Mouse-ear in blossom.

April 22.

Had mouse-ear in blossom for a week. Observed the crowfoot on the Cliffs in abundance, and the saxifrage. 

The wind last Wednesday, April 16th, blew down a hundred pines on Fair Haven Hill. 

Having treated my friend ill, I wished to apologize; but, not meeting him, I made an apology to myself. It is not the invitation which I hear, but which I feel, that I obey.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 22, 1851

Had mouse-ear in blossom for a week. See April 6, 1858 ("No mouse-ear there yet"); April 11, 1858 ("Mouse-ear, not yet. "); April 15, 1853 ("Mouse-ear"); April 15, 1860 ("Mouse-ear"); April 29, 1854 ("The mouse-ear is now fairly in blossom in many places. It never looks so pretty as now in an April rain, covered with pearly drops."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Mouse-ear and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Earliest Flower

The crowfoot on the Cliffs in abundance, and the saxifrage. See April 13, 1854 ("One or two crowfoots Lee's Cliff, fully out, surprise me like a flame bursting from the russet ground. The saxifrage is pretty common, ahead of the crowfoot now, and its peduncles have shot up."); April 23, 1854 ("Crowfoot is not yet abundant, though it was earlier than saxifrage, which has now gone ahead "); April 30, 1855 ("Crowfoot and saxifrage are now in prime at Lee’s; they yellow and whiten the ground.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Crowfoot (Ranunculus fascicularis) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Saxifrage in Spring (Saxifraga vernalis)

Mouse-ear in blossom

the crowfoot in abundance

and the saxifrage.

The most common and conspicuous green leaf on the ground when the snow is off at this season.

January 30.  

Buda  January 30 2021

The most common and conspicuous green leaf on the ground when the snow is off at this season, as at present, is that of the buttercup. 

Sorrel is also very common, and johnswort, and the purplish gnaphaliums. There is also the early crowfoot in some places, strawberry, mullein, and thistle leaves, and hawkweeds, etc., etc.

On Cliffs.

The westering sun is yet high above the horizon, but, concealed by clouds, shoots down to earth on every side vast misty rays like the frame of a tent, to which clouds perchance are the canvas, under which a whole country rests. 

BTV February 1, 2023

The northern and southern rays appear very much slanted and long; those between us and the west, steeper and shorter.

What I have called the Shrub Oak Plain contains comparatively few shrub oaks, — rather, young red and white and, it may be, some scarlet (?).

The shrub oak leaf is the firmest and best preserved. The white oak is the most sere and curled and brittle, frequently with discolored, mould-like spots.

H. D Thoreau, Journal, January 30, 1853

The most common and conspicuous green leaf on the ground when the snow is off at this season, as at present, is that of the buttercup. See November 8, 1858 ("The now more noticeable green radical leaves of the buttercup in the russet pastures remind me of the early spring to come, of which they will offer the first evidence."); January 9, 1853 ("On the face of the Cliff the crowfoot buds lie unexpanded just beneath the surface"); January 25, 1853 ("The buttercup leaves appear everywhere when the ground is bare.);  February 18, 1857 ("The snow is nearly all gone, and . . . I step excited over the moist mossy ground, dotted with the green stars of thistles, crowfoot, etc., the outsides of which are withered."); February 23, 1860 ("I walk over the moist Nawshawtuct hillside and see the green radical leaves of the buttercup"); February 28, 1857 ("At the Cliff, the tower-mustard, early crowfoot, and perhaps buttercup appear to have started of late.")

The westering sun, concealed by clouds, shoots down to earth on every side vast misty rays. See August 9, 1851 ("It was a splendid sunset that day, a celestial light on all the land, so that all people went to their doors and windows to look on the grass and leaves and buildings and the sky. . . We were in the westernmost edge of the shower at the moment the sun was setting, and its rays shone through the cloud and the falling rain. We were, in fact, in a rainbow.")

The shrub oak leaf is the firmest and best preserved. The white oak is the most sere and curled and brittle. See October 2, 1852 ("From Cliffs the shrub oak plain has now a bright-red ground, perhaps of maples.");  October 13, 1852 ("The shrub oak plain is now a deep red, with grayish, withered, apparently white oak leaves intermixed."); November 3, 1852 ("The shrub oak plain is all withered."); May 14, 1855 ("All the oak leaves off the shrub oak plain, except apparently a few white oaks.")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 30

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 ©  2009-2023

Rain, more than wind, makes the leaves fall.

October 10. 

October 10, 2020

Burdock, Ranunculus acris, rough hawk-weed.

A drizzling rain to-day.

The air is full of falling leaves. The streets are strewn with elm leaves. The trees begin to look thin. The butternut is perhaps the first on the street to lose its leaves.

Rain, more than wind, makes the leaves fall.

Glow-worms in the evening.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 10, 1852

Ranunculus acris. See June 15, 1851 ("I see the tall crowfoot now in the meadows ( Ranunculus acris ) , with a smooth stem ."); August 21, 1851 ("Ranunculus acris (tall crowfoot) still."); October 16, 1856 ("I notice these flowers on the way by the roadside, which survive the frost, . . . mayweed, tall crowfoot, autumnal dandelion, yarrow, ...”)

Rain, more than wind, makes the leaves fall. See October 24, 1855 ("The gentle touch of the rain brings down more leaves than the wind."); October 24, 1858 ("This rain and wind too bring down the leaves very fast. ")

The peculiar flight of a hawk thus fetches the year about.

