A Book of the Seasons: November 27 (short days, shore ice, shrub oak, acorns and pignuts, lycopodium and other wintergreen plants, barren earth, bright stars)

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

 November 27

The bare barren earth

    cheerless without ice and snow  –   

but how bright the stars.

November 27, 1853

November 27, 2021

Almost an Indian-summer day.  November 27, 1852

On the 22d the ground was white with snow for a few hours only. Yet, though you saw no more of it generally the latter part of that day, I still see some of it in cold, wet, shaded places, as amid andromeda and cranberry vines. November 27, 1859

There is a little ice along most of the shore throughout the day. November 27, 1855

That trough placed on the side of the rocky valley to catch the trickling spring for the sake of the cattle . . . is an agreeable object and in keeping with the circumstances, amid the hickories. November 27, 1857

It reminds me . . . that other creatures than myself quench their thirst at this hillside. November 27, 1857

Was struck by the appearance of a small hickory near the wall, in the rocky ravine just above the trough. November 27, 1857

Its trunk was covered with loose scales unlike the hickories near it and as much as the shagbark; but probably it is a shaggy or scaly-barked variety of Carya glabra.  November 27, 1857

The husk is not thick, like that of the shagbark, but quite thin, and splits into four only part way down. The shell is not white nor sharply four-angled like the other, but it is rather like a pignut. November 27, 1857

I find acorns which have sent a shoot down into the earth this fall. November 27, 1852

I find scarlet oak acorns like this

in form not essentially different from those of the black oak, except that the scales of the black stand out more loose and bristling about the fruit. So all scarlet oak acorns do not regularly taper to a point from a broad base. November 27, 1858

The shrub oaks and the sprouts make woods you can look down on. They are now our rustling gardens. November 27, 1852

This wood-lot, especially at the northwest base of the hill, is extensively carpeted with the Lycopodium complanatum and also much dendroideum. November 27, 1859

I observe the Lycopodium lucidulum still of .a fresh, shining green. November 27, 1853

Chimaphila umbellata. November 27, 1859  [pipsissewa, or “wintergreen.”] 

Checkerberries and partridge-berries are both numerous and obvious now November 27, 1853

To Colburn Farm wood-lot north of C. Hill. I traverse this wood-lot back and forth by the lines cut by those who have lotted it off. Thus I scare up the partridges in it . . . there are few wood-lots of this size which have not some in them at present. November 27, 1859

Take a turn down the river.  November 27, 1856 

The principal flight of geese is said to have been a few days before the 24th. I have seen none. November 27, 1859

There is little now to be heard along the river but the sedge rustling on the brink. November 27, 1855

A painted tortoise sinking to the bottom.  November 27, 1856 

And apparently tree sparrows along the shore. November 27, 1856 

Mr. Wesson says that he has seen a striped squirrel eating a white-bellied mouse on a wall — had evidently caught it.  November 27, 1857

This country is so new that species of fishes and birds and quadrupeds inhabit it which science has not yet detected. November 27, 1858

The days are short enough now. The sun is already setting before I have reached the ordinary limit of my walk. November 27, 1853

It is too cold to-day to use a paddle; the water freezes on the handle and numbs my fingers. November 27, 1853

Now a man will eat his heart, if ever, now while the earth is bare, barren and cheerless, and we have the coldness of winter without the variety of ice and snow – but methinks the variety and compensation are in the stars now. How bright they are now by contrast with the dark earth! November 27, 1853

*****

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Indian Summer

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Partridge-berry (Mitchella Repens)

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

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

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

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

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Painted Turtle (Emys picta)

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Tree Sparrow

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

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

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November days

November 27, 2021

April 19, 1856 (“I notice acorns sprouted.”)

April 29, 1852 ("The acorns among the leaves are sprouted, the shells open and the blushing (red) meat exposed at the sprout end, where the sprout is already turning toward the earth.”)

May 12, 1859 ("My red oak acorns have sent down long radicles underground.”) 

