A Book of the Seasons: The Shrub Oak

I love the shrub oak,

its scanty garment of leaves

whispering to me.

December 1, 1856

The shrub oak, lowly, loving the earth and spreading over it, tough, thick-leaved; leaves firm and sound in winter and rustling like leather shields; leaves fair and wholesome to the eye, clean and smooth to the touch.  December 1. 1856

August 28, 1853 ("The acorns show now on the shrub oaks.")

September 13, 1859 ("I see some shrub oak acorns turned dark on the bushes and showing their meridian lines, but generally acorns of all kinds are green yet. ")

September 21, 1859 ("Acorns have been falling very sparingly ever since September 1, but are mostly wormy. They are as interesting now on the shrub oak (green) as ever.")

September 25, 1854 ("On the shrub oak plain, as seen from Cliffs, the red at least balances the green. It looks like a rich, shaggy rug now, before the woods are changed.")

September 28, 1858 ("The small shrub oak . . . with its pretty acorns striped dark and light alternately.");

September 30, 1859 ("Most shrub oak acorns browned.")

October 1, 1859 ("The shrub oaks on this hill are now at their height, both with respect to their tints and their fruit. The . . .pretty fruit, varying in size, pointedness, and downiness, being now generally turned brown, with light, converging meridional lines. . . .Now is the time for shrub oak acorns.")
October 2, 1851 ("The shrub oaks on the terraced plain are now almost uniformly of a deep red")
October 7, 1857 ("Some shrub oaks are yellow, others reddish.")
October 9, 1851 ("The hills and plain on the opposite side of the river are covered with deep warm red leaves of shrub oaks.")
October 13, 1852 ("The shrub oak plain is now a deep red,")
October 14, 1859 ("The shrub oak acorns are now all fallen, — only one or two left on,")
October 22, 1858 ("I see, from the Cliffs, that color has run through the shrub oak plain like a fire or a wave, not omitting a single tree")

November 2, 1853 ("The shrub oak cups which I notice to-day have lost their acorns.")

November 16, 1850 ("It is singular that the shrub oaks retain their leaves through the winter. Why do they? ")

November 21, 1850 ("Seeing the sun falling . . .in an angle where this forest meets a hill covered with shrub oaks, affects me singularly, reinspiring me with all the dreams of my youth. It is a place far away, yet actual and where I have been. It is like looking into dreamland. It is one of the avenues to my future.”)

November 25, 1858 ("Most shrub oaks there have lost their leaves (Quercus ilicifolia), which, very fair and perfect, cover the ground. ")

November 29, 1857 ("Again I am struck by the singularly wholesome colors of the withered oak leaves, especially the shrub oak, so thick and firm and unworn, without speck or fret, clear reddish-brown (sometimes paler or yellowish brown), its whitish under sides contrasting with it in a very cheerful manner. So strong and cheerful, as if it rejoiced at the advent of winter, and exclaimed, “Winter, come on!”")

December 4, 1850 ("The shrub oak fire burns briskly as seen from the Cliffs")

December 7, 1857 ("It is a fair, sunny, and warm day in the woods for the season. We eat our dinners . . .amid the young oaks in a sheltered and very unfrequented place. I cut some leafy shrub oaks and cast them down for a dry and springy seat. ")

January 7, 1857 ("I should not be ashamed to have a shrub oak for my coat-of-arms.")
January 30, 1853 (''The shrub oak leaf is the firmest and best preserved")

January 30, 1853 (" What I have called the Shrub Oak Plain contains comparatively few shrub oaks, — rather, young red and white and, it may be, some scarlet (?).")

 A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  The Shrub Oak.

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

A little green hemisphere of moss.

December 1. 

It is quite mild and pleasant to-day. 

I saw a little green hemisphere of moss which looked as if it covered a stone, but, thrusting my cane into it, I found it was nothing but moss, about fifteen inches in diameter and eight or nine inches high. 

When I broke it up, it appeared as if the annual growth was marked by successive layers half an inch deep each. The lower ones were quite rotten, but the present year's quite green, the intermediate white. I counted fifteen or eighteen. 

