Each town should have a park, or rather a primitive forest, a common possession forever, for instruction and recreation

October 15. 

P. M. — To Botrychium Swamp. 

A cold northwest wind. 

I see some black oak acorns on the trees still and in some places at least half the shrub oak acorns. The last are handsomer now that they have turned so much darker. 

I go along the east edge of Poplar Hill. This very cold and windy day, now that so many leaves have fallen, I begin to notice the silveriness of willows blown up in the wind, — a November sight. 

The hickories at Poplar Hill (and elsewhere, as far as I perceive) are all past prime now and most half-withered or bare, very different from last year. In warmer autumns, if I remember rightly, they last several weeks later than this in some localities, one succeeding an other with its splendid glow, an evidence of the genial-ness of the season. In cool and moist places, in a genial year, some are preserved green after others have changed, and by their later change and glow they prolong the season of autumnal tints very agreeably. 

This is a cold fall. 

The larches in A. Heywood's swamp, though a yellower green than the white pines, are not yet sharply distinguished from them by their form, as they will be. 

The oaks generally are very fair now at a distance. 

Standing on this hilltop this cold and blustering day, when dark and slate-colored clouds are flitting over the sky, the beauty of the scenery is enhanced by the contrast in the short intervals of sunshine. The whole surface of the country, both young woodlands and full- grown forests, whether they clothe sides of hills or their lit tops are seen over a ridge, — the birch phalanxes and huckleberry flocks [?], etc., — even to the horizon, is like a rug of many brilliant colors, with the towns in the more open and tawny spaces. 

The beauty or effect of the scene is enhanced, if, standing here, you see far in the horizon the red regiments of oaks alternately lit up by the sun and dimmed by the passing shadow of a cloud. As the shadows of these cold clouds flit across the landscape, the red banners of distant forests are lit up or disappear like the colors of a thousand regiments. 

Pratt says that he planted a ground-nut in his garden in good soil, but they grew no bigger than a bean. He did not know but it would take more than one year, even if he planted the tuber. 

The yellow birches are generally bare. 

Juniperus repens leaves have fallen, perhaps with red cedar.

The ash trees I see to-day are quite bare, apparently several or some days. 

The little leaves of the mitchella, with a whitish midrib and veins, lying generally flat on the mossy ground, perhaps about the base of a tree, with their bright-scarlet twin berries sprinkled over them, may properly be said to checker the ground. Now, particularly, they are noticed amid the fallen leaves. 

The bayberry leaves have fallen, and all the berries are gone. I suppose the birds have eaten them. 

Mountain laurel leaves are fallen. 

The yellow birches are bare, revealing the fruit (the short, thick brown catkins) now ripe and ready to scale off. How full the trees are! About as thick as the leaves were. 

The fever-bush is for the most part bare, and I see no berries. 

Rhus radicans too is bare. 

The maidenhair is for the most part withered. It is not evergreen, then. 

The mountain sumach which I see is bare, and some smooth ditto. 

That appears to be Aspidium cristatum which I find evergreen in swamps, but no fertile fronds now. It is broader and denser than the plate of the English one. It cannot be a described variety of spinulosum, for it is only once pinnate. 

I think I see myrtle-birds on white birches, and that they are the birds I saw on them a week or two ago, — apparently, or probably, after the birch lice. 

See a Fringilla hyemalis. 

The chickadees sing as if at home. They are not travelling singers hired by any Barnum. Theirs is an honest, homely, heartfelt melody. Shall not the voice of man express as much content as the note of a bird?  

Botrychium Lunaria has shed pollen, how long? 

The little larches in midst of Gowing's Swamp already changed, before others elsewhere. 

