You will no sooner have got your pond dug than nature will begin to stock it.

October 10

In August, '55, I levelled for the artificial pond at Sleepy Hollow. They dug gradually for three or four years and completed the pond last year, '59.

It is now about a dozen rods long by five or six wide and two or three deep, and is supplied by copious springs in the meadow. There is a long ditch leading into it, in which no water now flows, nor has since winter at least, and a short ditch leading out of it into the brook. It is about sixty rods from the very source of the brook.

Well, in this pond thus dug in the midst of a meadow a year or two ago and supplied by springs in the meadow I find to-day several small patches of the large yellow and the kalmiana lily already established. Thus in the midst of death we are in life.

. . . The river, where these abound, is about half a mile distant down the little brook near which this pond lies, though there may be a few pads in the ditched part of it at half that distance.

How then, did the seed get here?

...

You have only to dig a pond anywhere in the fields hereabouts, and you will soon have not only water-fowl, reptiles, and fishes in it, but also the usual water-plants, as lilies, etc. You will no sooner have got your pond dug than nature will begin to stock it.

P. M. -- Went to a fire or smoke at Mrs. Hoar's.

There is a slight blaze and more smoke. Two or three hundred men rush to the house, cut large holes in the roof, throw many hogsheads of water into it, — when a few pails full well directed would suffice, and then they run off again, leaving your attic three inches deep with water, which is rapidly descending through the ceiling to the basement and spoiling all that can be spoiled, while a torrent is running down the stairways.

They were very forward to put out the [fire], but they take no pains to put out the water, which does far more damage. The first was amusement; the last would be mere work and utility.

Why is there not a little machine invented to throw the water out of a house?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 10, 1860

When the woodpeckers visit your woods in great numbers.

March 3

Wednesday. 

Moore's larch trees beyond Sleepy Hollow cut this winter. They were much decayed. 

The woodpeckers had stripped many of bark in pursuit of grubs. When the woodpeckers visit your woods in great numbers, you may suspect that it is time to cut them. 

The chopper does not complain of cutting the larch, but when he comes to the splitting there's the rub. The grain runs almost round a four-foot stick sometimes. They make good posts.

 

Are those poplars whose buds I have seen so much expanded for a week or more a new species to me ? The river poplar ? [No.]

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 3, 1852

Cut this winter. December 14, 1851 ("I hear the small woodpecker whistle as he flies to ward the leafless wood on Fair Haven, doomed to be cut this winter."); January 21, 1852 ("This winter they are cutting down our woods more seriously than ever,--Fair Haven hill, Walden, Linnaea, Borealis Wood, etc., etc. Thank God, they cannot cut down the clouds!"); January 22, 1852 ("It concerns us all whether these proprietors choose to cut down all the woods this winter or not"); March 11, 1852 (The woods I walked in in my youth are cut off. Is it not time that I ceased to sing?")

Moore's larch trees beyond Sleepy Hollow. See June 6, 1853 ("The larch grows in both Moore's and Pedrick’s swamps. Do not the trees that grow there indicate the depth of the swamp?")

March 3.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau March 3

Fully blossomed cone —

winged black seeds half fill my hand

like tiny fishes.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,

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

The first drops of rain begin to be heard on the dry leaves around me.

March 22. 

P. M. — The wind changes to easterly and is more raw, i. e. cool and moist, and the air thickens as if it would rain. 

Returning from Poplar Hill through the west end of Sleepy Hollow, it is very still, the air thick, just ready to rain, and I hear there, on the apple trees and small oaks, the tree sparrows and hyemalis singing very pleasantly. 

I hear the lively jingle of the hyemalis and the sweet notes of the tree sparrow, canary-like, — svar svar, svit vit vit vit vit, the last part with increasing rapidity. Both species in considerable numbers, singing together as they flit along, make a very lively concert. They sing as loud and full as ever now. There has been no sweeter warble than this of the tree sparrow as yet. 

It is a peculiarly still hour now, when the first drops of rain begin to be heard on the dry leaves around me, and, looking up, I see very high in the air two large birds, which, at that height, with their narrow wings, flying southeast, looked, i. e. were shaped, like night-hawks. I think they were gulls. 

The great scarlet oak has now lost almost every leaf, while the white oak near it still retains them. 