April 22. 

April 22, 2019

Row to Fair Haven. Thermometer 56° or 54º. 

See shad-flies. 

Scare up woodcock on the shore by my boat's place, — the first I had seen. It was feeding within a couple of rods, but I had not seen or thought of it. When I made a loud and sharp sound driving in my rowlocks, it suddenly flew up. It is evident that we very often come quite near woodcocks and snipe thus concealed on the ground, without starting them and so without suspecting that they are near. These marsh birds, like the bittern, have this habit of keeping still and trusting to their resemblance to the ground. 

See now hen-hawks, a pair, soaring high as for pleasure, circling ever further and further away, as if it were midsummer. The peculiar flight of a hawk thus fetches the year about. I do not see it soar in this serene and leisurely manner very early in the season, methinks. 

The early luzula is almost in bloom; makes a show, with its budded head and its purplish and downy, silky leaves, on the warm margin of Clamshell Bank.

Two or three dandelions in bloom spot the ground there. 

Land at Lee's Cliff. 

The cassandra (water-brush) is well out, — how long? — and in one place we disturb great clouds of the little fuzzy gnats that were resting on the bushes, as we push up the shallow ditch there. 

The Ranunculus fascicularis is now in prime, rather than before. 

The columbine is hardly yet out. 

I hear that the Viola ovata was found the 17th and the 20th, and the bloodroot in E. Emerson's garden the 20th. 

J. B. Moore gave me some mineral which he found being thrown out of [a] drain that was dug between Knight's factory and his house. It appears to me to be red lead and quartz, and the lead is quite pure and marks very well, or freely, but is pretty dark.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 22, 1860

See shad-flies. See April 24, 1857 (“Sail to Ball's Hill. The water is at its height, higher than before this year. I see a few shad-flies on its surface.”); April 25, 1854  ("Many shad-flies in the air and alighting on my clothes."); April 28, 1859 ("See a shad-fly, one only, on water.,”); May 1, 1854 ("The water is strewn with myriads of wrecked shad-flies, erect on the surface, with their wings up like so many schooners all headed one way.”); May 1, 1858 (“Ephemerae quite common over the water.”); May 4, 1856 ("Shad-flies on the water, schooner-like.”); see also June 9, 1854 ("The air is now full of shad-flies, and there is an incessant sound made by the fishes leaping for their evening meal");June 8, 1856 (“my boat being by chance at the same place where it was in ’54, I noticed a great flight of ephemera”);  June 9, 1856 ("Again, about seven, the ephemera came out, in numbers as many as last night, now many of them coupled, even tripled; and the fishes leap as before.")

    

These marsh birds, like the bittern, have this habit of keeping still and trusting to their resemblance to the ground. See November 21, 1857 ("Just above the grape-hung birches, my attention was drawn to a singular-looking dry leaf or parcel of leaves on the shore about a rod off. Then I thought it might be the dry and yellowed skeleton of a bird with all its ribs; then the shell of a turtle, or possibly some large dry oak leaves peculiarly curved and cut; and then, all at once, I saw that it was a woodcock, perfectly still, with its head drawn in, standing on its great pink feet."); See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The American Woodcock

The peculiar flight of a hawk thus fetches the year about. See . April 22, 1852 ("See four hawks soaring high in the heavens over the Swamp Bridge Brook. At first saw three; said to myself there must be four, and found the fourth. Glad are they, no doubt, to be out after being confined by the storm"); February 16, 1859 ("The hen-hawk . . . loves to soar above the clouds. It has its own way and is beautiful.);  March 15, 1860 ("I get a very fair sight of it sailing overhead. What a perfectly regular and neat outline it presents! an easily recognized figure anywhere."); March 23, 1856 ("I spend a considerable portion of my time observing the habits of the wild animals, my brute neighbors. By their various movements and migrations they fetch the year about to me.")  See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Hen-Hawk

The early luzula is almost in bloom; makes a show, with its budded head and its purplish and downy, silky leaves. See April 30, 1859 ("Luzula campestris is almost out at Clamshell. Its now low purplish and silky-haired leaves are the blooming of moist ground and early meadow-edges.")

Two or three dandelions in bloom spot the ground there. See April 22, 1855 ("The grass is now become rapidly green by the sides of the road, promising dandelions and butter cups. "); April 29, 1857 ("I commonly meet with the earliest dandelion set in the midst of some liquid green patch. It seems a sudden and decided progress in the season.")

We disturb great clouds of the little fuzzy gnats that were resting on the bushes.  

See April 22, 1852 ("I see swarms of gnats in the air."); See also April 21, 1855 ("All the button-bushes, etc., etc., in and about the water are now swarming with those minute fuzzy gnats about an eighth of an inch long. The insect youth are on the wing. The whole shore resounds with their hum wherever we approach it, and they cover our boat and persons. They are in countless myriads the whole length of the river.") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fuzzy Gnats (tipulidæ)

The Ranunculus fascicularis is now in prime, rather than before. See April 11, 1858 ("Crowfoot (Ranunculus fascicularis) at Lee's since the 6th, apparently a day or two before this.")