It was quite solid, and I saw that it continued solid as it grew by branching occasionally, just enough to fill the newly gained space, and the tender extremities of each plant, crowded close together, made the firm and compact surface of the bed. 

There was a darker line separating the growths, where I thought the surface had been exposed to the winter. 

It was quite saturated with water, though firm and solid.

H.. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 1, 1850

It is quite mild and pleasant to-day. See November 29, 1852 ("November 29, 30, and December 1. have been the mildest and pleasantest days since November came in.”); December 2, 1859("Nov. 30, Dec. 1 and 2 were remarkably warm and springlike days, — a moist warmth.”)

I hear the faintest possible quivet from a nuthatch, quite near me.

December 1. 

P. M. —Walking in Ebby Hubbard's woods, I hear a red squirrel barking at me amid the pine and oak tops, and now I see him coursing from tree to tree. How securely he travels there, fifty feet from the ground, leaping from the slender, bending twig of one tree across an interval of three or four feet and catching at the nearest twig of the next, which so bends under him that it is at first hard to get up it. His travelling a succession of leaps in the air at that height without wings! And yet he gets along about as rapidly as on the ground. 

I hear the faintest possible quivet from a nuthatch, quite near me on a pine. I thus always begin to hear this bird on the approach of winter, as if it did not breed here, but wintered here.* 

I hear of two more flocks of geese going over to-day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 1, 1857

*[Hear it all the fall (and occasionally through the summer of ’59).]

And now I see him coursing from tree to tree. See May 7, 1855 ("Scare up two gray squirrels in the Holden wood, which run glibly up the tallest trees on the opposite side to me, and leap across from the extremity of the branches to the next trees, and so on very fast ahead of me.")

I hear the faintest possible quivet from a nuthatch, quite near me. See November 26, 1860 ("I hear the faint note of a nuthatch like the creak of a limb. I detect it on the trunk of an oak much nearer than I suspected, and its mate or companion not far off. This is a phenomenon of the late fall or early winter; for we do not hear them in summer that I remember.");  July 12, 1860  ("Hear a nuthatch in the street. So they breed here."); See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Nuthatch

I hear of two more flocks of geese going over to-day. See note to November 30, 1857 ("The air is full of geese. I saw five flocks within an hour, about 10 A. M., containing from thirty to fifty each, and afterward two more flocks, making in all from two hundred and fifty to three hundred at least”)

I fell in love with a shrub oak.

December 1. 

P. M. — By path around Walden. With this little snow of the 29th ult. there is yet pretty good sledding, for it lies solid.

Slate-colored snowbirds flit before me in the path, feeding on the seeds on the snow, the countless little brown seeds that begin to be scattered over the snow, so much the more obvious to bird and beast. 

A hundred kinds of indigenous grain are harvested now, broadcast upon the surface of the snow. Thus at a critical season these seeds are shaken down on to a clean white napkin, unmixed with dirt and rubbish, and off this the little pensioners pick them. Their clean table is thus spread a few inches or feet above the ground. 

Will wonder become extinct in me? Shall I become insensible as a fungus? 

A ridge of earth, with the red cockscomb lichen on it, peeps out still at the rut's edge. 

The dear wholesome color of shrub oak leaves, so clean and firm, not decaying, but which have put on a kind of immortality, not wrinkled and thin like the white oak leaves, but full-veined and plump, as nearer earth. Well-tanned leather on the one side, sun-tanned, color of colors, color of the cow and the deer, silver-downy beneath, turned toward the late bleached and russet fields. 

What are acanthus leaves and the rest to this? Emblem of my winter condition.

I love and could embrace the shrub oak with its scanty garment of leaves rising above the snow, lowly whispering to me, akin to winter thoughts, and sunsets, and to all virtue. Covert which the hare and the partridge seek, and I too seek. 

What cousin of mine is the shrub oak? 

How can any man suffer long? For a sense of want is a prayer, and all prayers are answered. 

Rigid as iron, clean as the atmosphere, hardy as virtue, innocent and sweet as a maiden is the shrub oak. In proportion as I know and love it, I am natural and sound as a partridge.

 I felt a positive yearning toward one bush this afternoon. There was a match found for me at last. I fell in love with a shrub oak.

