10 May 1852 – 16 May 1852

'This Monday the streets are full of catile being driven up-country, — cows and calves and colts. The rain is making the grass grow apace. It appears to stand upright, — its blades, — and you can almost see it grow. For some reason I now remember the autumn, — the succory and the goldenrod. We remem- ber autumn to best advantage in the spring; the finest aroma of it reaches us then. Are those the young keys of sugar maples that I see? The Canada (?) (N. Brooks’s) plum in bloom, and a cherry tree. How closely the flower follows upon, if it does not precede, the leaf! The leaves are but calyx and escort to the flower. Some beds of clover wave. Some look out only for the main chance, and do not regard appearances nor manners; others — others re- gard these mainly. It is an immense difference. I feel it frequently. It is a theme I must dwell upon. There is an aurora borealis to-night, and I hear a snoring, praying sound from frogs in the river, baser and less ringing and sonorous than the dreamers.

Sunrise, — merely a segment of a circle of rich amber in the east, growing brighter and brighter at one point. There is no rosy color at this moment and not a speck in the sky, and now comes the sun without pomp, a bright liquid gold. Dews come with the grass. There is, I find on examining, a small, clear drop at the end of each blade, quite at the top on one side. The Salix alba has a spicier fragrance than the ear- liest willows. We have so much causeway planted with willows, — set with them on each side to prevent its washing away, — that they make a great show, and are obvious now before other trees are so advanced. The birches at a distance appear as in a thin green veil, in their expanding leaves. P. M. — Kossuth here. The hand-organ, when I am far enough off not to hear the friction of the machinery, not to see or be reminded of the performer, serves the grandest use for me, deepens my existence. Heard best through walls and obstructions. ‘These performers, too, have come with the pleasant weather and the birds. I think I saw a female yellowbird yesterday; its note different from the male’s, somewhat like the night warbler’s. They come a little later than the males. The larches are leafing out.

Morning.— Swallows (I suppose barn) flying low over the Depot Field, a barren field, and sitting on the mulleins. Bobolinks. Currants and gooseberries are in bloom in the gar- den. The mountain-ash leafed out as much as two days ago. The elms have been leafing out for two or three days. Sugar maples on the common are in blossom. Hear the peepers in the rain to-night (9.30), but not the dream toads.

The best men that I know are not serene, a world in themselves. They dwell in form. They flat- ter and study effect, only more finely than the rest. The world to me appears uninhabited. My neighbors select granite for the underpinning of their houses and barns; they build their fences of stone; but they do not themselves rest on an underpinning of granite. Their sills are rotten. What stuff is the man made of who is not coexistent in your thought with the purest and sub- tlest truth? While there are manners and compliments we do not meet. I accuse my finest acquaintances of an immense frivolity. They do not teach me the lessons of honesty and sincerity that the brute beasts do, or of steadiness and solidity that the rocks do.’ I cannot associate with those who do not understand me. Rain to-day and yesterday, with fires in house. The birds — sparrows and yellowbirds — seeking shelter in the wood-pile. Where are the men who dwell in thought? Talk, — that is palaver! at which men hurrah and clap! The manners of the bear are so far good that he does not pay you any compliments. P. M. — To Walden in rain.

Hastily reviewing this Journal, I find the flowers to have appeared in this order since the 28th of April (perhaps some note in my Journal has escaped me) :1— Acer rubrum April 28 male; a female 30th; first date is perhaps early enough for both. Populus grandidentata 29 Epigea repens 30 (April 25, ’51). Sweet-gale 30 probably a day or two be- fore. Viola ovata May 1 (April 25, ’51). Potentilla Canadensis 3 Chrysosplenium Americanum 3 this may have bloomed two or three days before. Salix tristis or humilis 5 Sweet-fern 5 Thalictrum anemonordes 5 Populus balsamifera 5 two inches long. Anemone nemorosa 6 Viola blanda 6 perhaps the day before. Aquilegra Canadensis 6 Hedyotis coerulea 6 (April 25, 51). Andromeda calyculata 6 Fragaria Virginiana 7 Benzoin odoriferum 7 probably now (May 1, 751). Ostrya 8 begins. Salix alba May 8 Betula populifolia 9 Amelanchier Canadensis 9 Viola pedata 9 probably a day or two be- fore. V. cucullata 9 did not examine where they grow. Acer saccharinum 10 probably some days earlier. Canada (?) plum in gardens 10 Rubus triflorus ? 10 probably about this (ripe July 1). Cultivated cherry 10 Fraxinus Americana when? Currants 12 Gooseberries in garden 12 Ribes hirtellum? The wild; are they one? Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum 13 Cerasus Pennsylvanica ? 13 Betula papyracea B. excelsa \ when? B. lenta Did not observe so very carefully the first common elm and first red maple, but Cheney’s and white (?) maple at bridge instead; yet accurately enough. Per- haps the wild gooseberry and some Solomon’s-seal and other violets and birches and the hornbeam and the yellow lily in some places are in bloom now!

