From Cliffs I see snow on the mountains.

December 12. 

Cold at last. 

December 12, 2015

Saw a violet on the C. Miles road where the bank had been burned in the fall. 

Baeomyces roseus also. 

Tansy still fresh yellow by the Corner Bridge. 

From Cliffs I see snow on the mountains. 

Last night's rain was snow there, then. They now have a parti-colored look, like the skin of a pard, as if they were spread with a saddle-cloth for Boreas to ride.

I hear of a cultivated rose blossoming in a garden in Cambridge within a day or two. 

The buds of the aspen are large and show wool in the fall.

H. D Thoreau, Journal, December 12, 1852

Baeomyces roseus. See April 3, 1859 ("We need a popular name for the baeomyces. C. suggests "pink mould" Perhaps "pink shot" or "eggs" would do.")

Saw a violet on the C. Miles road where the bank had been burned in the fall. See December 9, 1852 ("A man tells me he saw a violet to-day.") See also November 9, 1850 ("I found many fresh violets (Viola pedata) to-day (November 9th) in the woods.”);  November 16, 1850 (Violets, dandelions, and some other flowers blossom again, and mulleins and in numerable other plants begin again to spring and are only checked by the increasing cold. There is a slight uncertainty whether there will be any winter this year.")

Tansy still fresh yellow by the Corner Bridge. See November 18, 1855 ("Tansy still shows its yellow disks, but yarrow is particularly fresh and perfect, cold and chaste, with its pretty little dry-looking rounded white petals and green leaves."); November 23, 1852 ("Among the flowers which may be put down as lasting thus far, as I remember, in the order of their hardiness: yarrow, tansy (these very fresh and common) . . . and perhaps tall buttercup, etc."); December 6, 1852 ("Tansy still fresh.")

From Cliffs I see snow on the mountains. See December 12, 1859 ("I got a new view of the mountains . . .very grand in their snowy mantle, which had a slight tinge of purple . . . It is now that these mountains, in color as well as form, most resemble the clouds.") See also December 8, 1854 ("Why do the mountains never look so fair as from my native fields?")

.

The buds of the aspen are large and show wool. See February 6, 1856 ("The down is just peeping out from some of the aspen buds. "); February 27. 1852 ("The buds of the aspen show a part of their down or silky catkins."); March 4, 1860 ("Aspen down a quarter of an inch out.")

Perambulated the Lincoln line.

September 17.

Perambulated the Lincoln line.

Was it the small rough sunflower which I saw this morning at the brook near Lee's Bridge?

Saw at James Baker's a buttonwood tree with a swarm of bees now three years in it, but honey and all inaccessible.

John W. Farrar tells of sugar maples behind Miles's in the Corner.

Did I see privet in the swamp at the Bedford stone near Giles's house?

Swamp all dry now; could not wash my hands.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 17, 1851

Perambulated the Lincoln line. See September 15, 1851 ("Commenced perambulating the town bounds"); September 18, 1851 ("Perambulated Bedford line.") See also Septembeer 16, 1851 ("the inhabitants of Lincoln yield sooner than usual to the influence of the rising generation, and are a mixture of rather simple but clever with a well-informed and trustworthy people.")

Was it the small rough sunflower which I saw this morning at the brook near Lee's Bridge?  See July 29, 1853 (“The sight of the small rough sunflower about a dry ditch bank and hedge advances me at once further toward autumn.”); August 1, 1852 ("The small rough sunflower (Helianthus divaricatus) tells of August heats”); August 13, 1858 ("H. divaricatus was abundantly out on the 11th."); August 19, 1851 ("Small rough sunflower by side of road between canoe birch and White Pond"); September 2, 1856 ("Also, a short time ago, I was satisfied that there was but one kind of sunflower (divaricatus) indigenous here.")


Sugar maples behind Miles's in the Corner. Charles Miles (1791- 864) resided at the corner of what is now Old-Road-to-Nine-Acre-Corner and Williams Road. ~ Place Names of Henry David Thoreau in Concord, Massachusetts(and in Lincoln, Massachusetts) & Other Botanical Sites in Concord compiled by Ray Angelo; See August 11, 1852 ("Aster corymbosus, path beyond Corner Spring and in Miles Swamp."); March 24, 1853 ("The white pine wood, freshly cut, piled by the side of the Charles Miles road, is agreeable to walk beside."); February 4, 1858 ("To C. Miles Swamp. Discover the Ledum latifolium, quite abundant over a space about six rods in diameter just east of the small pond-hole."); May 17, 1858 ("What a pleasant sandy road, soaking up the rain, that from the woods to the Miles house! The house becomes a controlling feature in the landscape when there is but one or two in sight."); 

The last three have been true March days for wind.