Tenacious of its leaves, which shrivel not but retain a certain wintry life in them, firm shields, painted in fast colors a rich brown. 

The deer mouse, too, knows the shrub oak and has its hole in the snow by the shrub oak's stem.

Now, too, I remark in many places ridges and fields of fine russet or straw-colored grass rising above the snow, and beds of empty straw-colored heads of everlasting and ragged-looking Roman wormwood. 

The blue-curls' chalices stand empty, and waiting evidently to be filled with ice.

No, I am a stranger in your towns. I am not at home at French's, or Lovejoy's, or Savery's. I can winter more to my mind amid the shrub oaks. I have made arrangements to stay with them. 

The shrub oak, lowly, loving the earth and spreading over it, tough, thick-leaved; leaves firm and sound in winter and rustling like leather shields; leaves fair and wholesome to the eye, clean and smooth to the touch. Tough to support the snow, not broken down by it. Well-nigh useless to man. A sturdy phalanx, hard to break through. Product of New England's surface. Bearing many striped acorns. 

Well named shrub oak. Low, robust, hardy, indigenous. Well known to the striped squirrel and the partridge and rabbit. The squirrel nibbles its nuts sitting upon an old stump of its larger cousins.  

How many rents I owe to you! how many eyes put out! how many bleeding fingers! How many shrub oak patches I have been through, stooping, winding my way, bending the twigs aside, guiding myself by the sun, over hills and valleys and plains, resting in clear grassy spaces! 

I love to go through a patch of shrub oak in a bee-line, where you tear your clothes and put your eyes out.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 1, 1856

I love and could embrace the shrub oak with its scanty garment of leaves rising above the snow, lowly whispering to me . See November 21, 1850 ("Seeing the sun falling . . .in an angle where this forest meets a hill covered with shrub oaks, affects me singularly, reinspiring me with all the dreams of my youth. It is a place far away, yet actual and where I have been. It is like looking into dreamland. It is one of the avenues to my future.”); April 26, 1852 ("Rambled amid the shrub oak hills beyond Hayden's. Lay on the dead grass in a cup-like hollow sprinkled with half-dead low shrub oaks. . . . It is a dull, rain dropping and threatening afternoon, inclining to drowsiness. I feel as if I could go to sleep under a hedge. The landscape wears a subdued tone, quite soothing to the feelings; no glaring colors.")

Shrub oak. Scrub or Bear oak (Quercus ilicifolia), one of the smaller and more gnarled oaks in New England, absent from the northern portions of northern New England. Rarely exceeding 12-20 feet this species does not tolerate shade and is among the first to recolonize dry sites that have been repeatedly cut-over or burned. It sprouts prolifically after fire burns away its above-ground parts. GoBotany Its leaves are a distinguishing feature; the second set of lobes from the base tend to be much larger than the others. Forest Trees of Vermont See November 25, 1858 (“Most shrub oaks there have lost their leaves (Quercus ilicifolia), which, very fair and perfect, cover the ground.”); January 19, 1859 ("Gathered a scarlet oak acorn . . .with distinct fine dark stripes or rays, such as a Quercus ilicifolia has.")

A Book of the Seasons: December 1 (A season for buds, withered leaves, shrub oak, chickadee and nuthatch)

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

December 1

December 1, 2021

At this season we

observe the form of the buds

now prepared for spring.

December 1, 1852

The chickadee hops

nearer and nearer as the

winter advances.

December 1, 1853

I love the shrub oak,

its scanty garment of leaves

whispering to me.

December 1, 1856

I hear the faintest

possible quivet from a

nuthatch, quite near me.