Each town should have a park, or rather a primitive forest, of five hundred or a thousand acres, where a stick should never be cut for fuel, a common possession forever, for instruction and recreation. We hear of cow-commons and ministerial lots, but we want men- commons and lay lots, inalienable forever. Let us keep the New World new, preserve all the advantages of living in the country. There is meadow and pasture and wood-lot for the town's poor. Why not a forest and huckleberry-field for the town's rich? All Walden Wood might have been preserved for our park forever, with Walden in its midst, and the Easterbrooks Country, an unoccupied area of some four square miles, might have been our huckleberry-field. 

If any owners of these tracts are about to leave the world without natural heirs who need or deserve to be specially remembered, they will do wisely to abandon their possession to all, and not will them to some individual who perhaps has enough already. As some give to Harvard College or another institution, why might not another give a forest or huckleberry-field to Concord? A town is an institution which deserves to be remembered. 

We boast of our system of education, but why stop at schoolmasters and schoolhouses? We are all schoolmasters, and our school-house is the universe. To attend chiefly to the desk or schoolhouse while we neglect the scenery in which it is placed is absurd. If we do not look out we shall find our fine schoolhouse standing in a cow-yard at last. 

The Kalmia glauca, now falling, is quite a brilliant scarlet. In this case you have the fresh liquid-green leaves of this year above the brilliant scarlet ones of last year. Most other evergreens exhibit only a contrast of green with yellow or yellowish. 

The balm-of-Gileads by Mrs. Ripley's bare. Those beyond Barrett's Bridge green and full of leaves. 

The spruce leaves have fallen, — how long? — and its seeds are falling. Larch seeds falling. 

Celtis berries ripe, how long? 

Solanum Dulcamara berries linger over water but mostly are shrivelled. 

Canoe birch is now at least half fallen or more, apparently with the small white; looks in color like an aspen.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 15, 1859

The hickories at Poplar Hill (and elsewhere, as far as I perceive) are all past prime now and most half-withered or bare, very different from last year. See October 15, 1858 ("Small hickories are the clearest and most delicate yellow in the shade of the woods.") See also October 8, 1856 ("The hickory leaves are among the handsomest now, varying from green through yellow, more or less broadly green-striped on the principal veins, to pure yellow, at first almost lemon-yellow, at last browner and crisped. This mingling of yellow and green on the same leaf, the green next the veins where the life is most persistent, is very pleasing."); October 22, 1857 ("The hickory leaves, now after they have fallen, are often if not oftenest a dark rich yellow, very conspicuous upon the brown leaves of the forest floor, seeming to have more life in them than those leaves which are brown."); October 4, 1858 ("The hickories on the northwest side of this hill are in the prime of their color, of a rich orange; some intimately mixed with green, handsomer than those that are wholly changed.")

The chickadees sing as if at home. Theirs is an honest, homely, heartfelt melody. See note to October 15, 1856 ("The chickadees are hopping near on the hemlock above. They resume their winter ways before the winter comes. A great part of the hemlock seeds fallen.")

The balm-of-Gileads by Mrs. Ripley's bare. Those beyond Barrett's Bridge green and full of leaves. See October 15,1858 ("The balm-of-Gileads are half bare. ")

Is not the rainbow a faint vision of God's face?

June 22. 

8 p.m. — Up the Union Turnpike. 

June 22, 2016

I feel my Maker blessing me

June 22, 1851 

We have had a succession of thunder-showers to day and at sunset a rainbow. 

How moral the world is made! This bow is not utilitarian. Methinks men are great in proportion as they are moral. After the rain He sets his bow in the heavens! The world is not destitute of beauty. Ask of the skeptic who inquires, Cui bono? why the rainbow was made. While men cultivate flowers below, God cultivates flowers above; he takes charge of the parterres in the heavens. 

Is not the rainbow a faint vision of God's face? How glorious should be the life of man passed under this arch! What more remarkable phenomenon than a rainbow, yet how little it is remarked! 

Near the river thus late, I hear the peetweet, with white-barred wings. 

The scent of the balm-of-Gilead leaves fills the road after the rain. 

There are the amber skies of evening, the colored skies of both morning and evening! Nature adorns these seasons.