May 29, 1859 ("Coming out of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery today, where I had just been to deposit the corpse of a man, I pick up an oak tree three inches high with the acorn attached.")

September 12, 1854 ("[White oak acorns] are small and very neat light-green acorns, with small cups, commonly arranged two by two close together, often with a leaf growing between them")

September 18, 1858 ("The small shrub oak . . .with its pretty acorns striped dark and light alternately.") 

September 30, 1854 ("The conventional acorn of art is of course of no particular species, but the artist might find it worth his while to study Nature’s varieties again.")

October 7, 1860 ("I see one small but spreading white oak full of acorns just falling and ready to fall. . . . Some that have fallen have already split and sprouted.”); 

October 17,1857 (“Glossy-brown white oak acorns strew the ground thickly, many of them sprouted. How soon they have sprouted!”);

October 16, 1859 ("All the Lycopodium complanatum I see to-day has shed its pollen.")

October 30, 1853 ("Coarse, rustling, light-colored withered grasses skirt the river and the wood-side.")
November 1, 1852 ("In November, a man will eat his heart, if in any month.") 
November 1, 1855.("I see no painted tortoises out, and I think it is about a fortnight since I saw any. ")

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

November 2, 1853 ("I have not seen a flock of small birds,. . . for about a fortnight. There is now no sound of early birds on the leafless trees and bushes -- willows and alders -- along this watercourse")

November 4, 1855 ("The river-brink — at a little distance at least — is now all sere and rustling.")

November 7, 1855 ("I see a painted tortoise swimming under water, and to my surprise another afterward out on a willow trunk”) 

November 7, 1855 ("Birds are pretty rare now. I hear a few tree sparrows in one place on the trees and bushes near the river, — a clear, chinking chirp and a half-strain...”)

November 9, 1855 ("See a painted tortoise and a wood tortoise in different places out on the bank still!”)

November 10, 1858 ("Hearing in the oak and near by a sound as if some one had broken a twig, I looked up and saw a jay pecking at an acorn. There were several jays busily gathering acorns on a scarlet oak")

November 14, 1855 ("A clear, bright, warm afternoon. A painted tortoise swimming under water and a wood tortoise out on the bank.”)

November 11, 1855 ("The water is smooth. I see the reflections, not only of the wool-grass, but the. . . the coarse rustling sedge, now completely withered (and hear it pleasantly whispering)")

November 11, 1859 ("The flat variety of Lycopodium dendroideum shed pollen on the 25th of October.")

November 12, 1851 ("I hear no sound of any bird now at night, but sometimes some creature stirring, a rabbit, or skunk, or fox, betrayed now by the dry leaves which lie so thick and light")

November 13, 1857 ("How speedily the night comes on now!. . .in twenty minutes, candles gleam from distant windows, and the walk for this day is ended.")

November 14, 1857 ("I feel the crunching sound of frost-crystals in the heaving mud under my feet")

November 14, 1858 ("This strong and cutting northwest wind makes the oak leaves rustle dryly enough to set your heart on edge.")

November 15, 1858 ("The Lycopodium dendroideum var. obscurum appears to be just in bloom in the swamp about the Hemlocks (the regular one (not variety) is apparently earlier)")
November 16, 1858 ("the lycopodium dendroideum, complanatum, and lucidulum, and the terminal shield fern are also very interesting.")

 November 16, 1858 (“Methinks the wintergreen, pipsissewa, is our handsomest evergreen, so liquid glossy green and dispersed almost all over the woods.”)

November 17, 1858 ("Lycopodium dendroideum . . .was apparently in its prime yesterday);

November 17, 1858 ("It would seem that these lycopodiums, at least, which have their habitat on the forest floor and but lately attracted my attention there (since the withered leaves fell around them and revealed them by the contrast of their color and they emerged from obscurity), —it would seem that they at the same time attained to their prime, their flowering season.")

November 18, 1857 ("I hear the dry rustling of seedy rattlesnake grass in the wind, a November sound, within a rod of me.")