December 1, 1857

December 1, 2017

By path around Walden. With this little snow of the 29th ult. there is yet pretty good sledding, for it lies solid. December 1, 1856

It is quite mild and pleasant to-day.  December 1, 1850

Will wonder become extinct in me? Shall I become insensible as a fungus? December 1, 1856

I saw a little green hemisphere of moss which looked as if it covered a stone, but, thrusting my cane into it, I found it was nothing but moss, about fifteen inches in diameter and eight or nine inches high.  December 1, 1850\

It was quite solid, and I saw that it continued solid as it grew by branching occasionally, just enough to fill the newly gained space, and the tender extremities of each plant, crowded close together, made the firm and compact surface of the bed.  December 1, 1850

It was quite saturated with water, though firm and solid. December 1, 1850

At this season I observe the form of the buds which are prepared for spring,

• the large bright yellowish and reddish buds of the swamp-pink, 
• the already downy ones of the Populus tremuloides and the willows, 
• the red ones of the blueberry, 
• the long, sharp ones of the amelanchier, 
• the spear-shaped ones of the viburnum; 

also the catkins of the alders and birches. December 1, 1852

Those trees and shrubs which retain their withered leaves through the winter serve as a shelter to rabbits and partridges and other winter quadrupeds and birds. December 1, 1853

Even the little chickadees love to skulk amid them and peep out from behind them.  December 1, 1853

I hear their faint, silvery, lisping notes, like tinkling glass, and occasionally a sprightly day-day-day, as they inquisitively hop nearer and nearer to me. December 1, 1853

They are our most honest and innocent little bird, drawing yet nearer to us as the winter advances, and deserve best of any of the walker. December 1, 1853 

I hear the faintest possible quivet from a nuthatch, quite near me on a pine.  December 1, 1857

I thus always begin to hear this bird on the approach of winter, as if it did not breed here, but wintered here December 1, 1857.[Hear it all the fall (and occasionally through the summer of ’59).] 

Slate-colored snowbirds flit before me in the path, feeding on the seeds on the snow, the countless little brown seeds that begin to be scattered over the snow, so much the more obvious to bird and beast. December 1, 1856

A hundred kinds of indigenous grain are harvested now, broadcast upon the surface of the snow. December 1, 1856

Thus at a critical season these seeds are shaken down on to a clean white napkin, unmixed with dirt and rubbish, and off this the little pensioners pick them. December 1, 1856

Their clean table is thus spread a few inches or feet above the ground. December 1, 1856

Now, too, I remark in many places ridges and fields of fine russet or straw-colored grass rising above the snow, and beds of empty straw-colored heads of everlasting and ragged-looking Roman wormwood. December 1, 1856

The blue-curls' chalices stand empty, and waiting evidently to be filled with ice. December 1, 1856

A ridge of earth, with the red cockscomb lichen on it, peeps out still at the rut's edge. December 1, 1856

What are acanthus leaves and the rest to this? Emblem of my winter condition. December 1, 1856

The dear wholesome color of shrub oak leaves, so clean and firm, not decaying, but which have put on a kind of immortality, not wrinkled and thin like the white oak leaves, but full-veined and plump, as nearer earth. Well-tanned leather on the one side, sun-tanned, color of colors, color of the cow and the deer, silver-downy beneath, turned toward the late bleached and russet fields. December 1, 1856

I love and could embrace the shrub oak with its scanty garment of leaves rising above the snow, lowly whispering to me, akin to winter thoughts, and sunsets, and to all virtue. December 1, 1856

Tenacious of its leaves, which shrivel not but retain a certain wintry life in them, firm shields, painted in fast colors a rich brown. December 1, 1856

Covert which the hare and the partridge seek, and I too seek. December 1, 1856

What cousin of mine is the shrub oak? December 1, 1856

Rigid as iron, clean as the atmosphere, hardy as virtue, innocent and sweet as a maiden is the shrub oak. In proportion as I know and love it, I am natural and sound as a partridge.December 1, 1856

 I felt a positive yearning toward one bush this afternoon. There was a match found for me at last. I fell in love with a shrub oak.December 1, 1856

 I can winter more to my mind amid the shrub oaks. I have made arrangements to stay with them. December 1, 1856

The deer mouse, too, knows the shrub oak and has its hole in the snow by the shrub oak's stem. December 1, 1856

The shrub oak, lowly, loving the earth and spreading over it, tough, thick-leaved; leaves firm and sound in winter and rustling like leather shields; leaves fair and wholesome to the eye, clean and smooth to the touch. Tough to support the snow, not broken down by it. Well-nigh useless to man. A sturdy phalanx, hard to break through. Product of New England's surface. Bearing many striped acorns. December 1, 1856