 Unquestionable truth is sweet, though it were the announcement of our dissolution.

More thunder-showers threaten, and I still can trace those that are gone by.

The fireflies in the meadows are very numerous, as if they had replenished their lights from the lightning. The far-retreated thunder-clouds low in the southeast horizon and in the north, emitting low flashes which reveal their forms, appear to lift their wings like fireflies; or it is a steady glare like the glow worm. Wherever they go, they make a meadow.

 I hear no toads this cool evening.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 22, 1852

Is not the rainbow a faint vision of God's face? See March 3, 1841 ("God's voice is but a clear bell sound."). See also June 22, 1851 ("Sometimes we are clarified and calmed healthily, as we never were before in our lives . . . so that we become like a still lake of purest crys tal and without an effort our depths are revealed to ourselves . All the world goes by us and is reflected in our deeps .. . . Whom shall I thank for it ? . . . I feel my Maker blessing me ")

What more remarkable phenomenon than a rainbow See November 5, 1857 ("I think that the man of science makes this mistake, and the mass of mankind along with him: that you should coolly give your chief attention to the phenomenon which excites you as something independent on you, and not as it is related to you. The important fact is its effect on me. He thinks that I have no business to see anything else but just what he defines the rainbow to be, but I care not whether my vision of truth is a waking thought or dream remembered, whether it is seen in the light or in the dark. It is the subject of the vision, the truth alone, that concerns me. The philosopher for whom rainbows, etc., can be explained away never saw them. With regard to such objects, I find that it is not they themselves (with which the men of science deal) that concern me; the point of interest is somewhere between me and them (i. e. the objects)")

Thunder-showers to day and at sunset a rainbow. See March 15. 1859 ("Two brilliant rainbows at sunset, the first of the year."); August 9, 1851 ("It is a splendid sunset, a celestial light on all the land, so that all people come to their doors and windows to look on the grass and leaves and buildings and the sky, as the sun’s rays shine through the cloud and the falling rain we are, in fact, in a rainbow. "); August 6, 1852 ("All men beholding a rainbow begin to understand the significance of the Greek name for the world, - Kosmos, or beauty. It was designed to impress man."); August 7, 1852 ("A moment when the sun was setting with splendor in the west, his light reflected far and wide through the clarified air after a rain, and a brilliant rainbow, as now, o'erarching the eastern sky.") and note to May 11, 1854 ("A rainbow on the brow of summer")

Near the river thus late, I hear the peetweet. See June 21, 1855 ("Peetweets make quite a noise calling to their young with alarm.")

Unquestionable truth is sweet. See  August 8, 1852 ("No man ever makes a discovery, even an observation of the least importance, but he is advertised of the fact by a joy that surprises him.”); November 1, 1857 ("A higher truth, though only dimly hinted at, thrills us more than a lower expressed.")

The fireflies in the meadows are very numerous, as if they had replenished their lights from the lightning. See  June 3, 1852 (“It has been a sultry day, and a slight thunder-shower, and now I see fireflies in the meadows at evening.”) and note to June 8, 1859 ("See lightning-bugs to-night”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Fireflies


June 22. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 22

Is not the rainbow 

a faint vision of God's face –

a clear bell his voice?

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, 

Is not the rainbow a faint vision of God's face?

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

tinyurl.com/hdt-520622

The colors of the oaks are far more distinct now

October 15. 

October 15, 2018

The balm-of-Gileads are half bare. 

I see a few red maples still bright, but they are commonly yellow ones. [no] 

White pines are in the midst of their fall. 

The Lombardy poplars are still quite green and cool. 

Large rock maples are now perhaps in their prime,— later than I supposed, —though some small ones have begun to fall. Some that were green a week ago are now changed. 

The large white oak by path north of Sleepy Hollow is now all red and at height. 

Perhaps half the white ash trees are yellow, and if the mulberry ones were dulled (?) a week ago, the yellow ones, me thinks, are fresher or brighter than ever, but fast falling. 

