? 

I see some monstrous yellow lily roots in the ditch there just beyond the bridge on the right hand, - great branching roots, three or four of them from one base, two feet long (or more) and as big as my arm, all covered with muddy sediment. I know of no herbaceous plant which suggests so much vigor. They taper at the extremity, down (or up) to the green leaf-bud, and, regularly marked as they are with the bases of the leaf-stalks, they look like pineapples there. 

Holding by an alder, I get my hand covered with those whitish lice, which I suppose will cover themselves with down. 

The Rana halecina sits on the bank there. 


The Alnus incana is out, near Everett' s Spring, but not the Alnus serrulata, i. e. the smaller one, which grows south of scouring-rush. The plants which have grown the most there — and they are very conspicuous now — are the forget-me-not , the Ranunculus repens (much more than any bulbosus), and a common sedge which already begins to yellow the top of some tussocks.  

The lower part of the hill at Minott's is decidedly green now. 

The road and paths are perfectly dry and settled in the village, except a very little frost still coming out on the south side the street.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 19, 1860

The pitch pine shines in the spring . See March 26, 1846 ( The green pitch  suddenly looked brighter and more erect, as if now entirely washed and cleansed by the rain. I knew it would not rain any more. A serene summer-evening sky seemed darkly reflected in the pond, though the clear sky was nowhere visible overhead. It was no longer the end of a season, but the beginning.).  Compare March 19, 1858 ("This is the brightening and awakening of the pines, a phenomenon perchance connected with the flow of sap in them.")

I see in the ditch by the Turnpike bridge a painted tortoise. See March 28, 1857 ("He who painted the tortoise thus, what were his designs? ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Painted Turtle

I see, I think, a small shiner or two, also several suckers which swiftly dart out of sight, rippling the water.  See March 19, 1854 ("You look into some clear, sandy-bottomed brook, where it spreads into a deeper bay, yet flowing cold from ice and snow not far off, and see, indistinctly poised over the sand on invisible fins, the outlines of a shiner, scarcely to be distinguished from the sands behind it as if it were transparent.”);  March 19, 1856 ("No sooner is some opening made in the river, a square rod in area, where some brook or rill empties in, than the fishes apparently begin to seek it for light and warmth, . . .They are seen to ripple the water, darting out as you approach.") Compare March 19, 1857 ("I observed yesterday a dead shiner by the riverside, and to-day the first sucker.")

We rejoice to see the waters inhabited again,. See March 20, 1853 ("A myriad brilliant sparkles on the bare face of the pond, an expression of glee, of youth, of spring, as if it spoke the joy of the fishes within it.")

Myriads of water-bugs of various sizes are now gyrating, and they reflect the sun like silver. Why do they cast a double orbicular shadow on the bottom? See March 10, 1855 ("To-day they are here and yesterday they were not");  March 19, 1856 ("In the smooth open water there, small water-bugs were gyrating singly, not enough to play the game"); October 18, 1857 ("The shadows of these bugs on the bottom, half a dozen times as big as themselves, are very distinct and interesting, with a narrow and well-defined halo about them. But why are they composed, as it were, of two circles run together, the foremost largest? Is it owing to the manner in which the light falls on their backs, in two spots? You think that the insect must be amused with this pretty shadow. I also see plainly the shadows of ripples they make, which are scarcely perceptible on the surface.")

The Alnus incana is out, near Everett' s Spring,  See   March 22, 1853 ("The very earliest alder is in bloom and sheds its pollen. I detect a few catkins at a distance by their distinct yellowish color. This the first native flower.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau : the Alders

The road and paths are perfectly dry and settled in the village, except a very little frost still coming out on the south side the street.  See March 15, 1860 ("Though it is pretty dry and settled travelling on open roads, it is very muddy still in some roads through woods").