Well named shrub oak. Low, robust, hardy, indigenous. Well known to the striped squirrel and the partridge and rabbit. The squirrel nibbles its nuts sitting upon an old stump of its larger cousins.  December 1, 1856

How many rents I owe to you! how many eyes put out! how many bleeding fingers! How many shrub oak patches I have been through, stooping, winding my way, bending the twigs aside, guiding myself by the sun, over hills and valleys and plains, resting in clear grassy spaces! December 1, 1856

I love to go through a patch of shrub oak in a bee-line, where you tear your clothes and put your eyes out. December 1, 1856

Walking in Ebby Hubbard's woods, I hear a red squirrel barking at me amid the pine and oak tops, and now I see him coursing from tree to tree.  December 1, 1857

How securely he travels there, fifty feet from the ground, leaping from the slender, bending twig of one tree across an interval of three or four feet and catching at the nearest twig of the next, which so bends under him that it is at first hard to get up it. December 1, 1857

 His travelling a succession of leaps in the air at that height without wings!  December 1, 1857

And yet he gets along about as rapidly as on the ground. December 1, 1857

Examine the young hickories on Fair Haven Hill slope to see how old they are. These hickories are most numerous in openings . . . very far from other trees of any kind. I infer that animals plant them, and perhaps their growing along walls may be accounted for in part by the fact that the squirrels with nuts oftenest take that road.

I do not know of a grove of oaks springing up in this manner, with broad intervals of bare sward between them, and away from pines. How is this to be accounted for?  December 1, 1860 

I hear of two more flocks of geese going over to-day. December 1, 1857

The landscape is the color of a russet apple which has no golden cheek. The sunset sky supplies that. December 1, 1852 

How can any man suffer long? For a sense of want is a prayer, and all prayers are answered. December 1, 1856

The year looks back toward summer, and a summer smile is reflected in her face. December 1, 1852

December 1, 2020

*****

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Blue-Curls

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Aromatic Herbs

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau. The Hickory

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Shrub Oak

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Aspens

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Birches in Season

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Shad-bush, 

Juneberry, or Service-berry 

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Nuthatch

 A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, the Dark-eyed Junco (Fringilla hyemalis)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Geese in Autumn

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  the Chickadee in Winter

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Striped Squirrel

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Red Squirrel

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Reminiscence and Prompting

 A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Winter

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Winter Sunsets

*****

December 1, 2018

April 26, 1852 ("Rambled amid the shrub oak hills beyond Hayden's. Lay on the dead grass in a cup-like hollow sprinkled with half-dead low shrub oaks. . . . It is a dull, rain dropping and threatening afternoon, inclining to drowsiness. I feel as if I could go to sleep under a hedge. The landscape wears a subdued tone, quite soothing to the feelings; no glaring colors.")

May 7, 1855 ("Scare up two gray squirrels in the Holden wood, which run glibly up the tallest trees on the opposite side to me, and leap across from the extremity of the branches to the next trees, and so on very fast ahead of me.")

October 2, 1857 (“The chickadees of late have winter ways, flocking after you.”); 

October 15, 1856 ("The chickadees are hopping near on the hemlock above. They resume their winter ways before the winter comes. “)

October 30, 1853 ("Now, now is the time to look at the buds.”)

November 4, 1857 ("I notice the new and as yet unswollen scales of willow catkins or buds")

November 5, 1855 ("Swamp-pink buds now begin to show.")

The chickadee 

Hops near to me.

November 8, 1857

November 9, 1850 ("The chickadees, if I stand long enough, hop nearer and nearer inquisitively, from pine bough to pine bough, till within four or five feet, occasionally lisping a note.”)

November 21, 1850   ("Seeing the sun falling . . .in an angle where this forest meets a hill covered with shrub oaks, affects me singularly, reinspiring me with all the dreams of my youth. It is a place far away, yet actual and where I have been. It is like looking into dreamland. It is one of the avenues to my future.”)

November 25, 1858 (“Most shrub oaks there have lost their leaves (Quercus ilicifolia), which, very fair and perfect, cover the ground.”)