White birches, though they have lost many leaves, are still, perhaps, as soft a yellow as ever, a fine yellow imbrication seen against the greener forest. They change gradually and last long. 

P. M. — To Walden. 

White oaks are rapidly withering, — the outer leaves.

The small black oaks, too, are beginning to wither and turn brown. Small red oaks, at least, and small scarlet ones, are apparently in their prime in sprout-lands and young woods. The large leaves of the red oaks are still fresh, of mingled reddish or scarlet, yellow, and green, striking for the size of the leaf, but not so uniformly dark and brilliant as the scarlet. The black oak is yellowish, a half-decayed or brownish yellow, and already becoming brown and crisp, though not so much so as the white. The scarlet is the most brilliant of the oaks, finely fingered, especially noticeable in sprout-lands and young woods. The larger ones are still altogether green, or show a deep cool green in their recesses. 

If you stand fronting a hillside covered with a variety of young oaks, the brightest scarlet ones, uniformly deep, dark scarlet, will be the scarlet oaks; the next most uniformly reddish, a peculiar dull crimson (or salmon ?) red, are the white oaks; then the large-leaved and variously tinted red oaks, scarlet, yellow, and green; and finally the yellowish and half-decayed brown leaves of the black oak. 

The colors of the oaks are far more distinct now than they were before. See that white and that black oak,  side by side, young trees, the first that peculiar dull crimson (or salmon) red, with crisped edges, the second a brownish and greenish yellow, much sun still in its leaves. Looking at a young white oak, you see two distinct colors, the brighter or glossier red of the upper surfaces of the inner leaves, as yet not much affected by frost and wind, contrasting with the paler but still crimson tinged under sides of the outmost leaves, blown up by the wind and perhaps partly crisped.

I notice thorn bushes in sprout-lands quite bare. 

The lower leaves of huckleberry bushes and young wild black cherries fall first, but for the most part the upper leaves of apple trees. 

The high blueberries are still a bright or red scarlet.

Goldenrods now pretty generally show their dirty-white pappus together with the still yellow scales, the last preserving some semblance of the flowers. 

Small hickories are the clearest and most delicate yellow in the shade of the woods. 

Cinnamon ferns in Clintonia Swamp are fast losing their leafets. 

Some large dicksonias on the moist hillside there are quite green yet, though nearly prostrate in a large close patch slanting down the hill, and with some faded nearly white. 

The yellow lily in the brook by the Turnpike is still expanding fresh leaves with wrinkled edges, as in the spring. 

The Salix humilis falls, exposing its great cones like a fruit. 

On the sandy slope of the cut, close by the pond, I notice the chips which some Indian fletcher has made. Yet our poets and philosophers regret that we have no antiquities in America, no ruins to remind us of the past. Hardly can the wind blow away the surface anywhere, exposing the spotless sand, even though the thickest woods have recently stood there, but these little stone chips made by some aboriginal fletcher are revealed. 

With them, too, this time, as often, I find the White man’s arm, a conical bullet, still marked by the groove of the rifle, which has been roughened or rucked up like a thimble on the side by which it struck the sand. As if, by some [un]explained sympathy and attraction, the Indian’s and the white man’s arrowheads sought the same grave at last.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 15, 1858

White pines are in the midst of their fall. See October 14, 1856 (“Pine-needles, just fallen, now make a thick carpet”); October 16, 1854 (“The pines, too, have fallen.”); October 16, 1855 (“How evenly the freshly fallen pine-needles are spread on the ground!”); October 16,1857 (“A great part of the pine-needles have just fallen.”)

Cinnamon ferns in Clintonia Swamp are fast losing their leafets. See October 15, 1856 ("The large ferns are now rapidly losing their leaves except the terminal tuft."); October 17, 1857 ("The cinnamon ferns surrounding the swamp have just lost their leafets, except the terminal ones.")

A perfectly warm and pleasant day..

