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
White maples resound
with the hum of honey-bees
like a summer dream.
April 6, 2019
Last night a snow-storm, and this morning we find the ground covered again six or eight inches deep -- and drifted pretty badly beside. The conductor in the car, which have been detained more than an hour, says it is a dry snow up-country. Here it is very damp. April 6, 1852
Last night a snow-storm
now six or eight inches deep --
and drifted badly.
April 6, 1852
All along under the south side of this hill on the edge of the meadow, the air resounds with the hum of honey-bees, attracted by the flower of the skunk cabbage.. . .I watched many when they entered and came out, and they all had little yellow pellets of pollen at their thighs. As the skunk-cabbage comes out before the willow, it is probable that the former is the first flower they visit. It is the more surprising, as the flower is for the most part invisible within the spathe. . . .One cowslip, though it shows the yellow, is not fairly out, but will be by to-morrow. How they improve their time! Not a moment of sunshine lost. One thing I may depend on: there has been no idling with the flowers. They advance as steadily as a clock. Nature loses not a moment, takes no vacation. April 6, 1853
Flowers advance as
steadily as a clock. Nature
loses no moment.
April 6, 1853
A still warmer day than yesterday — a warm, moist rain-smelling west wind. Up Assabet. I am surprised to find so much of the white maples already out . . . They resound with the hum of honey-bees, heard a dozen rods off, and you see thousands of them about the flowers against the sky . . . This susurrus carries me forward some months toward summer -- to those still warm summer noons when . . .the fishes retreat from the shallows into the cooler depths, and the cows stand up to their bellies in the river. The reminiscence comes over me like a summer's dream. April 6, 1854
A still warmer day
than yesterday — a warm, moist
rain-smelling west wind.
April 6, 1854
A few white maple
stamens stand out loose enough
to blow in the wind.
April 6, 1855
Just beyond Wood’s Bridge, I hear the pewee. With what confidence after the lapse of many months, I come out to this waterside, some warm and pleasant spring morning, and, listening, hear, from farther or nearer, through the still concave of the air, the note of the first pewee! If there is one within half a mile, it will be here, and I shall be sure to hear its simple notes from those trees, borne over the water. It is remarkable how large a mansion of the air you can explore with your ears in the still morning by the waterside . . . It is a still and warm, overcast afternoon, and I am come to look for ducks on the smooth reflecting water which has suddenly surrounded the village, — water half covered with ice or icy snow On the 2d it was a winter landscape, —a narrow river covered thick with ice for the most part, and only snow on the meadows. In three or four days the scene is changed to these vernal lakes, and the ground more than half bare. The reflecting water alternating with unrefiecting ice . . . I am not sure whether it was a white-headed eagle or a fish hawk. . . It rose and wheeled, flapping several times, till it got under way; then, with its rear to me, presenting the least surface, it moved off steadily in its orbit over the woods northwest, with the slightest possible undulation of its wings, — a noble planetary motion, like Saturn with its ring seen edgewise. . .Through my glass I saw the outlines of this sphere against the sky, trembling with life and power as it skimmed the topmost twigs of the wood toward some more solitary oak amid the meadows. April 6, 1856
Over the water
the note of the first pewee --
this still concave air.
April 6, 1856
P. M. — To New Bedford Library. Mr. Ingraham, the librarian, says that he once saw frog-spawn in New Bedford the 4th of March. Take out Emmons’s Report on the insects injurious to vegetation in New York.