The last four days have been a May storm, and this day is not quite fair yet. As I remember, there was the long storm and freshet near the end of April, then the warm, pleasant, hazy days, then this May storm, cooler but not cold as the first. P. M.— To Conantum. I think I may say that the buttercup (bulbous crow- foot) which I plucked at the Corner Spring would have blossomed to-day. The Gnaphaliwm plantagineum has a tender, springlike scent. The clustered purple buds of the senecio are very common in the meadows. The bees on the Saliz alba, the prevailing one now in blos- som, hum a further advance into summer. The Ameri- can water cress (Cardamine Pennsylvanica) in blossom. The dwarf andromeda’s leaf-buds are just starting. The dense beds of this plant resound with the hum of honey-bees. There is enough of this early flower to make up for deficiencies elsewhere at this season. The meadows ring with the bobolink’s strain. I do not observe the female yet. Here is a bird’s nest by the ditch-side which some animal has robbed, and an egg is fallen into the water. The first I have found this season. The air is sweet with fragrance. I have not seen any speckled frogs before to-day. The bobolink sits on a hardhack, swaying to and fro, uncertain whether to begin his strain, —dropping a few bubbling notes by way of prelude, — with which he overflows. There are many insects now. I was ready to say that I had seen no more beautiful flower than the dandelion. That has the vernal scent. How many flowers have no peculiar, but only this simple vernal, fragrance ? The sessile-leaved bellwort, with three or four deli- cate pale-green leaves with reflexed edges, on a tender- looking stalk, the single modest-colored flower grace- fully drooping, neat, with a fugacious, richly spiced fragrance, facing the ground, the dry leaves, as if un- worthy to face the heavens. It is a beautiful sight, a pleasing discovery, the first of the season, — growing in a little straggling company, in damp woods or swamps. When you turn up the drooping flower, its petals make a perfect geometrical figure, a six-pointed star. These faint, fugacious fragrances are pleasing. You are not always quite sure that you perceive any. In the swamp at end of Hubbard’s Grove. Here are a million Ane- mone nemorosa. The inconspicuous white blossom of the gold-thread is detected amid them, but you are more struck by the bright-golden thread of its root when you pull it up. The Viola ovata is now very com- mon, but rather indistinct in the grass, in both high and low land, in the sod where there is yet but little grass. The earth reflects the heavens in violets. ‘The whole earth is fragrant as a bouquet held to your nose. I distin- guish Bigelow’s Pyrus ovalis (swamp) and Botryapium (wood), the former now downy, with smaller racemes, a shorter shrub, the other larger in most respects, if not all, with smooth aspen-colored leaves. Think it was the last I first plucked, though they apparently came together. Vide back. Peach trees in blossom. I have not walked to Lincoln lately; so have not watched their opening. It must have been some days ago. The apple buds show red. The trees are gradually leafing out and investing the evergreens. The high blueberry on high land will blossom fully in a day or two. Pretty sure I heard a hummingbird about the columbines. Can now pluck a sprig of fresh sweet-briar and feed my senses with that. I begin to hesitate about walking through some fields on account of the grass. Rye has been five or six inches high for some time. Methinks the columbine here is more remarkable for growing out of the seams of the rocks than the saxifrage, and per- haps better deserves the latter name. It is now in its prime, ornamental for nature’s rockwork. It is a beau- tiful sight to see large clusters of splendid scarlet and yellow flowers growing out of a seam in the side of this gray cliff. I observe some very pale blue Viola cucul- lata in the meadows. The Arum triphyllum in bloom and the nodding trillium budded. The black ash is now in flower (and some out of flower), and the male white ash in Miles’s swamp. Is the fever-bush dead, that its wood looks so dry and its flower-buds do not expand?! Some of the Gnaphalium plantagineum have a yellow tip to the blossoms. Which is it? Male or female? I hear few peepers to-day and no toads. The Ane- mone nemorosa are half closed, showing the purple un- der sides of the petals, but all the rue-leaved are open; but they are not so handsome open, notwithstanding their pretty leaves and yellow stamens, as the purple buds of the other. Some of these are wholly purple and their leaves a rich brown. The muskrat has piled his shells high up the bank this year, on account of the freshet. Even our river shells will have some black, purple, or green tints, tell- ing of distant skies, like shells from the Indies. How did these beautiful rainbow tints get into the shell of the fresh-water clam buried in the mud at the bottom of our dark river? Even the sea-bottom tells of the upper skies. The tupelo tree is as late as, or later than, the white ’ Yes, dead. oak to leaf out. What is that grass in Conant’s or- chard in bloom? Early sedge? Here a woodchuck has dug out a bushel of sharp stones on a hillside, as big as your fist. The thrasher has a sort of laugh in his strain which the catbird has not. The sun comes out in patches somewhat like the expanding oak leaves. This gleam of sunshine, an hour or more before sun- down (I am on the top of Conantum), on the tender foliage of Garfield’s elms and of other trees, from be- hind a dark cloud in the west. Nature letting her sun shine by degrees, holding a veil of cloud before her tender plants. The patches of ground plowed and planted look fresh after the rain and of a dark-brown color. Even this nakedness is agreeable. This will be the week of the oaks in the gray, when the farmers must plant away[?]. The bass is very con- spicuous now, with its light yellow-green leaves, more forward than most. I see a hundred young apple trees come up in cow-dung. The flower-like leaves of the shrub oaks”now, so red! A young of the painted tortoise, almost exactly circular and one inch in dia- meter, run over by a wheel in the road on the cause- way. Here on this causeway is the sweetest fragrance I have perceived this season, blown from the newly flooded meadows. I cannot imagine what there is to produce it. Nonosegay can equal it. It is ambrosially,: nectareally, fine and subtile, for you can see naught but the water, with green spires of meadow grass rising above it. Yet no flower from the Islands of the Blessed could smell sweeter. Yet I shall never know whence it comes. Is it not all water-plants combined? A fine, delicious fragrance, which will come to the senses only when it will, — willful as the gales. Iwould give some- thing to know of it. How it must attract all birds and insects ! Can it be the willow over my head? I think not. | I hear the peepers and toads again this evening. It gradually clears up at the end of this May storm.