The columbine is hardly yet out. See April 18, 1856 (“Columbine, and already eaten by bees. Some with a hole in the side.”); April 30, 1855 (" Columbine just out; one anther sheds."); May 1, 1854 ("I think that the columbine cannot be said to have blossomed there [Lee's Cliff] before to-day, — the very earliest.”)

I hear that the Viola ovata was found the 17th and the 20th. See April 19, 1858 ("Viola ovata on bank above Lee's Cliff. Edith Emerson found them there yesterday.") See also May 20, 1852 ) ("The Viola ovata is of a deep purple blue, is darkest and has most of the red in it; the V. pedata is smooth and pale-blue, delicately tinged with purple reflections; the cucullata is more decidedly blue, slaty-blue, and darkly striated.”). and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Violets

There is something of spring in all seasons.

March 8.

2.30 P. M. — 50°. To Cliffs and Walden.

See a small flock of grackles on the willow-row above railroad bridge. How they sit and make a business of chattering! for it cannot be called singing, and no improvement from age to age perhaps. Yet, as nature is a becoming, their notes may become melodious at last. At length, on my very near approach, they fit suspiciously away, uttering a few subdued notes as they hurry off. 

This is the first flock of blackbirds I have chanced to see, though Channing saw one the 6th. I suspect that I have seen only grackles as yet.

I saw, in Monroe's well by the edge of the river, the other day, a dozen frogs, chiefly shad frogs, which had been dead a good while. It may be that they get into that sort of spring-hole in the fall to hibernate, but for some reason die; or perhaps they are always jumping into it in the summer, but at that season are devoured by some animal before they infest the water.

Now and for some days I see farmers walking about their fields, knocking to pieces and distributing the cow dung left there in the fall, that so, with the aid of the spring rains, they fertilize a larger surface and more equally.

To say nothing of fungi, lichens, mosses, and other cryptogamous plants, you cannot say that vegetation absolutely ceases at any season in this latitude; for there is grass in some warm exposures and in springy places, always growing more or less, and willow catkins expanding and peeping out a little further every warm day from the very beginning of winter, and the skunk cabbage buds being developed and actually flowering sometimes in the winter, and the sap flowing [in] the maples in midwinter in some days, perhaps some cress growing a little (?), certainly some pads, and various naturalized garden weeds steadily growing if not blooming, and apple buds sometimes expanding. Thus much of vegetable life or motion or growth is to be detected every winter.

There is something of spring in all seasons. There is a large class which is evergreen in its radical leaves, which make such a show as soon as the snow goes off that many take them to be new growth of the spring. At the pool on the south side of Hubbard's Grove, I notice that the crowfoot, i. e. buttercup, leaves which are at the bottom of the water stand up and are much more advanced than those two feet off in the air, for there they receive warmth from the sun, while they are sheltered from cold winds. 

Nowadays we separate the warmth of the sun from the cold of the wind and observe that the cold does not pervade all places, but being due to strong northwest winds, if we get into some sunny and sheltered nook where they do not penetrate, we quite forget how cold it is elsewhere. 

In some respects our spring, in its beginning, fluctuates a whole month, so far as it respects ice and snow, walking, sleighing, etc., etc.; for some years winter may be said to end about the first of March, and other years it may extend into April.

That willow-clump by railroad at Walden looks really silvery. 

I see there that moles have worked for several days. There are several piles on the grass, some quite fresh and some made before the last rain. One is as wide as a bushel-basket and six inches high; contains a peck at least. When I carefully remove this dirt, I cannot see, and can scarcely detect by feeling, any looseness in the sod beneath where the mole came to the surface and discharged all this dirt. I do feel it, to be sure, but it is scarcely perceptible to my fingers. The mole must have filled up this doorway very densely with earth, perhaps for its protection.

Those small green balls in the Pout's-Nest — and in the river, etc. — are evidently the buds by which the Utricularia vulgaris are propagated. I find them attached to the root as well as adrift.

I noticed a very curious phenomenon in this pond. It is melted for two or three rods around the open side, and in many places partly filled with a very slender thread-like spike-rush (apparently Eleocharis tenuis?) which is matted more or less horizontally and floating, and is much bleached being killed. In this fine matting I noticed perfectly straight or even cuts a rod or more in length,just as if one had severed this mass of fine rush as it lay [?] with some exceeding sharp instrument. However, you could not do it with a scythe, though you might with scissors, if it were ruled. It is as if you were to cover a floor with very fine flaccid grass and tread it to one inch in thickness, and then cut this web straight across. The fact is, this floating matting (it also rests partly on soft mud) was not cut at all, but pulled apart on a straight line, producing the exact appearance of a cut, as if you were to pull a piece of felt apart by a force on each side and yet leave the edge as straight as if it had been cut. It had been frozen in, and when the ice cracked it was in an instant thus pulled apart, without further disturbing the relative position of the fibres. I first conjectured this, and then saw the evidence of it for, glancing my eye along such a cut, which ran at right angles with the shore, I saw that it exactly corresponded at its termination to an old crack in the ice which was still unmelted and which continued its course exactly. This in the ice had been filled and cemented so as to look like a white seam. Would this account for such a crack being continued into the meadow itself, as I have noticed?