March 4

Sunday. 2 P. M. – To Conantum via Clamshell. 

Thermometer 44; very strong and gusty northwest wind, with electric-looking wind-clouds. One spits a · little rain, but mostly clear. The frost is all out of the upper part of the garden. These wind-clouds come up and disappear fast, and have a more or less perpendicular fibre. 

Sit under Lupine Promontory again, to see the ripples. The wind is too strong, the waves run too high and incessantly, to allow the distinct puffs or gusts that drop from over the hill to be seen distinctly enough on tumultuous surface. Yet it is interesting. It spreads and runs as a bird spreads its tail suddenly, or it is as if a gust fell on a head of dark hair and made dimples or “crowns” in it, or it is as when dust before a brisk sweeper curls along over a floor. 

There is much less of that yellowish anchor ice than on the 2d. Cakes of it successively rise, being separated by warmth from the bottom, and are driven off to the leeward shore. In some places that shore is lined with such cakes now, which have risen and been blown clear across the meadow and river, — large masses. Some portions of them are singularly saturated, of a yellowish or clay-color, and an uneven upper surface, with a finely divided perpendicular grain, looking (in form) just like some kinds of fungi (that commonly yellowish kind). There strike against one another and make a pleasant musical, or tinkling, sound. 

Some of the ice will occasionally be lifted up on its edge two feet high and very conspicuous afar. 

That reddish-purple tinge in the meadow ripples appears to be owing to a reflection in some cases from the somewhat russet bottom. 

I see some curled dock, just started. 

The earth is never lighter - colored than now, — the hillsides reflecting the sun when first dried after the winter, — especially, methinks, where the sheep's fescue grows(?). It contrasts finely with the rich blue of the water. 

I saw half a dozen crows on a cake of ice in the middle of the Great Meadows yesterday, evidently looking for some favorite food which is washed on to it, - snails, or cranberries perhaps. 

I see a bush of the early willow — by wall far in front of the C. Miles house — whose catkins are conspicuous thirty rods off, very decidedly green, three eighths of an inch by measure. The bush at this distance had quite a silvery look, and the catkins show some redness within. Many of the scales as usual had fallen. 

A hen-hawk rises and sails away over the Holden Wood as in summer. Saw and heard one scream the 2d. 

I notice, where (ice or) snow has recently melted, a very thin dirty-white web like a dense cobweb, left flat on the grass, such as I saw some years ago. 

There is a broad and very black space extending through Fair Haven Pond over the channel, visible half a mile off, where the ice is thinnest and saturated with water. The channel is already open a little way at the upper end of the pond. This pond at its outlet contracts gradually into the river, so that you could hardly tell where the pond left off and the river began. I see that the ice at present extends that way only so far as I last year assumed that the pond did. In this sense the river hence to the Hubbard Bridge is pond-like compared with the portion below. 

See two apparently sternothærus eggs dropped in a slight hollow in the grass, evidently imperfectly planted by the turtle; still whole. 

The last three have been true March days for wind. 

The handsome and neat brown (pale-brown yet distinct on the lighter withered sod) of the lechea is now conspicuous as a shading in the drying fields.

See no ducks to-day, though much water. Nights too cold? 

Aspen down a quarter of an inch out.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 4, 1860

There is a broad and very black space extending through Fair Haven Pond over the channel, visible half a mile off, where the ice is thinnest and saturated with water. See March 30, 1852 (" From the Cliffs I see that Fair Haven Pond is open over the channel of the river, - which is in fact thus only revealed, of the same width as elsewhere, running from the end of Baker's Wood to the point of the Island. The slight current there has worn away the ice. I never knew before exactly where the channel was.") See also February 28, 1857 ("Nearly one third the channel is open in Fair Haven Pond. ");. March 26, 1860 ("Fair Haven Pond may be open by the 20th of March, as this year [1860], or not till April 13 as in '56, or twenty-three days later"); March 29, 1854 ("Fair Haven half open; channel wholly open. Thin cakes of ice at a distance now and then blown up on their edges glistening in the sun.").