November 26, 1860 ("I hear the faint note of a nuthatch like the creak of a limb. I detect it on the trunk of an oak much nearer than I suspected, and its mate or companion not far off. This is a phenomenon of the late fall or early winter; for we do not hear them in summer that I remember.") 

November 29, 1852 ("November 29, 30, and December 1. have been the mildest and pleasantest days since November came in.”)

November 30, 1857 ("The air is full of geese. I saw five flocks within an hour, about 10 A. M., containing from thirty to fifty each, and afterward two more flocks, making in all from two hundred and fifty to three hundred at least”)

 November 30, 1856 ("Now see the empty chalices of the blue-curls and the rich brown-fruited pinweed above the crust.")

December 2, 1859 ("Nov. 30, Dec. 1 and 2 were remarkably warm and springlike days, — a moist warmth.”)
December 3, 1856 ("Six weeks ago I noticed the advent of chickadees and their winter habits. As you walk along a wood-side, a restless little flock of them, whose notes you hear at a distance, will seem to say, "Oh, there he goes! Let's pay our respects to him." And they will flit after and close to you, and naively peck at the nearest twig to you, as if they were minding their own business all the while without any reference to you.”)

December 4, 1856 ("How many thousand acres are there now of pitchered blue-curls and ragged wormwood rising above the shallow snow?")

December 6, 1856 ("On all sides, in swamps and about their edges and in the woods, the bare shrubs are sprinkled with buds, more or less noticeable and pretty, their little gemmae or gems, their most vital and attractive parts now, almost all the greenness and color left, greens and salads for the birds and rabbits.")

December 11, 1855 ("I thread the tangle of the spruce swamp, admiring . . . the great yellow buds of the swamp-pink, the round red buds of the high blueberry, and the fine sharp red ones of the panicled andromeda")

December 31, 1859 ("The oblong-conical sterile flower-buds or catkins of the sweet-gale, half a dozen at the end of each black twig, dark-red, oblong-conical, spotted with black, and about half an inch long, are among the most interesting buds of the winter.")

January 19, 1859 ("Gathered a scarlet oak acorn . . .with distinct fine dark stripes or rays, such as a Quercus ilicifolia has.")

December 1, 2022

December 1, 2023

If you make the least correct

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

November 30 <<<<<<<<  December 1 >>>>>>>> December 2 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, December 1

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season, 

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2022

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

https://tinyurl.com/HDT01DEC

The chickadee Hops near to me.

December 1

December 1, 2023

4 P. M. – Το Cliffs. 

We may infer that every withered culm of grass or sedge, or weed that still stands in the fields, answers some purpose by standing.

Those trees and shrubs which retain their withered leaves through the winter – shrub oaks and young white, red, and black oaks, the lower branches of larger trees of the last-mentioned species, hornbeam, etc., and young hickories seem to form an intermediate class between deciduous and evergreen trees. They may almost be called the ever-reds. 

Their leaves, which are falling all winter long, serve as a shelter to rabbits and partridges and other winter quadrupeds and birds. Even the little chickadees love to skulk amid them and peep out from behind them. 

I hear their faint, silvery, lisping notes, like tinkling glass, and occasionally a sprightly day-day-day, as they inquisitively hop nearer and nearer to me. They are our most honest and innocent little bird, drawing yet nearer to us as the winter advances, and deserve best of any of the walker.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 1, 1853

Our most honest and innocent little bird, drawing yet nearer to us as the winter advances. See October 2, 1857 (“The chickadees of late have winter ways, flocking after you.”); October 15, 1856 ("The chickadees are hopping near on the hemlock above. They resume their winter ways before the winter comes. “)

The chickadee 

Hops near to me.

November 8, 1857

November 9, 1850 ("The chickadees, if I stand long enough, hop nearer and nearer inquisitively, from pine bough to pine bough, till within four or five feet, occasionally lisping a note.”); December 3, 1856 ("Six weeks ago I noticed the advent of chickadees and their winter habits. As you walk along a wood-side, a restless little flock of them, whose notes you hear at a distance, will seem to say, "Oh, there he goes! Let's pay our respects to him." And they will flit after and close to you, and naively peck at the nearest twig to you, as if they were minding their own business all the while without any reference to you.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter.