November 19, 1850 ("Now that the grass is withered and the leaves are withered or fallen, it begins to appear what is evergreen the partridge-berry and checkerberry, and winter-green leaves even, are more conspicuous.”) 

November 20, 1857 (“The hardy tree sparrow has taken the place of the chipping and song sparrow, so much like the former that most do not know it is another. His faint lisping chip will keep our spirits up till another spring.”)

November 20, 1853 ("Methinks the geese are wont to go south just before a storm, and, in the spring, to go north just after one, say at the end of a long April storm.”)

November 21, 1852 ("I am surprised this afternoon to find the river skimmed over in some places, and Fair Haven Pond one-third frozen or skimmed over, though commonly there is scarcely any ice to be observed along the shores.")

November 24, 1860 ("I am surprised to find a great many sound acorns still, though everyone is sprouted, . . . each with its radicle two inches long penetrated into the earth")

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 24, 1855 ("Geese went over on the 13th and 14th, on the 17th the first snow fell, and the 19th it began to be cold and blustering.”)

November 24, 1860 ("The bitter-sweet of a white oak acorn which you nibble in a bleak November walk over the tawny earth is more to me than a slice of imported pineapple. ")

November 25, 1852 ("At Walden. — I hear at sundown . . . a flock of wild geese going south.")

November 25, 1857 (“November Eatheart, — is that the name of it?") 

November 25, 1859 ("There is a thin ice for half a rod in width along the shore, which shivers and breaks in the undulations of my boat.")
November 25, 1850 ("Ice on the water and winter in the air, but yet not a particle of snow on the ground")

November 25, 1851 ("Saw a tree on the turnpike full of hickory-nuts which had an agreeable appearance")

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

November 25, 1857 (“November Eatheart, — is that the name of it? Not only the fingers cease to do their office, but there is often a benumbing of the faculties generally. You can hardly screw up your courage to take a walk when all is thus tightly locked or frozen up and so little is to be seen in field or wood.”)
November 26, 1855 ("The ice next the shore bears me and my boat")

November 26, 1860 ("Better for us is the . . .hazelnut or pignut than the cocoanut or almond, and not on account of their flavor merely, but the part they play in our education.")

  

November 28, 1859 ("We make a good deal of the early twilights of these November days, they make so large a part of the afternoon.”)

 November 28, 1860 ("The rich man's son gets cocoanuts, and the poor man's, pignuts; but the worst of it is that the former never goes a-cocoanutting, and so he never gets the cream of the cocoanut as the latter does the cream of the pignut") 

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!”")

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, 1853 ("I am attracted nowadays by the various withered grasses and sedges, of different shades of straw-color and of various more or less graceful forms.")

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.”)

I love the shrub oak,

its scanty garment of leaves

whispering to me.

December 1, 1856

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 ("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 6, 1856 ("I take to the riverside where the ice will bear. White snow ice it is, but pretty smooth, but it is quite glare close to the shore and wherever the water overflowed yesterday.")

December 5, 1853 ("Now for the short days and early twilight. . . The sun goes down behind a low cloud, and the world is darkened.")
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.")

December 7, 1853 (" In the latter part of November and now, before the snow, I am attracted by the numerous small evergreens on the forest floor, now most conspicuous, especially the very beautiful Lycopodium dendroideum, somewhat cylindrical, and also, in this grove, the variety obscurum of various forms, . . .like looking down on evergreen trees. And the L. lucidulum of the swamps, forming broad, thick patches of a clear liquid green,. . . not to mention the spreading openwork umbrellas of the L. complanatum, or flat club-moss, all with spikes still. Also the liquid wet glossy leaves of the Chimaphila (winter or snow-loving) umbellata, with its dry fruit.")

December 9, 1856 ("The worker who would accomplish much these short days must shear a dusky slice off both ends of the night")
December 11, 1854 ("The day is short; it seems to be composed of two twilights merely; the morning and the evening twilight make the whole day.”)

January 7, 1860 ("See, at White Pond . . . a pignut hickory, which was quite full of nuts and still has many on it.")