I meet some Indians just camped on Brister's Hill. As usual, they are chiefly concerned to find where black ash grows, for their baskets. This is what they set about to ascertain as soon as they arrive in any strange neighborhood.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 8, 1860


See a small flock of grackles on the willow-row above railroad bridge. How they sit and make a business of chattering! See March 9, 1859 ("C. also saw a skater-insect on the 7th, and a single blackbird flying over Cassandra Ponds, which he thought a grackle."); March 13, 1859 ("Probably grackles have been seen some days. I think I saw them on the 11th?"): March 14, 1859 ("I see a large flock of grackles searching for food along the water's edge, just below Dr. Bartlett's. Some wade in the water. They are within a dozen rods of me and the road.It must be something just washed up that they are searching for, for the water has just risen and is still rising fast.. . .When a grackle sings, it is as if his mouth were full of cotton, which he was trying to spit out"); March 18, 1858 ("Each new year is a surprise to us.We find that we had virtually forgotten the note of each bird, and when we hear it again it is remembered like a dream, reminding us of a previous state of existence... . The blackbird — probably grackle this time —wings his way direct above the swamp northward, with a regular tchuck, carrier haste, calling the summer months along,"); March 19, 1858 ("Met Channing and walked on with him to what we will call Grackle Swamp. . .In the swamp, see grackles, four or five, with the light ring about eye, — their bead eyes. They utter only those ineffectual split notes, no conqueree"); March 29, 1858 ("I see what I suppose is the female rusty grackle; black body with green reflections and purplish-brown head and neck, but I notice no light iris"); March 29, 1857 ("When I have put my boat in its harbor, I hear that sign-squeaking blackbird, and, looking up, see half a dozen on the top of the elm at the foot of Whiting’s lot. . .on the whole I think them grackles (?). Possibly those I heard on the 18th were the same ?? Does the red-wing ever make a noise like a rusty sign?")

I saw, in Monroe's well by the edge of the river, the other day, a dozen frogs, chiefly shad frogs, which had been dead a good while. See February 26, 1856 ("I see at bottom of the mill brook, below Emerson’s, two dead frogs. The brook has part way yet a snowy bridge over it. Were they left by a mink, or killed by cold and ice? ")

At the pool on the south side of Hubbard's Grove, I notice that the crowfoot, i. e. buttercup, leaves which are at the bottom of the water stand up and are much more advanced. See November 8, 1858 (The now more noticeable green radical leaves of the buttercup in the russet pastures remind me of the early spring to come, of which they will offer the first evidence. ""); January 9, 1853 ("On the face of the Cliff the crowfoot buds lie unexpanded just beneath the surface. I dig one up with a stick, and, pulling it to pieces, I find deep in the centre of the plant, just beneath the ground, surrounded by all the tender leaves that are to precede it, the blossom-bud, about half is big as the head of a pin, perfectly white. There it patiently sits, or slumbers, how full of faith, informed of a spring which the world has never seen.”); February 18, 1857 ("The snow is nearly all gone, and it is so warm and springlike that I walk over to the hill, listening for spring birds. The roads are beginning to be settled. I step excited over the moist mossy ground, dotted with the green stars of thistles, crowfoot, etc., the outsides of which are withered."); February 23, 1860 ("I walk over the moist Nawshawtuct hillside and see the green radical leaves of the buttercup"); February 28, 1857 ("At the Cliff, the tower-mustard, early crowfoot, and perhaps buttercup appear to have started of late.")


Nowadays we separate the warmth of the sun from the cold of the wind and observe that the cold does not pervade all places. See April 8, 1859 ("Cold as it is, and has been for several weeks, in all exposed places, I find it unexpectedly warm in perfectly sheltered places where the sun shines. And so it always is in April. The cold wind from the northwest seems distinct and separable from the air here warmed by the sun."); April 26, 1857 ("How well adapted we are to our climate! In the winter we sit by fires in the house; in spring and fall, in sunny and sheltered nooks; in the summer, in shady and cool groves, or over water where the breeze circulates."); May 10, 1857 ("But now at last I do not go seeking the warm, sunny, and sheltered coves; the strong wind is enlivening and agreeable.”) May 22, 1854 (“I rest in the orchard, doubtful whether to sit in shade or sun.”); May 22, 1857 ("Is it not summer when we do not go seeking sunny and sheltered places, but also love the wind and shade? "); October 26, 1852 ("At this season we seek warm sunny lees and hillsides "); November 18, 1857 ("Now, as in the spring, we rejoice in sheltered and sunny places.")

That willow-clump by railroad at Walden looks really silvery. See  March 7, 1855 ("Methinks the buds of the early willows, the willows of the railroad bank, show more of the silvery down than ten days ago")

Fair Haven Pond completely frozen over during the last four days.

November 18. 

November 18, 2018

P. M. — To Conantum. 

Notice the short bright-yellow willow twigs on Hubbard’s Causeway. They are prominent now, first, because they are bare; second, because high-colored always and this rarity of bright colors at present; third, because of the clear air and November light. 

For the same reason I notice nowadays the red twigs of the silky cornel by the river. The black willow twigs are tawny in the mass, almost cinnamon. 