December 1. A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, December 1

The chickadee hops

nearer and nearer as the

winter advances.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The chickadee  Hops near to me.

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/hdt-531201

The buds are prepared for spring

December 1.

To Cliffs. 

The snow keeps off unusually. 

The landscape is the color of a russet apple which has no golden cheek. The sunset sky supplies that. But though it be crude to bite, it yields a pleasant acid flavor. 

The year looks back toward summer, and a summer smile is reflected in her face. 

There is in these days a coolness in the air which makes me hesitate to call them Indian summer.

At this season I observe the form of the buds which are prepared for spring,

• the large bright yellowish and reddish buds of the swamp-pink, 
• the already downy ones of the Populus tremuloides and the willows, 
• the red ones of the blueberry, 
• the long, sharp ones of the amelanchier, 
• the spear-shaped ones of the viburnum; 

also the catkins of the alders and birches.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 1, 1852

At this season I observe the form of the buds.  See October 30, 1853 ("Now, now is the time to look at the buds.”); November 4, 1857 ("I notice the new and as yet unswollen scales of willow catkins or buds"); November 5, 1855 ("Swamp-pink buds now begin to show.");  December 6, 1856 ("On all sides, in swamps and about their edges and in the woods, the bare shrubs are sprinkled with buds, more or less noticeable and pretty, their little gemmae or gems, their most vital and attractive parts now, almost all the greenness and color left, greens and salads for the birds and rabbits."); December 11, 1855 ("I thread the tangle of the spruce swamp, admiring . . . the great yellow buds of the swamp-pink, the round red buds of the high blueberry, and the fine sharp red ones of the panicled andromeda"); December 31, 1859 ("The oblong-conical sterile flower-buds or catkins of the sweet-gale, half a dozen at the end of each black twig, dark-red, oblong-conical, spotted with black, and about half an inch long, are among the most interesting buds of the winter.")

To Fair Haven Hill.

December 1.

Measure a great red maple near the south end of E. Hubbard's swamp, dividing in two at the ground, the largest trunk 7 feet and 10 inches at three feet. This the largest I know.

Examine the young hickories on Fair Haven Hill slope to see how old they are. These hickories are most numerous in openings four or five rods over amid the pines, and are also found many rods from the pines in the open pasture, and also especially along walls, though yet very far from other trees of any kind. I infer that animals plant them, and perhaps their growing along walls may be accounted for in part by the fact that the squirrels with nuts oftenest take that road.

What is most remarkable is that they should be planted so often in open land, on a bare hillside, where oaks rarely are. I do not know of a grove of oaks springing up in this manner, with broad intervals of bare sward between them, and away from pines.

How is this to be accounted for? It may be that they are more persistent at the root than oaks, and so at last succeed in becoming trees in these localities, where oaks fail.

It will be very suggestive to a novice just to go and dig up a dozen seedling oaks and hickories and see what they have had to contend with. Theirs is like the early career of genius.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 1, 1860

Measure a great red maple near the south end of E. Hubbard's swamp 7 feet and 10 inches at three feet. This the largest I know. See November 14, 1860 ("The red maple on south edge of Trillium Wood is six feet three inches in circumference at three feet"); November 16, 1860 ("To Inches Woods . . . we next went west by south through a maple and yellow birch swamp, in which a black oak eight feet and four twelfths [ in ] circumference, a red maple six feet and a half, a black birch seven feet, a black birch eight feet.")

What is most remarkable is that they should be planted so often in open land, on a bare hillside, where oaks rarely are. See October 26, 1860 ("Are not hickories most commonly found on hills? There are a few hickories in the open land which I once cultivated there, and these may have been planted there by birds or squirrels"); December 2, 1860 ("It may be that when pine and oaks and hickories, young and old, are cut off and the land cleared, the two former are exterminated but the hickories are tough and stubborn and do not give up the ground"); December 3, 1860 ("I am inclined to think now that both oaks and hickories are occasionally planted in open land a rod or two or more beyond the edge of a pine or other wood, but that the hickory roots are more persistent under these circumstances and hence oftener succeed there. ")