January 7, 1857 ("I should not be ashamed to have a shrub oak for my coat-of-arms.")

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

November 27, 2021

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 26 <<<<<<<<  November 27 >>>>>>>> November 28

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  November 27

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

I think that Ruskin is wrong about reflections

November 27. 

Mr. Wesson says that he has seen a striped squirrel eating a white-bellied mouse on a wall — had evidently caught it; also that the little dipper is not a coot, - but he appears not to know a coot, and did not recognize the lobed feet when I drew them. Says the little dipper has a bill like a hen, and will not dive at the flash so as to escape, as he has proved. 

Says that a loon can run but little way and very awkwardly, falling on its belly, and cannot rise from the ground. Makes a great noise running on the water before it rises. 

Standing before Stacy's large glass windows this morning, I saw that they were gloriously ground by the frost. I never saw such beautiful feather and fir like frosting. His windows are filled with fancy articles and toys for Christmas and New-Year's presents, but this delicate and graceful outside frosting surpassed them all infinitely.

I saw countless feathers with very distinct midribs and fine pinnae. The half of a trunk seemed to rise in each case up along the sash, and these feathers branched off from it all the way, sometimes nearly horizontally. Other crystals looked like pine plumes the size of life. If glass could be ground to look like this, how glorious it would be! You can tell which shopman has the hottest fire within by the frost being melted off. I was never so struck by the gracefulness of the curves in vegetation, and wonder that Ruskin does not refer to frostwork. 

P. M. – Rode to the kiln and quarry by William Farrar's, Carlisle, and to gorge behind Melvin's. 

The direction of the strata at this quarry is like that of Curly-pate and the Easterbrooks quarries, east-northeast by west-southwest, though the latter are very nearly two miles southeast. 

Was struck by the appearance of a small hickory near the wall, in the rocky ravine just above the trough. Its trunk was covered with loose scales unlike the hickories near it and as much as the shagbark; but probably it is a shaggy or scaly-barked variety of Carya glabra. [Carya glabra – pignut hickory]

It may be well to observe it next fall. The husk is not thick, like that of the shagbark, but quite thin, and splits into four only part way down. The shell is not white nor sharply four-angled like the other, but it is rather like a pignut. 

The stratification trends there as at Curly-pate, or perhaps more north and south. 

That trough placed on the side of the rocky valley to catch the trickling spring for the sake of the cattle, with a long slab cover to the trough that leads to it to fend off the feet of cattle that come to drink, is an agreeable object and in keeping with the circumstances, amid the hickories and perhaps ash trees. It reminds me of life sometimes in the pasture, — that other creatures than myself quench their thirst at this hillside. 

I think that Ruskin is wrong about reflections in his “Elements of Drawing,” page 181.* He says the reflection is merely the substance “reversed” or “topsy turvy,” and adds, “Whatever you can see from the place in which you stand, of the solid objects so reversed under the water, you will see in the reflection, always in the true perspective of the solid objects so reversed.”

H. D.Thoreau, Journal, November 27, 1857

Was struck by the appearance of a small hickory See November 25, 1851 ("Saw a tree on the turnpike full of hickory-nuts which had an agreeable appearance")

.

Ruskin is wrong about reflections . . .He says . . . 'Whatever you can see from the place in which you stand, of the solid objects so reversed under the water, you will see in the reflection.' See  November 30, 1853 ("Though frequently we could not see the real bush in the twilight against the dark bank, in the water it appeared against the sky");November 2, 1857 ("The water tells me how it looks to it seen from below.”) ; October 14, 1857 (“[T]he reflection is never a true copy or repetition of its substance, but a new composition”)

See also, on reading Ruskin, October 6, 1857 (“How much is written about Nature as somebody has portrayed her, how little about Nature as she is”); October 29, 1857 (“The love of Nature and fullest perception of the revelation which she is to man is not compatible with the belief in the peculiar revelation of the Bible which Ruskin entertains.”)