C. says he saw fox-colored sparrows this afternoon.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 22, 1859

I hear the lively jingle of the hyemalis and the sweet notes of the tree sparrow,. . . There has been no sweeter warble than this of the tree sparrow as yet. See March 15, 1854 ("Hear on the alders by the river the lill lill lill lill of the first F. hyemalis, mingled with song sparrows and tree sparrows."); March 20, 1855 ("At my landing I hear the F. hyemalis, in company with a few tree sparrows."); March 20, 1858 ("The tree sparrow is perhaps the sweetest and most melodious warbler at present and for some days."); April 8, 1855 ("Also song sparrows and tree sparrows and F. hyemalis are heard in the yard. The fox-colored sparrow is also there. The tree sparrows have been very musical for several mornings, somewhat canary-like"); April 23, 1854 ("A rain is sure to bring the tree sparrow and hyemalis to the gardens"). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Dark-eyed Junco; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Tree Sparrow; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, the note of the dark-eyed junco going northward

The air thickens as if it would rain . . It is a peculiarly still hour now, when the first drops of rain begin to be heard on the dry leaves around me. See July 16, 1852 ("This is a still thoughtful day, the air full of vapors which shade the earth, preparing rain for the morrow.")

The great scarlet oak has now lost almost every leaf, while the white oak near it still retains them. See October 26, 1858 ("The largest scarlet oak that I remember hereabouts stands by the penthorum pool in the Sleepy Hollow cemetery, and is now in its prime."); December 11, 1858 ("The large scarlet oak in the cemetery has leaves on the lower limbs near the trunk just like the large white oaks now.");  January 19, 1859 {"Our largest scarlet oak (by the Hollow), some three feet diameter at three feet from ground, has more leaves than the large white oak close by.")

The first drops of rain 

begin to be heard on the 

dry leaves around me.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The first drops of rain 

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt590322

The green bitterns are leaving the nest now.

August 1. 

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

August 1, 2019

The radical or immersed leaves of the pontederia are linear and grass-like, and I see that I have mistaken them for vallisneria just springing from the bottom. The leaves of new plants are just reaching and leaving the surface now, like spoons on the end of long handles. 

Edward Bartlett and another brought me a green bittern, this year’s bird, apparently full grown but not full plumaged, which they caught near the pool on A. Heywood’s land behind Sleepy Hollow. They caught it in the woods on the hillside. 

It had not yet acquired the long feathers of the neck. The neck was bent back on itself an inch or more,— that part being bare of feathers and covered by the long feathers from above, — so that it did not appear very long until stretched out. This doubling was the usual condition and not apparent, but could be felt by the hand. 

So the green bitterns are leaving the nest now.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 1, 1858

So the green bitterns are leaving the nest now. See July 29, 1859 ("Heard from a bittern, a peculiar hoarse, grating note, lazily uttered as it flew over the meadows."); July 30, 1856 ("A green bittern. . .with heavy flapping flight, ts legs dangling"); August 2, 1856 ("A green bittern comes, noiselessly flapping, with stealthy and inquisitive looking to this side the stream and then that, thirty feet above the water. ")

Felling the big elm, which must have been some fifty years old when the British marched into town.

January 21.

January 21, 2016

Four men, cutting at once, began to fell the big elm at 10 A. M., went to dinner at 12, and got through at 2.30 P. M. They used a block and tackle with five falls, fastened to the base of a button wood, and drawn by a horse, to pull it over the right way; so it fell without harm down the road. One said he pulled twenty turns. 

I measured it at 3 P. M., just after the top had been cut off. It was 15 feet to the first crotch. At 75 feet, the most upright and probably highest limb was cut off, and measured 27 inches in circumference. As near as I could tell from the twigs on the snow, and what the choppers said who had just removed the top, it was about 108 feet high. 

At 15 feet from the stump, it divided into two parts, about an equal size. One was decayed and broken in the fall, being undermost, the other (which also proved hollow) at its origin was 11' 4" in circumference. (The whole tree directly beneath this crotch was 9' 3"round.) 

This same limb branched again at 36' 8" from the stump, and there measured, just beneath the crotch, 14' 10" in circumference. At the ground the stump measured 8' 4" one way, 8' 3" another, 7' 6" another. 

It was solid quite through at butt (excepting 3 inches in middle), though some what decayed within, and I could count pretty well 105 rings, not including the hollow.  

There was a currant bush opposite the first crotch, in a large hole at that height, where probably a limb once broke off (making three there), and also a great many stones bigger than a hen’s egg, probably cast in by the boys. There was also part of an old brick with some clay, thirty or forty years within the tree at the stump, completely overgrown and cut through by the axe. 

I judged that there were at least seven cords then in the road, supposing one main limb sound, and Davis thought that the pile in the yard, from the limbs taken off last week, contained four more. 

He said that there were some flying squirrels within and upon it when they were taking off the limbs. There was scarcely any hollowness to be discovered.

It had grown very rapidly the first fifty years or so. You could see where there had once been deep clefts between different portions of the trunk at the stump, but the tree had afterward united and overgrown them, leaving some bark within the wood. 