I see a bush of the early willow . . . whose catkins are conspicuous thirty rods off, very decidedly green, three eighths of an inch by measure.  See February 19, 1857 ("Some willow catkins have crept a quarter of an inch from under their scales and look very red, probably on account of the warm weather"); See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding

I saw half a dozen crows on a cake of ice in the middle of the Great Meadows yesterday, evidently looking for some favorite food which is washed on to it, - snails, or cranberries perhaps. See March 22, 1854 ("See crows along the water's edge. What do they eat?"): March 22, 1855 (" I have noticed crows in the meadows ever since they were first partially bare, three weeks ago "); March 22, 1856 ("Many tracks of crows in snow along the edge of the open water against Merrick’s at Island. They thus visit the edge of water—this and brooks —before any ground is exposed. Is it for small shellfish?"); March 20, 1856 ("Perhaps these [Paludina decisa] make part of the food of the crows which visit this brook and whose tracks I now see on the edge, and have all winter. Probably they also pick up some dead frogs"); March 5, 1859 (" I see crows walking about on the ice half covered with snow in the middle of the meadows, where there is no grass, apparently to pick up the worms and other insects left there since the midwinter freshet ."). See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring:  The crowing of cocks, the cawing of crows

A hen-hawk rises and sails away over the Holden Wood as in summer. Saw and heard one scream the 2d. See March 15, 1856 ("Hear two hawks scream. There is something truly March-like in it, like a prolonged blast or whistling of the wind"); March 15, 1860 ("A hen-hawk sails away from the wood southward.  

  

These hawks, as usual, began to be common about the first of March, showing that they were returning from their winter quarters.").  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: the Hawks of March

 Aspen down a quarter of an inch out. See February 6, 1856 (" The down is just peeping out from some of the aspen buds"); February 27. 1852 ("The buds of the aspen show a part of their down or silky catkins.")

March 4. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 4

A hen-hawk rises 

and sails over Holden Wood 

as in the summer.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, True March days for wind. 

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-600304

What kind of life it must be that is lived always in sight of mountains..

May 17

Louring and more or less rainy. 

P. M. – To Ledum Swamp. 

Near Baeomyces Bank, I see the Salix humilis showing its down or cotton, and also the S. tristis. Probably the last is wholly out of bloom some time. These, then, have ripe seed before the white maple. 

It rains gently from time to time as I walk, but I see a farmer with his boys, John Hosmer, still working in the rain, bent on finishing his planting. He is slowly getting a soaking, quietly dropping manure in the furrows. 

This rain is good for thought. It is especially agreeable to me as I enter the wood and hear the soothing dripping on the leaves. It domiciliates me in nature. The woods are the more like a house for the rain; the few slight noises sound more hollow in them; the birds hop nearer; the very trees seem still and pensive. The clouds are but a higher roof. The clouds and rain confine me to near objects, the surface of the earth and the trees. 

On the first holdings up in the intervals of the rain, the chewink is heard again, and the huckleberry-bird, and the evergreen-forest note, etc. 

I am coming in sight of the Charles Miles house. What a pleasant sandy road, soaking up the rain, that from the woods to the Miles house! The house becomes a controlling feature in the landscape when there is but one or two in sight. 

The red maple tops ten days ago looked like red paint scaling off, when seen against houses. Now they have acquired a browner red. 

The Populus grandidentata now shows large, silvery, downy, but still folded, leafets. 

You are more than paid for a wet coat and feet, not only by the exhilaration that the fertile moist air imparts, but by the increased fragrance and more gem-like character of expanding buds and leafets in the rain. All vegetation is now fuller of life and expression, some what like lichens in wet weather, and the grass. Buds are set in syrup or amber. 

May 17, 2018

Measured the large apple tree in front of the Charles Miles house. It is nine feet and ten inches in circumference at two and a half feet from the ground, the smallest place below the branches, which are now four, — once five, one being cut, — starting at about five feet from the ground, and each as big as a good-sized modern tree. The top is large. The trunk looks healthy and is scarcely larger at the ground than where measured. It is large for an oak, a sturdy-looking tree, reminding one of the portly bodies of some of our grandfathers. It is not grafted. Once stood by the fence. 