Note.  On November 16th HDT wrote Blake:

"Have you ever read Ruskin's books? If not, I would recommend you to try the second and third volumes (not parts) of his “Modern Painters.” I am now reading the fourth, and have read most of his other books lately. They are singularly good and encouraging, though not without crudeness and bigotry. The themes in the vol-umes referred to are Infinity, Beauty, Imagination, Love of Nature, etc., all treated in a very living manner. I am rather surprised by them."

* "If, after a little study from Nature, you get puzzled by the great differences between the aspect of the reflected image and that of the object casting it; and if you wish to know the law of reflection, it is simply this: Suppose all the objects above the water actually reversed (not in appearance, but in fact) beneath the water, and precisely the same in form and in relative position, only all topsy-turvy. Then, whatever you could see, from the place in which you stand, of the solid objects so reversed under the water, you will see in the reflection, always in the true perspective of the solid objects so reversed."

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

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

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

It is time now to bring our philosophy out of doors.

June 4. 

P. M. — To Bare Hill. 

The early potentilla is now erect in the June grass. 

Salix tristis is going to seed, showing some cotton; also some S. rostrate. 

I am surprised to see some kind of fish dart away in Collier's veronica ditch, for it about dries up and has no outlet. 

I observed yesterday, the first time this year, the lint on the smooth surface of the Assabet at the Hemlocks, giving the water a stagnant look. It is an agreeable phenomenon to me, as connected with the season and suggesting warm weather. I suppose it to be the down from the new leaves which so rapidly become smooth. There may be a little pitch pine pollen with it now. The current is hardly enough to make a clear streak in it here and there. The stagnant-looking surface, where the water slowly circles round in that great eddy, has the appearance of having been dusted over. This lint now covers my clothes as I go through the sprout- lands, but it gets off remarkably before long. Each under side of a leaf you strike leaves the mark of its lint on your clothes, but it is clean dirt and soon wears off. 

One thing that chiefly distinguishes this season from three weeks ago is that fine serene undertone or earth-song as we go by sunny banks and hillsides, the creak of crickets, which affects our thoughts so favorably, imparting its own serenity. It is time now to bring our philosophy out of doors. Our thoughts pillow themselves unconsciously in the troughs of this serene, rippling sea of sound. Now first we begin to be peripatetics. No longer our ears come in contact with the bold echoing earth, but everywhere recline on the spring cushion of a cricket's chirp. These rills that ripple from every hillside become at length a universal sea of sound, nourishing our ears when we are most unconscious. 

In that first apple tree at Wyman's an apparent hairy woodpecker's nest (from the size of the bird), about ten feet from ground. The bird darts away with a shrill, loud chirping of alarm, incessantly repeated, long before I get there, and keeps it up as long as I stay in the neighborhood. The young keep up an in cessant fine, breathing peep which can be heard across the road and is much increased when they hear you approach the hole, they evidently expecting the old bird. 

I perceive no offensive odor. I saw the bird fly out of this hole, May 1st, and probably the eggs were laid about that time. Vide it next year. 

In the high pasture behind Jacob Baker's, soon after coming out of the wood, I scare up a bay-wing. She runs several rods close to the ground through the thin grass, and then lurks behind tussocks, etc. The nest has four eggs, dull pinkish-white with brown spots; nest low in ground, of stubble lined with white horse hair. 

Carya glabra [Carya glabra – pignut hickory], apparently a day at least. 

Oldenlandia on Bare Hill, along above wall opposite the oak, a rod or more off and westerly. Apparently several days at least, but it appears not to do well. It has a dry, tufted look, somewhat like young savory- leaved aster, on the bare rocky hill and in the clear spaces between the huckleberry bushes. Reminds me of a heath. Does not blossom so full as once I saw it. 

Arethusa. 

Crimson fungus (?) on black birch leaves, as if bespattered with blood.

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

The early potentilla is now erect in the June grass. See June 4, 1855 (“There are now many potentillas ascendant.”)