May 4. 

May 4, 2015

May 4, 2019

Rain. 

The barber tells me that the masons of New York tell him that they would prefer human hair to that of cattle to mix with their plastering. 

Balm-of-Gilead pollen in house to-day; outdoors, say to-morrow, if fair. 

Minott tells me of one Matthias Bowers, a native of Chelmsford and cousin of C. Bowers, a very active fellow, who used to sleep with him and when he found the door locked would climb over the roof and come in at the dormer-window. One Sunday, when they were repairing the old Unitarian church and there was a staging just above the belfry, he climbed up the lightning-rod and put his arm round the ball at the top of the spire and swung his hat there. He then threw it down and the crown was knocked out. Minott saw him do it, and Deacon White ordered him to come down. 

M. also told of a crazy fellow who got into the belfry of the Lincoln church with an axe and began to cut the spire down, but was stopped after he had done considerable damage. 

When M. lived at Baker's, B. had a dog Lion, famous for chasing squirrels. The gray squirrels were numerous and used to run over the house sometimes. It was an old-fashioned house, slanting to one story behind, with a ladder from the roof to the ground. One day a gray squirrel ran over the house, and Lion, dashing after him up the ladder, went completely over the house and fell off the front side before he could stop, putting out one of his toes. But the squirrel did not put out any of his toes. 

Wyman told Minott that he used to see black snakes crossing Walden and would wait till they came ashore and then kill them. One day he saw a bull on the northerly side swim across to get at some cows on the south. 

It has rained all day, and I see in the footpath across the Common, where water flows or has flown, a great many worms, apparently drowned. Did they not come out in unusual numbers last night because it was so warm, and so get overtaken by the rain? But how account for the worms said to be found in tubs of water? 

Perhaps the most generally interesting event at present is a perfectly warm and pleasant day. It affects the greatest number, the well out of doors and the sick in chambers. No wonder the weather is the universal theme of conversation. A warm rain; and the ring of the toads is heard all through it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 4, 1857

At Goose Pond.

April 30. 

Thursday. A. M. — Surveying for Farrar and Heywood by Walden. 

Hear a kingfisher at Goose Pond. 

Hear again the same bird heard at Conantum April 18th, which I think must be the ruby-crowned wren. 

As we stood looking for a bound by the edge of Goose Pond, a pretty large hawk alighted on an oak close by us. It probably has a nest near by and was concerned for its young. 

The larch plucked yesterday sheds pollen to-day in house, probably to-day abroad. 

Balm-of-Gilead plucked yesterday, not yet (nor on May 1st) in house.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal April 30, 1857

Hear a kingfisher at Goose Pond. See April 23, 1854 (“A kingfisher with his crack, — cr-r-r-rack.”); April 24, 1854 ("The kingfisher flies with a crack cr-r-r-ack and a limping or flitting flight from tree to tree before us ”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. The Kingfisher

Hear again the same bird heard at Conantum April 18th, which I think must be the ruby-crowned wren. See April 26, 1860 ("Hear the ruby-crowned wren in the morning, near George Heywood’s.”); May 6, 1855 ("Hear at a distance a ruby(?)-crowned wren, so robin-like and spirited. After see one within ten . . . feet of me as if curious. I think this the only Regulus I have ever seen.”); see also note to April 20, 1859 ("My ruby-crowned or crested wren”).  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau: the ruby-crowned or crested wren. and  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Winter Birds

It probably has a nest near by . . . See note to April 30, 1855 ( It must have a nest there. “)

The larch plucked yesterday sheds pollen to-day See .April 27, 1856 (The female flowers are now fully expanded and very pretty, but small. I think it will first scatter pollen to-morrow. ");April 29, 1855 ("The crimson female flowers are now handsome but small. ") and note to May 1, 1856 ("I judge that the larch blossomed ...”). See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Larch

Catkins fallen and effete in the rain

May 3

Another cool, rainy day. 