The fruitless enterprise of some persons who rush helter-skelter, carrying out their crazy scheme,—merely “putting it through,” as they phrase it, — reminds me of those thistle-downs which, not being detained nor steadied by any seed at the base, are blown away at the first impulse and go rolling over all obstacles. They may indeed go fastest and farthest, but where they rest at last not even a thistle springs. I meet these useless barren thistle-downs driving over the fields. They remind me of busy merchants and brokers on ’change doing business on credit, gambling with fancy stocks, that have failed over and over again, assisted to get a-going again to no purpose,—-a great ado about no thing, — all in my eye, — with nothing to deposit, not of the slightest use to the great thistle tribe, not even tempting a jackass. When you right or extricate one of these fellows and set him before the wind again, it is worth the while to look and see if he has any seed of success under him. Such a one you may know afar — he floats more slowly and steadily— and of his enterprise expect results. 

Am surprised to see Fair Haven Pond completely frozen over during the last four days. It will probably open again. Thus, while all the channel elsewhere is open and a mere edging of ice amid the weeds is seen, this great expansion is completely bridged over, thus early. 

Some mocker-nuts, and I think some hickories, on Conantum are not yet bare. Their withered leaves hold on almost like the oaks. Now is the time to gather the mocker-nuts. 

I go along under the east side of Lee’s Cliff, looking at the evergreen ferns. The marginal fern is the commonest. How pretty the smallest asplenium sometimes, in a recess under a shelving rock, as it were pinned on rosettewise, as if it were the head of a breastpin. 

I look south from the Cliff. The westering sun just out of sight behind the hill. Its rays from those bare twigs across the pond are bread and cheese to me. So many oak leaves have fallen that the white birch stems are more distinct amid the young oaks; I see to the bone. See those brave birches prepared to stand the Winter through on the hillsides. They never sing, “What’s this dull town to me?” 

The maples skirting the meadows (in dense phalanxes) look like light infantry advanced for a swamp fight. Ah, dear November, ye must be sacred to the Nine surely.

The early willow catkins already peep out a quarter of an inch. 

Early crowfoot is reddened at Lee’s.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 18, 1858

Notice the short bright-yellow willow twigs on Hubbard’s Causeway. Compare November 18, 1855 (“I do not detect any peculiar brightness whatever in the osiers on the Hubbard causeway; they are scarcely, if at all, brighter than the tops of the trees.”)

Am surprised to see Fair Haven Pond completely frozen over.  See November 21, 1852 ("I am surprised this afternoon to find . . . Fair Haven Pond one-third frozen or skimmed over, though commonly there is scarcely any ice to be observed along the shores."); November 23, 1852 (“I am surprised to see Fair Haven entirely skimmed over.”) December 5, 1853 (" Fair Haven Pond is skimmed completely over."); December 7, 1856 (" Take my first skate to Fair Haven Pond”)

Now is the time to gather the mocker-nuts. See November 7, 1853 (“I shook two mocker-nut trees; one just ready to drop its nuts, and most came out of the shells. But the other tree was not ready; only a part fell, and those mostly in the shells.”); November 19, 1858 ("I shook the trees. It is just the time to get them")

How pretty the smallest asplenium sometimes, in a recess under a shelving rock, as it were pinned on rosettewise, as if it were the head of a breastpin. See August 30, 1853 ("The dwarf spleenwort [maidenhair spleenwort] grows in the sharp angles of the rocks in the side of Lee's Cliff, its small fronds spreading in curved rays . . . The ebony spleenwort stands upright against the rocks.")

The early willow catkins already peep out a quarter of an inch. 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.”); March 10, 1855 (“I am not aware of growth in any plant yet, unless it be the further peeping out of willow catkins. They have crept out further from under their scales, and, looking closely into them, I detect a little redness along the twigs even now”): March 20, 1858 (“How handsome the willow catkins! Those wonderfully bright silvery buttons, so regularly disposed in oval schools in the air, or, if you please, along the seams which their twigs make, in all degrees of forwardness, from the faintest, tiniest speck of silver, just peeping from beneath the black scales, to lusty pussies which have thrown off their scaly coats and show some redness at base on a close inspection.”)

Wood frog pollywogs.

April 11. 

P. M. – To Lee's Cliff. 

The black spheres (rather dark brown) in the Rana sylvatica spawn by Hubbard's Grove have now opened and flatted out into a rude broad pollywog form. (This was an early specimen.) 

Yesterday saw moles working in a meadow, throwing up heaps. 

I notice at the Conantum house, of which only the chimney and frame now stand, a triangular mass of rubbish, more than half a bushel, resting on the great mantel-tree against an angle in the chimney. It being mixed with clay, I at first thought it a mass of clay and straw mortar, to fill up with, but, looking further, I found it composed of corn-cobs, etc., and the excrement probably of rats,  and of pure clay, looking like the cells of an insect. Either the wharf rat or this country rat. They had anciently chosen this warm place for their nest and carried a great store of eatables thither, and the clay of the chimney, washing down, had incrusted the whole mass over. 

So this was an old rats’ nest as well as human nest, and so it is with every old house. The rats’ nest may have been a hundred and fifty years old. Wherever you see an old house, there look for an old rats’ nest. In hard times they had, apparently, been compelled to eat the clay, or it may be that they love it. It is a wonder they had not set the house on fire with their nest. 

Conant says this house was built by Rufus Hosmer's great-grandfather. 

Slippery elm. 

Crowfoot (Ranunculus fascicularis) at Lee's since the 6th, apparently a day or two before this. 

Mouse-ear, not yet. 

What that large frog, bullfrog-like but with brown spots on a dirty-white throat, in a pool on Conantum? 