While I was measuring the tree, Puffer came along, and I had a long talk with him, standing under the tree in the cool sprinkling rain till we shivered. He said that he had seen pout-spawn attached to the under side of the white lily pads! ! He thought he knew it from having seen it in their bodies. He thought that the pickerel spawn was dropped in deep water and was devoured by pouts and eels. Wondered where eels bred, and how, for he never detected any spawn in them. Had been told (like Witherell) that they gendered into, i.e. copulated with, the clam. 

Told of a winter some fifteen years ago when there was a freshet in February, and the snapping turtles thought it was spring and came up with it on to the meadows; but it froze, and the ice settled on them and killed them when the water went down, and they were found dead in great numbers in the spring, — one that must have weighed one hundred pounds. Had seen pickerel that had been frozen four or five hours brought to life in water. 

Said that the black snake laid eight or ten eggs in a field. Once killed a very large water adder, and counted over sixty little snakes in it an inch or two long, and that was not all. Once he was going along, saw a water adder and heard a low sound which it made with its mouth, and he saw as many as twenty-five little snakes run into its mouth. 

Says the foxes eat the Emys picta, which I believe he called grass turtles. He had seen where they had opened them. But they could not get at the box turtle. Found some young stake-drivers as he was mowing. 

When the hummingbird flew about the room yesterday, his body and tail hung in a singular manner be tween the wings, swinging back and forth with a sort of oscillating motion, not hanging directly down, but yet pulsating or teetering up and down. 

I see a chewink flit low across the road with its peculiar flirting, undulating motion. 

I thought yesterday that the view of the mountains from the bare hill on the Lincoln side of Flint's Pond was very grand. Surely they do not look so grand any where within twenty miles of them. 

And I reflected what kind of life it must be that is lived always in sight of them. I looked round at some windows in the middle of Lincoln and considered that such was the privilege of the inhabitants of these chambers; but their blinds were closed, and I have but little doubt that they are blind to the beauty and sublimity of this prospect. 

I doubt if in the landscape there can be anything finer than a distant mountain-range. They are a constant elevating influence.

Ranunculus acris, apparently in a day or two. 

Rhodora at Clamshell well out. 

Just after hearing my night-warbler I see two birds on a tree. 

The one which I examined — as well as I could without a glass — had a white throat with a white spot on his wings, was dark above and moved from time to time like a creeper, and it was about the creeper's size. [The plate of Sylvia Canadensis in New York Reports has since reminded me of this.]

The other bird, which I did not examine particularly, was a little larger and more tawny – Perhaps golden-crowned thrush.

It is remarkable how little way most men get in their account of the mysteries of nature. Puffer, after describing the habits of a snake or turtle, – some peculiarity which struck him in its behavior, — would say with a remarkable air as if he were communicating or suggesting something, possibly explaining something, “Now I take it that is Nature; Nature did that.”

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 17, 1858 

The clouds and rain confine me to near objects, the surface of the earth and the trees. See August 4, 1854 ("Rain and mist contract our horizon and we notice near and small objects"); September 20, 1857 ("The outlines of trees are more conspicuous and interesting such a day as this, being seen distinctly against the near misty background, – distinct and dark. "); December 16, 1855 ("The mist makes the near trees dark and noticeable, like pictures, and makes the houses more interesting, revealing but one at a time."); ;February 6, 1852 (A mistiness makes the woods look denser, darker and more primitive.); November 29, 1850 ("The trees and shrubs look larger than usual when seen through the mist...As you advance, the trees gradually come out of the mist and take form before your eyes.") See also November 7, 1855 ("I find it good to be out this still, dark, mizzling afternoon . . .The world and my life are simplified.")

Just after hearing my night-warbler I see two birds. See  May 16, 1858 ("A golden-crowned thrush hops quite near . . . Hear the night warbler."); May 19 , 1858. ("Heard the night-warbler begin his strain just like an oven-bird!") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  The Oven-bird

The month of the crusted snow.

February 28

P. M. —To Nut Meadow. 

How various are the talents of men! From the brook in which one lover of nature has never during all his lifetime detected anything larger than a minnow, an other extracts a trout that weighs three pounds, or an otter four feet long. How much more game he will see who carries a gun, i. e. who goes to see it! Though you roam the woods all your days, you never will see by chance what he sees who goes on purpose to see it. 