A staminate balm of Gilead poplar by Peter’s path. Many of the catkins fallen and effete in the rain, but many anthers still red and unopen. Probably began five or six days ago.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 3, 1856

Staminate balm of Gilead catkins fallen and effete in the rain. See April 27, 1854 ("The balm-of-Gilead is in bloom, about one and a half or two inches long, and some hang down straight."); April 27, 1855 ("The balm-of Gilead catkins are well loosened and about three inches long, but I have seen only fertile ones. Say male the 25th, 26th, or 27th.") See also Balm of Gilead, Balsam Poplar  ("Populus balsamifera is dioecious, that is male and female flowers occur on separate trees. Male (staminate) flowers have a cup shaped disc with 20 to 30 reddish stamens. These are bunched on a short curved catkin. Female (pistillate) flowers are in moderately dense 2 to 3 inch yellow-green drooping catkins . . . After pollination, the female catkins elongate up to 4 inches in length")

A cold drizzling May storm.

May 8

5 A. M. —To Gilead. (Began to leaf yesterday.) 

Still finger-cold. Think I saw bank swallows. (Not at all certain.) 

At noon begins a cold, drizzling rain, which continues at intervals through the next day. A cold May storm, wind easterly. 

Grackle here still. Cultivated cherry opened flower yesterday. 

The rock maples (such sized as we generally have) come on faster and show more now than the red.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 8, 1855


At the view after sunset the sound (apparently) of a robin clucking, then a red breasted grosbeak bursts into song, at length. The hermit thrush nasal note to the right. Sound of peepers down in the wetland drifts up. A robin for certain. Loud tree frog. (hyla something* Jane says, not rana sylvaticus - that is the tiny wood frog.) Barred owl noises. A quick gobble i suppose of a turkey. The serviceberry in the clearing is in bloom. Down via the middle pond. Just before home another owl closer.

The sound of peepers

drifting up from the wetland,

then a loud tree frog.

May 8, 2015

* Gray Treefrog   (Hyla versicolor)

 

A gray lichen-like pattern on their skin with a light patch under the eyes, and no dorsolateral ridges (no folds of skin on either side of its back), The Gray Treefrog has larger adhesive toe pads than the Spring Peeper and is an excellent climber. Gray Treefrogs have a loud short trill and often call from the trees where they feed. They generally call on warm, humid nights from April through July

Black and white creepers utter oven-bird-like notes.

April 27.

5 A. M. — S. tristis Path around Cliffs. 

Cold and windy, but fair. 

The earliest willow by railroad begins to leaf and is out of bloom. 

April 27, 1854

Few birds are heard this cold and windy morning. Hear a partridge drum before 6 A. M., also a golden-crested wren. 

Salix tristis, probably to-day, the female more forward than the male. 

Hear a singular sort of screech, somewhat like a hawk, under the Cliff, and soon some pigeons fly out of a pine near me. 

The black and white creepers running over the trunks or main limbs of red maples and uttering their fainter oven-bird-like notes. 

The principal singer on this walk, both in wood and field away from town, is the field sparrow. I hear the sweet warble of a tree sparrow in the yard. 

Cultivated cherry is beginning to leaf. 

The balm-of Gilead catkins are well loosened and about three inches long, but I have seen only fertile ones. Say male the 25th, 26th, or 27th.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 27, 1855


Hear a partridge drum before 6 A. M.  See April 27, 1854 ("I hear the beat of a partridge and the spring hoot of an owl, now at 7 a.m.”) See also See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge

Also a golden-crested wren. [probably the ruby-crowned kinglet] See May 7, 1854 ("A ruby-crested wren. . .Saw its ruby crest and heard its harsh note. (This was the same I have called golden-crowned . . . except that I saw its ruby crest.. ..Have I seen the two?)”) May 6, 1855 ("Hear at a distance a ruby(?)-crowned wren, . . . I think this the only Regulus I have ever seen.”); and note to December 25, 1859 ("I hear a sharp fine screep from some bird,. . . I can see a brilliant crown. . . . It is evidently the golden-crested wren, which I have not made out before.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau: the ruby-crowned or crested wren. (Thoreau did not truly identify the golden-crested wren until  Christmas  1859. See note to December 25, 1859 

