A good deal of coolness in the wind, so that I can scarcely find a comfortable seat.

May 2. 

River three and five sixteenths below summer level. 

I observed on the 29th that the clams had not only been moving much, furrowing the sandy bottom near the shore, but generally, or almost invariably, had moved toward the middle of the river. Perhaps it had something to do with the low stage of the water. 

I saw one making his way — or perhaps it had rested since morning-over that sawdust bar just below Turtle Bar, toward the river, the surface of the bar being an inch or two higher than the water. Probably the water, falling, left it thus on dry (moist) land.

I notice this forenoon (11. 30 A. M. ) remarkably round-topped white clouds just like round-topped hills, on all sides of the sky, often a range of such, such as I do not remember to have seen before. There was considerable wind on the surface, from the northeast, and the above clouds were moving west and southwest, -- a generally distributed cumulus.    

What added to the remarkableness of the sight was a very fine, fleecy cirrhus, like smoke, narrow but of indefinite length, driving swiftly eastward beneath the former, proving that there were three currents of air, one above the other.  (The same form of cloud prevailed to some extent the next day.) 

Salix alba apparently yesterday.  

The early potentillas are now quite abundant.

P. M.    – To stone heaps and stone bridge. 

Since (perhaps) the middle of April we have had much easterly (northeast chiefly) wind, and yet no rain, though this wind rarely fails to bring rain in March.  (The same is true till 9th of May at least; i. e., in spite of east winds there is no rain.)

I find no stone heaps made yet, the water being very low. (But since — May 8th-I notice them, and perhaps I overlooked them before.) 

I notice on the east bank by the stone-heaps, amid the bushes, what I supposed to be two woodchucks' holes, with a well-worn path from one to the other, and the young trees close about them, aspen and black cherry, had been gnawed for a foot or more upward for a year or two.  There were some fresh wounds, and also old and extensive scars of last year partially healed. 

The naked viburnum is leafing.

The sedge apparently Carex Pennsylvanica has now been out on low ground a day or two.   

A crowd of men seem to generate vermin even of the human kind.  In great towns there is degradation undreamed of elsewhere, — gamblers, dog-killers, rag pickers.  Some live by robbery or by luck.  There was the Concord muster (of last September).  I see still a well dressed man carefully and methodically searching for money on the muster-fields, far off across the river.  I turn my glass upon him and notice how he proceeds.  (I saw them searching there in the fall till the snow came.) He walks regularly and slowly back and forth over the ground where the soldiers had their tents, — still marked by the straw, — with his head prone, and poking in the straw with a stick, now and then turning back or aside to examine something more closely. He is dressed, methinks, better than an average man whom you meet in the streets. How can he pay for his board thus? He dreams of finding a few coppers, or perchance a half-dime, which have fallen from the soldiers' pockets, and no doubt he will find something of the kind, having dreamed of it, --having knocked, this door will be opened to him.  

Walking over the russet interval, I see the first red-winged grasshoppers. They rise from the still brown sod before me, and I see the redness of their wings as they fly. They are quite shy and hardly let me come within ten feet before they rise again, — often before I have seen them fairly on the ground.   

It was 63° at 2 P. M., and yet a good deal of coolness in the wind, so that I can scarcely find a comfortable seat. (Yet a week later, with thermometer at 60° and but little wind, it seems much warmer.) We have had cool nights of late.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 2, 1860

Salix alba apparently yesterday. See May 2, 1853 (" Summer yellowbird on the opening Salix alba.?"). See also  April 24, 1855 ("The Salix alba begins to leaf. "); April 29, 1855 ("For two or three days the Salix alba, with its catkins (not yet open) and its young leaves, or bracts (?), has made quite a show, before any other tree, —a pyramid of tender yellowish green in the russet landscape."); April 30, 1859 (Salix alba leafing, or stipules a quarter of an inch wide; probably began a day or two.");    May 10, 1858 (" For some days the Salix alba have shown their yellow wreaths here and there, suggesting the coming of the yellowbird, and now they are alive with them.")

The naked viburnum is leafing. See April 30, 1859 ("The viburnum buds are so large and long, like a spear-head, that they are conspicuous the moment their two leafets diverge and they are lit up by the sun.");  May 1, 1854 ("The viburnum (Lentago or nudum) leaves unexpectedly forward at the Cliff Brook and about Miles Swamp. ")

The early potentillas are now quite abundant. See May 1, 1854 (“At Lee's Cliff find the early cinquefoil”); May 8, 1860 ("The cinquefoil is closed in a cloudy day, and when the sun shines it is turned toward it."); May 17, 1853 ("The early cinquefoil is now in its prime and spots the banks and hillsides and dry meadows with its dazzling yellow. How lively! It is one of the most interesting yellow flowers. ")