See a plate of the Colias Philodice, or common sulphur-yellow butterfly, male and female of different tinge. April 6, 1857
It begins to grow cold about noon, after a week or more of generally warm and pleasant weather. They with whom I talk do not remember when the river was so low at this season. The top of the bathing-rock, above the island in the Main Branch, was more than a foot out of water on the 3d, and the river has been falling since . . . At Lee's Cliff I find no saxifrage in bloom above the rock, on account of the ground having been so exposed the past exceedingly mild winter, and no Ranunculus fascicularis anywhere there, but on a few small warm shelves under the rocks the saxifrage makes already a pretty white edging along the edge of the grass sod [?] on the rocks; has got up three or four inches, and may have been out four or five days. I also notice one columbine, which may bloom in a week if it is pleasant weather . . . I hear hylas in full blast 2.30 P. M. It is remarkable how much herbaceous and shrubby plants, some which are decidedly evergreen, have suffered the past very mild but open winter on account of the ground being bare. Accordingly the saxifrage and crowfoot are so backward, notwithstanding the warmth of the last ten days. Perhaps they want more moisture, too. The asplenium ferns of both species are very generally perfectly withered and shrivelled, and in exposed places on hills the checkerberry has not proved an evergreen, but is completely withered and a dead-leaf color. I do not remember when it has suffered so much. Such plants require to be covered with snow to protect them . . . The very earliest aspens, such as grow in warm exposures on the south sides of hills or woods, have begun to be effete. Others are not yet out . . . It rapidly grows cold and blustering. April 6, 1858
It begins to grow cold about noon, after a week or more of generally warm and pleasant weather. They with whom I talk do not remember when the river was so low at this season. The top of the bathing-rock, above the island in the Main Branch, was more than a foot out of water on the 3d, and the river has been falling since . . . At Lee's Cliff I find no saxifrage in bloom above the rock, on account of the ground having been so exposed the past exceedingly mild winter, and no Ranunculus fascicularis anywhere there, but on a few small warm shelves under the rocks the saxifrage makes already a pretty white edging along the edge of the grass sod [?] on the rocks; has got up three or four inches, and may have been out four or five days. I also notice one columbine, which may bloom in a week if it is pleasant weather . . . I hear hylas in full blast 2.30 P. M. It is remarkable how much herbaceous and shrubby plants, some which are decidedly evergreen, have suffered the past very mild but open winter on account of the ground being bare. Accordingly the saxifrage and crowfoot are so backward, notwithstanding the warmth of the last ten days. Perhaps they want more moisture, too. The asplenium ferns of both species are very generally perfectly withered and shrivelled, and in exposed places on hills the checkerberry has not proved an evergreen, but is completely withered and a dead-leaf color. I do not remember when it has suffered so much. Such plants require to be covered with snow to protect them . . . The very earliest aspens, such as grow in warm exposures on the south sides of hills or woods, have begun to be effete. Others are not yet out . . . It rapidly grows cold and blustering. April 6, 1858
It grows cold about
noon after a week or more
of pleasant weather.
April 6 1858
Another remarkably windy day; cold northwest wind and a little snow spitting from time to time, yet so little that even the traveller might not perceive it. For nineteen days, from the 19th of March to the 6th of April, both inclusive, we have had remarkably windy weather. For ten days of the nineteen the wind has been remarkably strong and violent, so that each of those days the wind was the subject of general remark. The first one of these ten days was the warmest, the wind being southwest, but the others, especially of late, were very cold, the wind being northwest, and for the most part icy cold. There have also been five days that would be called windy and only four which were moderate. The last seven, including to-day, have all been windy, five of them remarkably so; wind from northwest . . . A fish hawk sails down the river, from time to time almost stationary one hundred feet above the water, notwithstanding the very strong wind. April 6, 1859
A fish hawk sails down
the river one hundred feet
above the water
April 6, 1859
I am struck by the fact that at this season all vegetable growth is confined to the warm days; during the cold ones it is stationary, or even killed. Vegetation thus comes forward rather by fits and starts than by a steady progress. Some flowers would blossom tomorrow if it were as warm as to-day, but cold weather intervening may detain them a week or more. The spring thus advances and recedes repeatedly, — its pendulum oscillates, — while it is carried steadily forward. Animal life is to its extent subject to a similar law. It is in warm and calm days that most birds arrive and reptiles and insects and men come forth. April 6, 1860
Vegetation comes
not by a steady progress
but by fits and starts.
April 6, 1860
Am surprised to find the river fallen some nine inches notwithstanding the melted snow. April 6, 1861
 |
| April 6, 2020 |
*****
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Earliest Flower
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau , the Skunk Cabbage;
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Song Sparrow (Fringilla melodia)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Tree Sparrow;
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Fox-colored Sparrow;
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Dark-eyed Junco.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Phoebe
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau The Osprey (Fish Hawk)
*****
If you make the least correct
observation of nature this year,
you will have occasion to repeat it
with illustrations the next,
and the season and life itself is prolonged.
April 6, 2024
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, April 6
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 © 2009-2024
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