February 28, 2021

I go on the crust which we have had since the 13th, i. e. on the solid frozen snow, which settles very gradually in the sun, across the fields and brooks. 

The very beginning of the river’s breaking up appears to be the oozing of water through cracks in the thinnest places, and standing in shallow puddles there on the ice, which freeze solid at night. The river and brooks are quite shrunken. The brooks flow far under the hollow ice and snow-crust a foot thick, which here and there has fallen in, showing the shrunken stream far below. The surface of the snow melts into a regular waved form, like raised scales. 

Miles is repairing the damage done at his new mill by the dam giving way. He is shovelling out the flume, which was half filled with sand, standing in the water. His sawmill, built of slabs, reminds me of a new country. He has lost a head of water equal to two feet by this accident. Yet he sets his mill agoing to show me how it works. 

What a smell as of gun-wash when he raised the gate! He calls it the sulphur from the pond. It must be the carburetted hydrogen gas from the bottom of the pond under the ice. It powerfully scents the whole mill. A powerful smelling-bottle.

How pleasant are the surroundings of a mill! Here are the logs (pail stuff), already drawn to the door from a neighboring hill before the mill is in operation. The dammed-up meadow, the melted snow, and welling springs are the serf he compels to do his work. He is unruly as yet, has lately broken loose, filled up the flume, and flooded the fields below. He uses the dam of an old mill which stood here a hundred years ago, which now nobody knows anything about. The mill is built of slabs, of the worm-eaten sap-wood. The old dam had probably been undermined by muskrats. It would have been most prudent to have built a new one. Rude forces, rude men, and rude appliances.   

That strong gun-wash scent from the mill-pond water was very encouraging. I who never partake of the sacrament make the more of it. 

How simple the machinery of the mill! Miles has dammed a stream, raised a pond or head of water, and placed an old horizontal mill-wheel in position to receive a jet of water on its buckets, transferred the motion to a horizontal shaft and saw by a few cog wheels and simple gearing, and, throwing a roof of slabs over all, at the outlet of the pond, you have a mill. 

A weight of water stored up in a meadow, applied to move a saw, which scratches its way through the trees placed before it. So simple is a sawmill. A millwright comes and builds a dam across the foot of the meadow, and a mill-pond is created, in which, at length, fishes of various kinds are found; and muskrats and minks and otter frequent it.

The pond is like a weight wound up.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  February 28, 1856

You never will see by chance what he sees who goes on purpose to see it. See April 8, 1856 ("Most countrymen might paddle five miles along the river now and not see one muskrat, while a sportsman a quarter of a mile before or behind would be shooting one or more every five minutes."); November 4, 1858 ("You will see, and much more, if you are prepared to see it  – if you look for it  . . . The true sportsman can shoot you almost any of his game from his windows. It comes and perches at last on the barrel of his gun; but the rest of the world never see it with the feathers on. He will keep himself supplied by firing up his chimney. The geese fly exactly under his zenith, and honk when they get there.");  Compare August 5, 1851 ("The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”); August 21, 1851 ("You must walk sometimes perfectly free, not prying nor inquisitive, not bent upon seeing things"); November 18 1851 ("The chopper who works in the woods all day is more open in some respects to the impressions they are fitted to make than the naturalist who goes to see them. He really forgets himself, forgets to observe, and at night he dreams of the swamp, its phenomena and events. Not so the naturalist; enough of his unconscious life does not pass there. A man can hardly be said to be there if he knows that he is there, or to go there if he knows where he is going. The man who is bent upon his work is frequently in the best attitude to observe what is irrelevant to his work."); September 13, 1852 ("I must walk more with free senses. I must let my senses wander as my thoughts, my eyes see without looking. Carlyle said that how to observe was to look, but I say that it is rather to see, and the more you look the less you will observe. Be not preoccupied with looking. Go not to the object; let it come to you. What I need is not to look at all, but a true sauntering of the eye.”); March 23, 1853 ("Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye.”); June 14, 1853 ("You are in that favorable frame of mind described by De Quincey, open to great impressions, and you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye, which you could not see by a direct gaze before.”); December 11, 1855 ("I saw this familiar fact at a different angle. It is only necessary to behold thus the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance. To perceive freshly, with fresh senses, is to be inspired.”); April 13, 1860 (“It distinctly occurred to me that, perhaps, if I came against my will, as it were, to look at the sweet-gale as a matter of business, I might discover something else interesting.”)