In some places the trunk as it lay on the ground (though flatwise) was as high as a man’s head. 

This tree stood directly under the hill, which is some sixty feet high, the old burying hill continued, south of where the flagstaff was planted when the British marched into town. This tree must have been some fifty years old and quite sizable then. 

White, when taking off the limbs, said that he could see all over Sleepy Hollow, beyond the hill. There were several great wens on the trunk, a foot in diameter and nearly as much in height. 

The tree was so sound I think it might have lived fifty years longer; but Mrs. Davis said that she would not like to spend another such a week as the last before it was cut down. They heard it creak in the storm. One of the great limbs which reached over the house was cracked. The two main limbs proved hollow.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 21, 1856

Four men, cutting at once, began to fell the big elm. See January 19, 1856 ("Measure again the great elm in front of Charles Davis’s on the Boston road, which he is having cut down. . . .At the smallest place between the ground and the limbs, seven feet from the ground, it is fifteen feet and two inches in circumference; at one foot from the ground on the lowest side, twenty-three feet and nine inches."); January 22, 1856 ("Most were not aware of the size of the great elm till it was cut down. . . . I have attended the felling and, so to speak, the funeral of this old citizen of the town."); January 26, 1856 ("It was one hundred and thirty-two years old, or came up in the year 1724, just before Lovewell’s Fight.")

Warm wind, blue haze and russet earth

March 5

To Beck Stow’s. 

A strong but warm southwesterly wind has produced a remarkable haze. As I go along by Sleepy Hollow, this strong, warm wind, rustling the leaves on the hillsides, this blue haze, and the russet earth seen through it, remind me that a new season has come. 

There was the less thick, more remotely blue, haze of the 11th February, succeeded by a thaw, beginning on the 14th. Will not rain follow this much thicker haze?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 5, 1855

A strong but warm southwesterly wind has produced a remarkable haze. . . . a new season has come. See February 21, 1855 (“What is the peculiarity in the air that both the invalid in the chamber and the traveller on the highway say these are perfect March days? The wind is rapidly drying up earth . . . How much light there is in the sky and on the surface of the russet earth! ”); March 2, 1854 ("What produces the peculiar softness of the air yesterday and to-day, as if it were the air of the south suddenly pillowed amid our wintry hills? . . .”); March 12, 1854 (“ . . .that peculiar scenery of March . . . is like, yet unlike, November; you have the same barren russet, but now, instead of a dry, hard, cold wind, a peculiarly soft, moist air, or else a raw wind.”)

Warm wind rustling leaves

russet earth seen through blue haze –

a new season comes.

Raw, thick, misty weather: the honking of geese.

March 14.

A. M. — Threatening rain after clear morning. Great concert of song sparrows in willows and alders along Swamp Bridge Brook by river. Hardly hear a distinct strain.

Alder scales are visibly loosened, their lower edges (i. e. as they hang) showing a line of yellowish or greenish.

P. M. — To Great Meadows. Raw thickening mists, as if preceding rain. Count over forty robins with my glass in the meadow north of Sleepy Hollow, in the grass and on the snow.

From within the house at 5.30 p. m. I hear the loud honking of geese, throw up the window, and see a large flock in disordered harrow flying more directly north or even northwest than usual. Raw, thick, misty weather.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 14, 1854

Great concert of song sparrows by river. Hardly hear a distinct strain. See 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."); See March 18, 1852 ("I hear the song sparrow's simple strain, most genuine herald of the spring.”)

I hear the loud honking of geese . . .. Raw, thick, misty weather. See March 10, 1854 ("We always have much of this rainy, drizzling, misty weather in early spring, after which we expect to hear geese.")

My life partakes of infinity.

March 15

This afternoon I throw off my outside coat. A mild spring day.  The air is full of bluebirds. The ground almost entirely bare. The villagers are out in the sun, and every man is happy whose work takes him outdoors. 

March 15, 2022

I go by Sleepy Hollow toward the Great Fields. I lean over a rail to hear what is in the air, liquid with the bluebirds' warble. My life partakes of infinity.

I go forth to make new demands on life. I wish to begin this summer well; to do something in it worthy of it and of me; to transcend my daily routine and that of my townsmen; to have my immortality now , that it be in the quality of my daily life. I pray that the life of this spring and summer may ever lie fair in my memory.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 15, 1852

This afternoon I throw off my outside coat.  See March 10, 1853 ("This is the first really spring day . . . You do not think it necessary to button up your coat.");  March 30, 1860 (" It is time to begin to leave your greatcoat at home, to put on shoes instead of boots and feel lightfooted."); See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring; My Greatcoat on my Arm

Every man is happy whose work takes him outdoors.  See November 4, 1852 ("I keep out-of-doors for the sake of the mineral, vegetable, and animal in me."); November 13, 1857 ("See the sun rise or set if possible each day.") September 13, 1859 ("You must be outdoors long, early and late."); December 29, 1856 (“We must go out and re-ally ourselves to Nature every day. . . .. Staying in the house breeds a sort of insanity always.”)