See thimble-berry and rose bush leafing under the rocks.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 11, 1858

The black spheres (rather dark brown) in the Rana sylvatica spawn. See April 4, 1857 "Caught a croaking frog . . .Nearby was its spawn, in very handsome spherical masses of transparent jelly, two and a half to three inches in diameter, suspended near the surface of some weed, as goldenrod or aster, and consisting of globules about a third of an inch in diameter, with a black or dark centre as big as a large shot. Only these black centres were visible at a little distance in the water, and so much the more surprising and interesting is the translucent jelly when you lift it to the light."); April 4, 1858 ("Go to the cold pond-hole south of J. P. Brown’s, to hear the croaking frogs.. ..[T]hey have dropped their spawn on the twigs.. . .. I see one or two pairs coupled, now sinking, now rising to the surface. The upper one, a male, quite dark brown and considerably smaller than the female, which is reddish--such part of her as I can see--and has quite distinct dark bars on its posterior extremities, while I cannot discern any on the male. .. . To my surprise the female was the ordinary light-reddish-brown wood frog (R. sylvatica), with legs distinctly barred with dark, while the male, whose note alone I have heard, methinks, was not only much smaller, but of a totally different color, a dark brown above with dark-slate colored sides, and the yet darker bars on its posterior extremities a. . . There was a good deal of spawn firmly attached to the brush close to the surface, and, as usual, in some lights you could not see the jelly, only the core.")

How herbaceous and shrubby plants have suffered the past very mild but open winter.

April 6

April 6, 2018

A moist, foggy, and very slightly drizzly morning.

 It has been pretty foggy for several mornings. This makes the banks look suddenly greener, apparently making the green blades more prominent and more vividly green than before, prevailing over the withered ones.

P. M. – Ride to Lee’s Cliff and to Second Division Brook. 

It begins to grow cold about noon, after a week or more of generally warm and pleasant weather. 

They with whom I talk do not remember when the river was so low at this season. The top of the bathing-rock, above the island in the Main Branch, was more than a foot out of water on the 3d, and the river has been falling since.

On examining the buds of the elm at Helianthus Bank, I find it is not the slippery elm, and therefore I know but one. 

At Lee's Cliff I find no saxifrage in bloom above the rock, on account of the ground having been so exposed the past exceedingly mild winter, and no Ranunculus fascicularis anywhere there, but on a few small warm shelves under the rocks the saxifrage makes already a pretty white edging along the edge of the grass sod [?] on the rocks; has got up three or four inches, and may have been out four or five days. 

I also notice one columbine, which may bloom in a week if it is pleasant weather. 

The Ulmus Americana is apparently just out here, or possibly yesterday. The U. fulva not yet, of course. The large rusty blossom-buds of the last have been extensively eaten and mutilated, probably by birds, leaving on the branches which I examine mostly mere shells. 

I see, in [one] or two places in low ground, elder started half an inch, before any other shrub or tree. The Turritis stricta is four to six inches high.

 No mouse-ear there yet.

 I hear hylas in full blast 2.30 P. M.

 It is remarkable how much herbaceous and shrubby plants, some which are decidedly evergreen, have suffered the past very mild but open winter on account of the ground being bare. Accordingly the saxifrage and crowfoot are so backward, notwithstanding the warmth of the last ten days. Perhaps they want more moisture, too. 

The asplenium ferns of both species are very generally perfectly withered and shrivelled, and in exposed places on hills the checkerberry has not proved an evergreen, but is completely withered and a dead-leaf color. I do not remember when it has suffered so much. Such plants require to be covered with snow to protect them.

At Second Division, the Caltha palustris, half a dozen well out. The earliest may have been a day or two. 

The frost is but just coming out in cold wood-paths on the north sides of hills, which makes it very muddy, there only. 

Returned by the Dugan Desert and stopped at the mill there to get the aspen flowers. The very earliest aspens, such as grow in warm exposures on the south sides of hills or woods, have begun to be effete. Others are not yet out. 

Talked a moment with two little Irish (?) boys, eight or ten years old, that were playing in the brook by the mill. Saw one catch a minnow. I asked him if he used a hook. He said no, it was a “dully-chunk,” or some such word. “Dully what?” [I] asked. “Yes, dully,” said he, and he would not venture to repeat the whole word again. It was a small horsehair slip noose at the end of a willow stick four feet long. The horsehair was twisted two or three together. He passed this over the fish slowly and then jerked him out, the noose slipping and holding him. It seems they are sometimes made with wire to catch trout. I asked him to let me see the fish he had caught. It was a little pickerel five inches long, and appeared to me strange, being transversely barred, and reminded me of the Wrentham pond pickerel; but I could not re member surely whether this was the rule or the exception; but when I got home I found that this was the one which Storer does not name nor describe, but only had heard of. Is it not the brook pickerel? Asking what other fish he had caught, he said a pike. “That,” said I, “is a large pickerel.” He said it had “a long, long neb like a duck’s bill.” 

It rapidly grows cold and blustering.

April 6, 1858 (“The asplenium ferns of both species are very generally perfectly withered and shrivelled.”)

H. D. Thoreau, Journal  April 6, 1858

On a few small warm shelves under the rocks the saxifrage may have been out four or five days. See April 7, 1855 ("The saxifrage on the rocks will apparently open in two days; it shows some white. ");  April 10, 1855("As for the saxifrage, when I had given it up for to-day, having, after a long search in the warmest clefts and recesses, found only three or four buds which showed some white, I at length, on a still warmer shelf, found one flower partly expanded, and its common peduncle had shot up an inch."). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Saxifrage in Spring (Saxifraga vernalis).