The black and white creepers running over the trunks or main limbs of red maples and uttering their fainter oven-bird—like notes. See April 27, 1854 ("I hear the black and white creeper's note , — seeser seeser seeser se.. . .Hear a faint sort of oven-bird's (?) note."); see also May 3, 1852. ("That oven-birdish note which I heard here on May 1st I now find to have been uttered by the black and white warbler or creeper. He has a habit of looking under the branches.")  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Black and White Creeper

The principal singer on this walk, both in wood and field away from town, is the field sparrow. See April 27, 1852 ("Heard the field or rush sparrow this morning (Fringilla juncorum), George Minott's "huckleberry-bird." It sits on a birch and sings at short intervals, apparently answered from a distance. It is clear and sonorous heard afar; but I found it quite impossible to tell from which side it came; sounding like phe, phe, phe, pher-pher-tw-tw-tw-t-t-t-t, — the first three slow and loud, the next two syllables quicker, and the last part quicker and quicker, becoming a clear, sonorous trill or rattle, like a spoon in a saucer.”).  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Field Sparrow

The balm-of Gilead catkins are well loosened and about three inches long. See April 27, 1854 ("The balm-of-Gilead is in bloom, about one and a half or two inches long, and some hang down straight.") See also  May 3, 1856 ("A staminate balm of Gilead poplar by Peter’s path. Many of the catkins fallen and effete in the rain, but many anthers still red and unopen. Probably began five or six days ago.")

April 27. See  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, April 27

Hear a partridge drum

 also golden-crested wren

before 6 A. M.

From red maple trunks

black and white creepers utter 

oven-bird-like notes.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Black and white creepers utter oven-bird-like notes

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-550427

The grass is now become rapidly green by the sides of the road, promising dandelions and buttercups

April 22.

5.30 A. M. — To Assabet stone bridge. 

Tree sparrows still. See a song sparrow getting its breakfast in the water on the meadow like a wader. 

Red maple yesterday, — an early one by further stone bridge. Balm-of-Gilead probably to-morrow.

The black currant is just begun to expand leaf — probably yesterday elsewhere -a little earlier than the red. 

Though my hands are cold this morning I have not worn gloves for a few mornings past, — a week or . ten days. 

The grass is now become rapidly green by the sides of the road, promising dandelions and buttercups. 

P. M. — To Lee’s Cliff. 

Fair, but windy. 

Tree sparrows about with their buntingish head and faint chirp. 

The leaves of the skunk-cabbage, unfolding in the meadows, make more show than any green yet. 

The yellow willow catkins pushing out begin to give the trees a misty, downy appearance, dimming them. 

The bluish band on the breast of the kingfisher leaves the pure white beneath in the form of a heart. 

The blossoms of the sweet-gale are now on fire over the brooks, contorted like caterpillars. The female flowers also out like the hazel, with more stigmas,—out at same time with the male. 

I first noticed my little mud turtles in the cellar out of their [sic], one of them, some eight days ago. I suspect those in the river begin to stir about that time? 

Antennaria probably yesterday, Skull-cap Meadow Ditch. 

Many yellow redpolls on the willows now. They jerk their tails constantly like phoebes, but I hear only a faint chip. Could that have been a female with them, with an ash head and merely a yellow spot on each side of body, white beneath, and forked tail?

Red stemmed moss now. 

Goosanders, male and female. They rise and fly, the female leading. They afterward show that they can get out of sight about as well by diving as by flying. At a distance you see only the male, alternately diving and sailing, when the female may be all the while by his side. 