Each under side of a leaf you strike leaves the mark of its lint on your clothes, but it is clean dirt and soon wears off. See June 4, 1855 (“Lint comes off on to clothes from the tender leaves, but it is clean dirt and all gone when you get home. . .”); June 4, 1854 (“ The surface of the still water nowadays looking like dust at a little distance. Is it the down of the leaves blown off? . . .”)

That fine serene undertone or earth-song . . . imparting its own serenity. See June 4, 1854 (“These warm and dry days, which put spring far behind, the sound of the cricket at noon has a new value and significance, so serene and cool . . ..”) ;May 12, 1857 (“The spirit of its earth-song, of its serene and true philosophy, was breathed into me, and I saw the world as through a glass, as it lies eternally”);; May 22, 1854 (“The song suggests lateness, but only as we come to a knowledge of eternity after some acquaintance with time. . . . . Only in their saner moments do men hear the crickets. . . .A quire has begun which pauses not for any news, for it knows only the eternal.”); June 1, 1856 (“Was soothed and cheered by I knew not what at first, but soon detected the now more general creak of crickets”); June 13, 1851 ("I listen to the ancient, familiar, immortal, dear cricket sound under all others, and as these cease I become aware of the general earth-song.”)  June 17, 1852 (“The earth-song of the cricket! Before Christianity was, it is. Health! health! health! is the burden of its song. ”); July 14, 1851 (“It is a sound from within, not without.You cannot dispose of it by listening to it. In proportion as I am stilled I hear it. It reminds me that I am a denizen of the earth.”);

The [peep of the young] is much increased when they hear you approach the hole, they evidently expecting the old bird. I perceive no offensive odor. See June 10, 1856 ("They utter their squeaking hiss whenever I cover the hole with my hand, apparently taking it for the approach of the mother. A strong, rank fetid smell issues from the hole.?”)  

A bay-wing . . .  The nest has four eggs, dull pinkish-white with brown spots. . . .See May 18, 1855 ("At Clamshell a bay-wing sparrow’s nest, four eggs (young half hatched) -- some black-spotted, others not.”); May 27, 1856 ("Fringilla melodia’s nest in midst of swamp, with four eggs . . . with very dark blotches"); May 31, 1856 (“A ground-bird’s nest (melodia or graminea.), with six of those oblong narrow gray eggs speckled with much brown at end. . . .The bird would steal out through the grass when I came within a rod, and then, after running a rod or two, take to wing.”)

Oldenlandia on Bare Hill . . . See July 8, 1857 ("Edith Emerson shows me Oldenlandia purpurea var. longifolia, which she saw very abundantly in bloom on the Blue Hills . . .”)

Summer yellow bird; young red maples and yellow birch: a yellow redpoll still.

May 10

Canada plum opens petals to-day and leafs. Domestic plum only leafs. 

Summer yellowbird. 

Young red maples are generally later to leaf than young sugar maples; hardly began before yesterday; and large white are not so forward as young sugar. 

Muhlenberg’s willow leafed four or five days. 

Young yellow birch leaf, say two days. 

In Callitriche Pool hear a bullfrog belch or dump. Is that a proserpinaca with finely divided leaves in this pool? 

Hear a tree-toad, — or, maybe, a woodpecker tapping. 

A juncus in Hubbard’s Close two feet high and big as a crow’s quill. 

Round-leafed cornel leaf to-morrow; also pignut leaf to-day in some places. 

The beech leaf-buds are more backward, apparently, than chestnut, but some leaves are expanding with the flower-buds, which are now opened so as to show the separate buds. 

Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum, early blueberry, in bloom; probably may shed pollen. 

A yellow redpoll still.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 10, 1855

Canada plum opens petals to-day and leafs. See May 10, 1852 ("The Canada (?) (N. Brooks's) plum in bloom, and a cherry tree."). May 10, 1856 ("Mr. Prichard’s Canada plum will open as soon as it is fair weather.") See also May 5, 1855 ("Canada plum and cultivated cherry and Missouri currant look as if they would bloom to-morrow. "); May 12,1856 ("Prichard’s Canada plum will probably bloom to-morrow.”)