I also notice one columbine, which may bloom in a week if it is pleasant weather. .The Turritis stricta is four to six inches high. The saxifrage and crowfoot are so backward, notwithstanding the warmth of the last ten days.  See April 2, 1856 ("Cross Fair Haven Pond to Lee’s Cliff. The crowfoot and saxifrage seem remarkably backward; no growth as yet. . . .. The columbine, with its purple leaves, has grown five inches, and one is flower-budded, apparently nearer to flower than anything there. Turritis stricta very forward, four inches high.");  April 18, 1856 ("Common saxifrage and also early sedge I am surprised to find abundantly out—both—considering their backwardness April 2d. Both must have been out some, i. e. four or five, days half-way down the face of the ledge. Crowfoot, apparently two or three days. . . . Turritis stricta. Columbine, and already eaten by bees. Some with a hole in the side"); April 19, 1858 ("Viola ovata on bank above Lee's Cliff. Edith Emerson found them there yesterday; also columbines and the early potentilla April 13th !!!")

At Second Division, the Caltha palustris, half a dozen well out. See March 30, 1856 ("[I]n this warm recess at the head of the meadow, though the rest of the meadow is covered with snow a foot or more in depth, I am surprised to see . . . the Caltha palustris bud, which shows yellowish; and the golden saxifrage, green and abundant")

The very earliest aspens have begun to be effete. Others are not yet out. See April 9, 1856 ("Early aspen catkins have curved downward an inch, and began to shed pollen apparently yesterday.”). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Aspens

This was the one which Storer does not name nor describe, but only had heard of. Is it not the brook pickerel? See May 27, 1858 ("De Kay describes the Esox fasciatus, which is apparently mine of May 11th."); February 23, 1859 ("I see, just caught in the pond, a brook pickerel which, though it has no transverse bars, but a much finer and slighter reticulation than the common, is very distinct from it in the length and form of the snout. This is much shorter and broader as you look down on it.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel

April 6, 2018

It takes several years' faithful search to learn where to look for the earliest flowers.

February 28. 

February 28

Nearly two inches of snow in the night. 

P. M. — To Lee's Cliff. 

I see the track, apparently of a muskrat (?), — about five inches wide with very sharp and distinct trail of tail, — on the snow and thin ice over the little rill in the Miles meadow. It was following up this rill, often not more than thrice as wide as itself, and sometimes its precise locality concealed under ice and snow, yet he kept exactly above it on the snow through all its windings, where it was open occasionally taking to the water and sometimes swimming under the ice a rod or two. 

It is interesting to see how every little rill like this will be haunted by muskrats or minks. Does the mink ever leave a track of its tail? 

At the Cliff, the tower-mustard, early crowfoot, and perhaps buttercup appear to have started of late. 

It takes several years' faithful search to learn where to look for the earliest flowers. 

It is a singular infatuation that leads men to become clergymen in regular, or even irregular, standing. I pray to be introduced to new men, at whom I may stop short and taste their peculiar sweetness. But in the clergyman of the most liberal sort I see no perfectly independent human nucleus, but I seem to see some in distinct scheme hovering about, to which he has lent himself, to which he belongs. It is a very fine cob web in the lower stratum of the air, which stronger wings do not even discover. Whatever he may say, he does not know that one day is as good as another. Whatever he may say, he does not know that a man's creed can never be written, that there are no particular expressions of belief that deserve to be prominent. He dreams of a certain sphere to be filled by him, something less in diameter than a great circle, maybe not greater than a hogshead. All the staves are got out, and his sphere is already hooped. What's the use of talking to him? When you spoke of sphere-music he thought only of a thumping on his cask. If he doesn't know something that nobody else does, that nobody told him, then he 's a telltale. What great interval is there between him who is caught in Africa and made a plantation slave of in the South, and him who is caught in New England and made a Unitarian minister of? In course of time they will abolish the one form of servitude, and, not long after, the other. I do not see the necessity for a man's getting into a hogshead and so narrowing his sphere, nor for his putting his head into a halter. Here 's a man who can't butter his own bread, and he has just combined with a thousand like him to make a dipped toast for all eternity! 

Nearly one third the channel is open in Fair Haven Pond. The snow lies on the ice in large but very shallow drifts, shaped, methinks, much like the holes in ice, broad crescents (apparently) convex to the northwest.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 28, 1857

The track, apparently of a muskrat (?) , — about five inches wide with very sharp and distinct trail of tail . . . Does the mink ever leave a track of its tail? See February 6, 1856 ("He [Goodwin] thinks that what I call muskrat-tracks are mink-tracks by the Rock, and that muskrat do not come out at all this weather. “); January 3, 1860 (“Melvin . . . speaks of the mark of the [muskrat] tail, which is dragged behind them, in the snow, — as if made by a case-knife.”); January 31, 1856 ("See also the tracks, probably of a muskrat, for a few feet leading from hole to hole just under the bank.") See also January 21, 1853 (“I think it was January 20th that I saw that which I think an otter track . . .similar to a muskrat's only much larger.")