I lean over a rail to hear what is in the air, liquid with the bluebirds' warble  See March 7, 1854 ("Hear the first bluebird, — something like pe-a-wor, — and then other slight warblings, as if farther off. ");  March 10, 1852 ("I see flocks of a dozen bluebirds together. The warble of this bird is innocent and celestial, like its color. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring:   Listening for the Bluebird

My life partakes of infinity. See September 7, 1851 ("We are receiving our portion of the infinite. We are surrounded by a rich and fertile mystery. May we not probe it, pry into it, employ ourselves about it, a little?")

On this mild spring day

my life partakes of bluebirds

and infinity.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, My life partakes of infinity

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-520315

March 15.

This afternoon I throw off my outside coat.
A mild spring day.
I must hie to the Great Meadows.
The air is full of bluebirds.
The ground almost entirely bare.
The villagers are out in the sun, and every man is happy whose work takes him outdoors.
I go by Sleepy Hollow toward the Great Fields.
I lean over a rail to hear what is in the air, liquid with the blue birds ' warble.
My life partakes of infinity.
The air is as deep as our natures.
Is the drawing in of this vital air attended with no more glorious results than I witness?
The air is a velvet cushion against which I press my ear.

I go forth to make new demands on life.
I wish to begin this summer well;

•  to do something in it worthy of it and of me;
•  to transcend my daily routine and that of my townsmen; 
• to have my immortality now, that it be in the quality of my daily life;
•  to pay the greatest price, the greatest tax, of any man in Concord, and enjoy the most!! 

I  will give all I am for my nobility.

I will pay all my days for my success.

I pray that the life of this spring and summer may ever lie fair in my memory.

• May I dare as I have never done! 
• May I persevere as I have never done! 
• May I purify myself anew as with fire and water, soul and body! 
• May my melody not be wanting to the season! 
• May I gird myself to be a hunter of the beautiful, that naught escape me! 
• May I attain to a youth never attained! 

I am eager to report the glory of the universe; may I be worthy to do it; to have got through with regarding human values, so as not to be distracted from regarding divine values.
It is reasonable that a man should be something worthier at the end of the year than he was at the beginning.

Yesterday's rain, in which I was glad to be drenched, has advanced the spring, settled the ways, and the old footpath and the brook and the plank bridge behind the hill are suddenly uncovered, which have [ been ] buried so long; as if we had returned to our earth after an absence, and took pleasure in finding things so nearly in the state in which we left them.

We go out without our coats, saunter along the street, look at the aments of the willow beginning to appear and the swelling buds of the maple and the elm.

The Great Meadows are water instead of ice.
I see the ice on the bottom in white sheets.
And now one great cake rises amid the bushes (behind Peter's).
I see no ducks.
Most men find farming unprofitable; but there are some who can get their living anywhere.
If you set them down on a bare rock they will thrive there.
The true farmer is to those who come after him and take the benefit of his improvements, like the lichen which plants itself on the bare rock, and grows and thrives and cracks it and makes a vegetable mould, to the garden vegetable which grows in it.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 15, 1852

A dug pond

October 10.


In August, '55, I levelled for the artificial pond at Sleepy Hollow. They dug gradually for three or four years and completed the pond last year, '59. It is now about a dozen rods long by five or six wide and two or three deep, and is supplied by copious springs in the meadow.

You have only to dig a pond anywhere in the fields hereabouts, and you will soon have not only water-fowl, reptiles, and fishes in it, but also the usual water-plants, as lilies, etc. You will no sooner have got your pond dug than nature will begin to stock it.

P. M. Went to a fire or smoke — at Mrs. Hoar's. 

There is a slight blaze and more smoke. Two or three hundred men rush to the house, cut large holes in the roof, throw many hogsheads of water into it, — when a few pails full well directed would suffice, — and then they run off again, leaving your attic three inches deep with water, which is rapidly descending through the ceiling to the basement and spoiling all that can be spoiled, while a torrent is running down the stairways. They were very forward to put out the fire, but they take no pains to put out the water, which does far more damage. The first was amusement; the last would be mere work and utility. Why is there not a little machine invented to throw the water out of a house?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 10, 1860

October 10. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  October 10