I go on the crust which we have had since the 13th . . . across the fields and brooks.  See February 13, 1856 ("This fall of 42° from 8.30 A. M. yesterday to the same time to-day has produced not a thin and smooth, but a very firm and thick, uneven crust, on which I go in any direction across the fields.); February 14, 1856 ("I can now walk on the crust in every direction at the Andromeda Swamp;"); February 25, 1856 ("The crust still bears, and I leave the railroad at Andromeda Ponds and go through on crust to Fair Haven."); See also February 9, 1851 ("Now I travel across the fields on the frozen crust . . . It is easier to get about the country than at any other season."); February 9, 1852 ("This is our month of the crusted snow."); February 14, 1852   ("Latterly we have had, i.e. within a week, crusted snow, made by thaw and rain."); February 17, 1854 ("In the early part of winter there was no walking on the snow, but after January. . . you could walk on the snow-crust pretty well."); February 19, 1855 ("Rufus Hosmer says that in the year 1820 there was so smooth and strong an icy crust on a very deep snow that you could skate everywhere over the fields and for the most part over the fences."); February 29, 1852 ("From Pine Hill, looking westward, I see the snowcrust shine in the sun as far as the eye can reach.")_

The carburetted hydrogen gas from the bottom of the pond under the ice. See July 9, 1857 ("Am surprised to find how much carburetted hydrogen gas there is in the beds of sawdust by the side of this stream."); July 14, 1857 ("Set fire to the carburetted hydrogen from the sawdust shoal with matches, and heard it flash.")

Across fields and brooks

I go on the crust, on the 

solid frozen snow.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The month of the crusted snow

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 ©  2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560228

The song of the robin is most suggestive in cloudy weather.

May 14

First kingbird. Its voice and flight relate it to the swallow. 

The maple-keys are already formed, though the male blossoms (on different trees) are not withered.

Going over the Corner causeway, the willow blossoms fill the air with a sweet fragrance, and I am ready to sing, Ah! willow, willow! These willows have yellow bark, bear yellow flowers and yellowish-green leaves, and are now haunted by the summer yellowbird and Maryland yellow-throat. 

They see this now conspicuous mass of yellowish verdure at a distance and fly to it. Single large willows at distance are great nosegays of yellow. This orchard precedes the peach and apple weeks. 

The Salix nigra (?) is leafing out now with its catkins appearing.

The sounds and sights — as birds and flowers — heard and seen at those seasons when there are fewest are most memorable and suggestive of poetic associations.

 The trillium is budded. 

bellwort
May 14, 2017

The Uvularia sessilifolio, a drooping flower with tender stems and leaves; the latter curled so as to show their under sides hanging about the stems, as if shrinking from the cold.

The Ranunculus bulbosus  shows its yellow by this spring thus early (Corner Spring).

The grass is now whitened with bluets; the fields are green, and the roadsides. (I am on the C. Miles road.) Now is the season to travel.

The deciduous trees are rapidly investing the evergreens, making the woods rich and bosky by degrees. 

The robin sings this louring day. They sang most in and about that great freshet storm. The song of the robin is most suggestive in cloudy weather. 

I have not heard any toads during this rain (of which this is the third day), and very few peepers. 

The beautiful birch catkins hang down four inches.

Saw a whip-poor-will sitting in the path in woods on the mill road, — the brown mottled bird. It flutters off blindly, with slow, soft flight. 

Most birds are silent in the storm. Hear the robin, oven-bird, night warbler, and, at length, the towhee's towee, chickadee's phoebe, and a preluding thrasher and a jay.