It is interesting to see how every little rill like this will be haunted by muskrats or minks. See February 28, 1856 ("A millwright comes and builds a dam across the foot of the meadow, and a mill-pond is created. . .; and muskrats and minks and otter frequent it.")

It takes several years' faithful search to learn where to look for the earliest flowers. See January 9, 1853 ("On the face of the Cliff the crowfoot buds lie unexpanded just beneath the surface. I dig one up with a stick, and, pulling it to pieces, I find deep in the centre of the plant, just beneath the ground, surrounded by all the tender leaves that are to precede it, the blossom-bud, about half is big as the head of a pin, perfectly white. There it patiently sits, or slumbers, how full of faith, informed of a spring which the world has never seen.”); April 2, 1856 (“It will take you half a lifetime to find out where to look for the earliest flower.”); April 8, 1855 (“As to which are the earliest flowers, it depends on the character of the season, and ground bare or not, meadows wet or dry, etc., etc., also on the variety of soils and localities within your reach.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, the Earliest Flower

Nearly one third the channel is open in Fair Haven Pond. 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,. . . I never knew before exactly where the channel was.");  March 29, 1854 ("Fair Haven half open; channel wholly open.");  March 29, 1855 ("Fair Haven Pond only just open over the channel of the river.");

Fall flowers and a fetid fungus.

October 16.

October 16.

Ground all white with frost. 

P. M. — To chestnuts, down Turnpike. 

I notice these flowers on the way by the roadside, which survive the frost, i. e. a few of them: hedge-mustard, mayweed, tall crowfoot, autumnal dandelion, yarrow, some Aster Tradescanti, and some red clover.  

Polygonum orientate was finished by yesterday's frost. There was plenty of the front-rank polygonum freshly open along river on the 13th. Perhaps the frosts have nipped it. 

I saw a farmer busily collecting his pumpkins on the 14th, — Abel Brooks, — rambling over his corn-fields and bringing the pumpkins out to the sides on the path, on the side of the field, where he can load them. The ground was so stiff on the 15th, in the morning, that some could not dig potatoes. 

Bent is now making haste to gather his apples. I. Wright, too, is collecting some choice barrels of golden russets. Many times he turns it over before he leaves out a specked one. A poor story if the farmer cannot get rich, for everything he has is salable, even every load of mud on his farm. 

At the Everett meadow a large flock of mewing and lisping goldfinches, with but little yellow, pass over the Turnpike. 

Many chestnut burs are now open, yet a stone will not jar down many nuts yet. Burs which were quite green on the 8th are now all brown and dry, and the prickles come off in your hand when you touch them, yet the nuts do not readily drop out. Many nuts have fallen within two or three days, but many squirrels have been busily picking them up. 

Found amid the sphagnum on the dry bank on the south side of the Turnpike, just below Everett's meadow, a rare and remarkable fungus, such as I have heard of but never seen before. The whole height six and three quarters inches, two thirds of it being buried in the sphagnum. It may be divided into three parts, pileus, stem, and base, — or scrotum, for it is a perfect phallus. 

One of those fungi named impudicus, I think. This is very similar to if not the same with that represented in Loudon's Encyclopedia and called "Phallus impudicus, Stinking Morel, very fetid." In all respects a most disgusting object, yet very suggestive. 

It is hollow from top to bottom, the form of the hollow answering to that of the outside. The color of the outside white excepting the pileus, which is olive-colored and somewhat coarsely corrugated, with an oblong mouth at tip about one eighth of an inch long, or, measuring the white lips, half an inch. This cap is thin and white within, about one and three eighths inches high by one and a half wide. The stem (bare portion) is three inches long (tapering more rapidly than in the drawing), horizontally viewed of an oval form. Longest diameter at base one and a half inches, at top (on edge of pileus) fifteen sixteenths of an inch. Short diameters in both cases about two thirds as much. It is a delicate white cylinder of a finely honeycombed and crispy material about three sixteenths of an inch thick, or more, the whole very straight and regular. The base, or scrotum, is of an irregular bag form, about one inch by two in the extremes, consisting of a thick trembling gelatinous mass surrounding the bottom of the stem and covered with a tough white skin of a darker tint than the stem. The whole plant rather frail and trembling. There was at first a very thin delicate white collar (or volva?) about the base of the stem above the scrotum. 

In all respects a

most disgusting object, yet 

very suggestive. 

It was as offensive to the eye as to the scent, the cap rapidly melting and defiling what it touched with a fetid, olivaceous, semiliquid matter. In an hour or two the plant scented the whole house wherever placed, so that it could not be endured. I was afraid to sleep in my chamber where it had lain until the room had been well ventilated. It smelled like a dead rat in the ceiling, in all the ceilings of the house. 

Pray, what was Nature thinking of when she made this ? She almost puts her self on a level with those who draw in privies. 

The cap had at first a smooth and almost dry surface, of a sort of olive slate-color, but the next day this colored surface all melted out, leaving deep corrugations or gills — rather honeycomb-like cells — with a white bottom.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 16, 1856

Burs which were quite green on the 8th are now all brown and dry . . .many squirrels have been busily picking them up. See October 8, 1856 ("A few chestnut burs are open, and have been some days, before they could have felt frost, showing that they would open without it, but a stone will not jar them down, nor a club thrown into the tree yet.. . ."); December 9, 1852 ("The chestnuts are almost as plenty as ever, . . .. There are more this year than the squirrels can consume.. . .")