Summer yellowbird. See. w. May 10, 1853 ("At this season the traveller passes through a golden gate on causeways where these willows are planted, as if he were approaching the entrance to Fairyland; and there will surely be found the yellowbird, and already from a distance is heard his note, a tche tche tche tcha tchar tcha, — ah, willow, willo"); May 10, 1858 ("For some days the Salix alba have shown their yellow wreaths here and there, suggesting the coming of the yellowbird, and now they are alive with them. ")See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Summer Yellowbird

Young red maples are generally later to leaf than young sugar maples; hardly began before yesterday. See  May 3, 1855 ("Young red maple leaf to-morrow");  May 4, 1855 ("Red maple blossoms begin to cover ground."); May 6, 1853 (" There are pretty large leaves on the young red maples (which have no flowers), disposed crosswise, as well as on the sugar maple, but not so with larger flowering maples."); May 6, 1855 ("The young sugar maples leafing are more conspicuous now than any maples.”) ; May 6, 1859 ("Young red maples suddenly bursting into leaf are very conspicuous now in the woods") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Spring Leaf-Out and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red Maple

Young yellow birch leaf, say two days.  See May 12, 1853 ("The yellow birch is considerably the most forward, its flowers, not, perhaps, its leaves, which last are only expanded on young trees, though here is one large one leaved out."); May 13, 1855 ("Only a part of the yellow birches are leafing, but not yet generally the large ones. I notice no catkins");   May 17, 1854 ("The birches burst out suddenly into leaf and make a great show. It is the first to clothe large tracts of deciduous woodlands with green, and perchance it marks an epoch in the season, the transition decidedly and generally from bare twigs to leaves . . . The light reflected from their tender yellowish green is like sunlight."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau the Yellow Birch

In Callitriche Pool hear a bullfrog belch. See  May 10, 1858 ("I hear in several places the low dumping notes of awakened bullfrogs . . . It is a certain revelation and anticipation of the livelong summer to come. It gives leave to the corn to grow and to the heavens to thunder and lighten.") See also April 16, 1856 ("Frogs sit round Callitriche Pool, where the tin is cast. We have waste places — pools and brooks, etc., -— where to cast tin, iron, slag, crockery, etc."); April 16, 1855 ("This pool dries up in summer. The very pools, the receptacles of all kinds of rubbish, now, soon after the ice has melted, so transparent and of glassy smoothness and full of animal and vegetable life, are interesting and beautiful objects.”);  May 25, 1852 (" I hear the first troonk of a bullfrog")   May 25, 1855 ("Heard the first regular bullfrog’s trump on the 18th; none since."); The different frogs mark the seasons pretty well,- the peeping hyla, the dreaming frog, and the bullfrog .June 13, 1851 (" I believe that all may be heard at last occasionally together. The bullfrog belongs to summer. ") and A Book of the Seasons,by Henry Thoreau, The Bullfrog in Spring

Hear a tree-toad, — or, maybe, a woodpecker tapping. See April 26, 1854 ("Did I hear a tree toad to-day?"); May 6, 1858 ("I heard from time to time a new note from my Rana palustris in the firkin in my chamber. . . . I recognized it as a sound I hear along the riverside . . . perhaps even like the tapping of a woodpecker. Yes, quite like it thus close by.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Tree-toad

Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum, early blueberry, in bloom; probably may shed pollen. See May 10, 1856 ("Some Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum out in Cut woods; maybe a day, as it has rained steadily the last two days. It seems to bloom with or immediately after the bear-berry."); See also  May 5, 1860 ("Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum flowers against rocks, not long . . . Hear of bear-berry well out the 29th of April at Cliffs, and there probably some days.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Blueberries

A yellow redpoll still. See April 27, 1854 ("The yellow redpolls still numerous; sing chill lill lill lill lill lill. "); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Yellow Redpoll ( Palm) Warbler

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

Summer yellowbird. 

Young yellow birch leaf two days –

yellow redpoll still.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A yellow redpoll still.

                                     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

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