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, May 14, 1852

The Uvularia sessilifolio, a drooping flower with tender stems and leaves. See  May 16, 1852 ("When you turn up the drooping flower, its petals make a perfect geometrical figure, a six-pointed star.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Bellworts

The Ranunculus bulbosus shows it by this spring thus early (Corner Spring)s yellow. See May 14, 1853 ("The glossy or varnished yellow of buttercups (bulbosus, also abundant, some days out) spots the hillside.") See also May 17, 1856 ("Ranunculus bulbosils a day or two at least.")May 29, 1859 ("The Ranunculus bulbosus are apparently in prime."); May 29, 1857 ("Ranunculus bulbosus in bloom.");

The deciduous trees are rapidly investing the evergreens, making the woods rich and bosky by degrees. See May 18, 1852 ("They are now being invested with the light, sunny, yellowish-green of the deciduous trees.”) May 22, 1855 ("The deciduous trees leafing begin to clothe or invest the evergreens.”); June 9, 1852 (“The deciduous trees have filled up the intervals between the evergreens, and the woods are bosky now.”)

The song of the robin is most suggestive in cloudy weather. See April 26, 1855 ("We see and hear more birds than usual this mizzling and still day, and the robin sings with more vigor and promise than later in the season.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring

May 14. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, May 14.

The sounds and sights of

birds and flowers heard and seen

when they are fewest.

Are there no works written in the language of the flowers?

February 6

The artificial system has been very properly called the dictionary, and the natural method, the grammar, of the science of botany, by botanists themselves. But are we to have nothing but grammars and dictionaries in this literature? 

Are there no works written in the language of the flowers? I asked a learned and accurate naturalist, who is at the same time the courteous guardian of a public library, to direct me to those works which contained the more particular popular account, or biography, of particular flowers, from which the botanies I had met with appeared to draw sparingly, - for I trusted that each flower had had many lovers and faithful describers in past times, but he informed me that I had read all; that no one was acquainted with them, they were only catalogued like his books. 

3 P. M. Round by C. Miles's place.

It is still thawy. A mistiness makes the woods look denser, darker, and more imposing.

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.  Methinks I would have lichens on some of my rails.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 6, 1852

Are there no works written in the language of the flowers? See February 5, 1852 ("I suspect that the child plucks its first flower with an insight into its beauty and significance which the subsequent botanist never retains.");  December 16, 1859 ("To Cambridge, where I read in Gerard's Herbal. His admirable though quaint descriptions are, to my mind, greatly superior to the modern more scientific ones. He describes not according to rule but to his natural delight in the plants. He brings them vividly before you, as one who has seen and delighted in them. It is almost as good as to see the plants themselves."); September 22, 1860 (" I rarely read a sentence in a new botany which reminds me of flowers or living plants. The early botanists, like Gerard, were prompted and compelled to describe their plants, but most nowadays only measure them, as it were.The former is affected by what he sees and so inspired to portray it; the latter merely fills out a schedule prepared for him. . . very few indeed write as if they had seen the thing they pretend to describe.")

A mistiness makes the woods look denser, darker, and more imposing. See  November 29, 1850 ("The trees and shrubs look larger than usual when seen through the mist..."); April 22, 1852 ("The mist to-day makes those near distances which Gilpin tells of."); August 4, 1854 ("Rain and mist contract our horizon and we notice near and small objects."); January 11, 1855 ("the air so thick with snowflakes . . .Single pines stand out distinctly against it in the near horizon"); November 7, 1855 ("The view is contracted by the misty rain . . . I am compelled to look at near objects.");  December 16, 1855 ("The mist makes the near trees dark and noticeable"); February 7, 1856  ("During the rain the air is thick, the distant woods bluish, and the single trees on the hill, under the dull mist-covered sky, remarkably distinct and black."); September 20, 1857 ("The outlines of trees are more conspicuous and interesting such a day as this, being seen distinctly against the near misty background, – distinct and dark.");January 13, 1859 ("I can see about a quarter of a mile through the mist, and when, later, it is somewhat thinner, the woods, the pine woods, at a distance are a dark-blue color."); February 7, 1859 ("Evidently the distant woods are more blue in a warm and moist or misty day in winter.")

Near the C. Miles house there are some remarkably yellow lichens on the rails, -- ever as if the sun were about to shine forth clearly. See February 5, 1853 ("It is a lichen day. . . . All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one to-day, - a sudden humid growth.”); February 7, 1859 ("Going along the Nut Meadow or Jimmy Miles road, when I see the sulphur lichens on the rails brightening with the moisture.")

February  6. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 6

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, I love you like I love the sky

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 © 2009-2022