February 26. Morning snow turns to fine freezing rain with a glaze changing to pure rain.

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 26, 1851:

A song sparrow(?) See February 24, 1857 (“I am surprised to hear the strain of a song sparrow from the riverside.”); March 11, 1854 ("On Tuesday, the 7th, I heard the first song sparrow chirp, and saw it flit silently from alder to alder. This pleasant morning after three days' rain and mist, they generally forthburst into sprayey song from the low trees along the river. The developing of their song is gradual but sure, like the expanding of a flower. This is the first song I have heard.”)

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 26, 1852:




The "greenish straw-colored" Parmelia conspersa, a very handsome and memorable lichen. See February 6, 1852 ("Near the C. Miles house there are some remarkably yellow lichens (parmelias?) on the rails, - ever as if the sun were about to shine forth clearly."); March 18, 1852 ("There is more rain than snow now falling, and the lichens, especially the Parmelia conspersa, appear to be full of fresh fruit, though they are nearly buried in snow.")

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 26, 1854:

This morning it began with snowing, turned to a fine freezing rain producing a glaze, but in the afternoon changes to pure rain. See February 7, 1856 ("Begins to snow at 8 A.M.; turns to rain at noon, and clears off, or rather ceased raining, at night, with some glaze on the trees.")

Deep pools of water form in the fields, which have an agreeable green or blue tint, — sometimes the one, sometimes the other.

See Febrruary 14, 1854 ("I perceive that some of these pools by the Walden road which on the 9th looked so green have frozen blue.")

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 26, 1855:

I see some cracks in a plowed field, — Depot Field cornfield, — maybe recent ones. I think since this last cold snap, else I had noticed them before. See February 7, 1855 ("The coldest night for a long, long time. People dreaded to go to bed. The ground cracked in the night as if a powder-mill had blown up"); February 23, 1855 ("I see no cracks in the ground this year yet."); December 23, 1856 (“The cracking of the ground is a phenomenon of the coldest nights”); January 11, 1859 ("It would appear then that the ground cracks on the advent of very severe cold weather.")

Those great cakes of ice which the last freshet floated up.

See February 23, 1855 ("I see great cakes of ice, a rod or more in length and one foot thick, lying high and dry on the bare ground in the low fields some ten feet or more beyond the edge of the thinner ice, washed up by the last rise (the 18th).”); February 24, 1855 ("The whole of the broad meadows is a rough, irregular checker-board of great cakes a rod square or more.”); February 28, 1855 ("Far on every side, over what is usually dry land, are scattered a stretching pack of great cakes of ice, often two or more upon each other and partly tilted up, a foot thick and one to two or more rods broad.")

Examine with glass some fox-dung from a tussock of grass amid the ice on the meadow. See February 1, 1856 ("What gives to the excrements of the fox that clay color often, even at this season? Left on an eminence. "); September 23, 1860 ("I see on the top of the Cliffs to-day the dung of a fox, consisting of fur, with part of the jaw and one of the long rodent teeth of a woodchuck in it, and the rest of it huckleberry seeds with some whole berries") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Fox



H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 26, 1856:

Two dead frogs. See March 8, 1860 ("I saw, in Monroe's well by the edge of the river, the other day, a dozen frogs, chiefly shad frogs, which had been dead a good while."); March 28, 1852 (' See . . .dead frogs, and the mud stirred by a living one, in this ditch, and afterward in Conantum Brook a living frog, the first of the season")



H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 26, 1857:

February 26, 2017

I saw Mrs. Brooks's spiraeas to-day, See February 18, 1856 ("Sophia says that Mrs. Brooks's spiraeas have started considerably!”)

Paint the bottom of my boat. See March 9, 1855 (“Painted the bottom of my boat. ”); March 15, 1854 (“Paint my boat. ”) ; March 16, 1860 (“As soon as I can get it painted and dried, I launch my boat and make my first voyage for the year up or down the stream, on that element from which I have been de barred for three months and a half.”); March 17, 1857 (“Launch my boat.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Boat in. Boat out.



H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 26, 1860:

Cold and strong northwest wind this and yesterday. See February 9, 1856 ("How much the northwest wind prevails in the winter! Almost all our storms come from that quarter, and the ridges of snow-drifts run that way."); February 10, 1860 ("A very strong and a cold northwest wind to-day, shaking the house, — thermometer at 11 a. m., 14°, — consumes wood and yet we are cold, and drives the smoke down the chimney."); February 17, 1860 ("Cold and northwest wind, drifting the snow. . . .thermometer 14º."); April 15, 1860 ("Strong northwest wind and cold.. . .We are continually expecting warmer weather than we have”)

February 26

Morning snow turns to
fine freezing rain with a glaze
changing to pure rain.
February 26, 1854

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 © 2009-2021