Getting over the wall under the middle Conantum Cliff, I hear a loud and piercing sharp whistle of two notes, — phe phe, like a peep somewhat. Could it  be a wood-chuck? Hear afterward under Lee’s Cliff a similar fainter one, which at one time appears to come from a pigeon woodpecker. 

Cowbirds on an apple tree. 

Crowfoot on Cliff. Johnswort radical leaves have grown several inches and angelica shows. Elder leaves have grown one and a half inches, and thimble-berry is forward under rocks. Meadow sweet in some places begins to open to-day; also barberry under Cliffs and a moss rose to-morrow. 

Say earliest gooseberry, then elder, raspberry, thimble berry, and low blackberry (the last two under rocks), then wild red cherry, then black currant (yesterday), then meadow sweet, and barberry under Cliff, to-day. A moss rose to-morrow and hazel under Cliffs to-morrow.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 22, 1855

The female flowers also out like the hazel, with more stigmas,—out at same time with the male.. . .Hazel under Cliffs to morrow. See March 27, 1853 ("The hazel is fully out. The 23d was perhaps full early to date them. It is in some respects the most interesting flower yet, so minute that only an observer of nature, or one who looked for them, would notice it."); March 31, 1853 ("The catkins of the hazel are now trembling in the wind and much lengthened, showing yellowish and beginning to shed pollen.”); and April 7, 1854 ("The hazel stigmas are well out and the catkins loose, but no pollen shed yet. “); April 9, 1854 (" The beaked hazel stigmas out; put it just after the common."'); April 11, 1856 ("The hazel sheds pollen to-day; some elsewhere possibly yesterday.”);April 13, 1855 ("The common hazel just out. It is perhaps the prettiest flower of the shrubs that have opened. . . .half a dozen catkins, one and three quarters inches long, trembling in the wind, shedding golden pollen . . . . They know when to trust themselves to the weather.");  April 18, 1857 ("The beaked hazel, if that is one just below the little pine at Blackberry Steep, is considerably later than the common, for I cannot get a whole twig fully out, though the common is too far gone to gather there. The catkins, too, are shorter.”) See also A Book of the Seasons: the Hazel.

Though my hands are cold this morning I have not worn gloves for a few mornings past, — a week or . ten days. See April 10, 1855 ("The morning of the 6th, when I found the skunk cabbage out, it was so cold I suffered from numbed fingers, having left my gloves behind. Since April came in, however, you have needed gloves only in the morning. Under some high bare bank sloping to the south on the edge of a meadow, where many springs, issuing from the bank, melt the snow early, — there you find the first skunk-cabbage in bloom.")

The leaves of the skunk-cabbage, unfolding in the meadows, make more show than any green yet. See April 22, 1857 ("At the Cliff Brook I see the skunk-cabbage leaves not yet unrolled, with their points gnawed off. ") See also April 7, 1855  ("At six this morn to Clamshell. The skunk-cabbage open yesterday, — the earliest flower this season") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Skunk Cabbage

Goosanders, male and female. At a distance you see only the male, alternately diving and sailing, when the female may be all the while by his side.  See March 16, 1855 (“Returning, scare up two large ducks just above the bridge. One very large; white beneath, breast and neck; black head and wings and aft. The other much smaller and dark. Apparently male and female. They alight more than a hundred rods south of the bridge, and I view them with glass. The larger sails about on the watch, while the smaller, dark one dives repeatedly. I think it the goosander or sheldrake”); March 27, 1858 ("They are now pairing. . . .At first we see only a male and female quite on the alert, some way out on the pond, tacking back and forth and looking every way. They keep close together, headed one way, and when one turns the other also turns quickly. The male appears to take the lead."); March 30, 1859 ("See on Walden two sheldrakes, male and female, as is common. So they have for some time paired. They are a hundred rods off. The male the larger, with his black head and white breast, the female with a red head.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Merganser, Goosander)

A warm sunny walk

through acres and acres of

fragrant spring beauties.

~ Zphx April 22, 2025