21 March 1853 – 27 March 1853

Morning along the river. The air full of song sparrows, — swedit swedit swedit and then a rapid jingle or trill, holding up its head with- § (This butterfly, the mourning-cloak (Antiopa), hibernates in the perfect state.]

As soon as the damp gardens are bared of snow and a really warm spring day arrives, the chick- weed blossoms fairly. As soon as those spring mornings arrive in which the birds sing, I am sure to be an early riser. I am waked by my genius. I wake to inaudible melodies and am sur- prised to find myself expecting the dawn in so serene and joyful and expectant a mood. I have an appointment with spring. She comes to the window to wake me, and I go forth an hour or two earlier than usual. It is by especial favor that I am waked, — not rudely but gently, as infants should be waked. Though as yet the trill of the chip-bird is not heard, — added, —like the sparkling bead which bursts on bottled cider or ale. When we wake indeed, with a double awakening, — not only from our ordinary nocturnal slumbers, but from our diurnal, — we burst through the thallus of our ordinary life with a proper exciple, we awake with emphasis. 6 a. M. — To Cliffs. There is a white frost on the ground. One robin really sings on the elms. Even the cockerel crows with new lustiness. Already I hear from the rail- road the plaintive strain of a lark or two. They sit now conspicuous on the bare russet ground. The tinkling bubbles of the song sparrow are wafted from distant fence-posts, — little rills of song that begin to flow and tinkle as soon as the frost is out of the ground. The blackbird tries to sing, as it were with a bone in his throat, or to whistle and sing at once. Whither so fast, the restless creature, — chuck, chuck, at every rod, and now and then whistle-ter-ee? The chill-lill of the blue snowbirds is heard again. A partridge goes off on Fair Haven Hill-side with a sudden whir like the wad of a six- pounder, keeping just level with the tops of the sprouts. These birds and quails go off like a report. It affects one’s philosophy, after so long living in winter quarters, to see the day dawn from some hill. Our effete lowland town is fresh as New Hampshire. It is as if we had migrated and were ready to begin life again in a new country, with new hopes and resolutions. See your town with the dew on it, in as wild a morning mist (though thin) as ever draped it. To stay in the house all day, such reviving spring days as the past have been, bending over a stove and gnawing one’s heart, seems to me as absurd as for a woodchuck to linger in his burrow. We have not heard the news then! Sucking the claws of our philosophy when there is game to be had! The tapping of the woodpecker, rat-tat-tat, knocking at the door of some sluggish grub to tell him that the spring has arrived, and his fate, this is one of the season sounds, calling the roll of birds and insects, the reveille. The Cliff woods are comparatively silent. Not yet the woodland birds, except, perhaps, the woodpecker, so far as it migrates; only the orchard and river birds have arrived. Probably the improvements of men thus ad- vance the season. ‘This is the Bahamas and the tropics or turning-point to the redpoll. Is not the woodpecker (downy ?) our first woodland bird? Come to see what effects the frost and snow and rain have produced on decaying trees, — what trunks will drum. Fair Haven Pond will be open entirely in the course of the day. The oak plain is still red. There are no ex- panding leaves to greet and reflect the sun as it first falls over the hills. ‘To see the first rays of the sun falling over an eastern wooded ridge on to a western wood and stream and lake! I go along the riverside to see the now novel reflections. The subsiding waters have left a thou- sand little isles, where willows and sweet-gale and the meadow itself appears. I hear the phcebe note of the chickadee, one taking it up behind another as in a catch, phe-bee phe-bee. ‘The very earliest alder is in bloom and sheds its pollen. I detect a few catkins at a distance by their distinct yellowish color. This the first native flower. One of my willow catkins in the pitcher has opened at length. That is an interesting morning when one first uses the warmth of the sun instead of fire; bathes in the sun, as anon in the river; eschewing fire, draws up to a garret window and warms his thoughts at nature’s great central fire, as does the buzzing fly by his side. Like it, too, our muse, wiping the dust off her long-unused wings, goes blundering through the cobweb of criticism, more dusty fi still, — what venerable cobweb is that, which has hitherto escaped the broom, whose spider is invisible, but the North American Review ? — and carries away the half of it. - No sap flows from the maples I cut into, except that one in Lincoln. What means it? Hylodes Pickeringi, a name that is longer than the frog itself! A description of animals, too, from a dead specimen only, as if, in a work on man, you were to describe a dead man only, omitting his manners and customs, his institutions and divine faculties, from want of opportunity to observe them, suggesting, perchance, that the colors of the eye are said to be much more brilliant in the living specimen, and that some cannibal, your neighbor, who has tried him on his table, has found him to be sweet and nutri- tious, good on the gridiron. Having had no opportunity to observe his habits, because you do not live in the coun- try. Only dindons and dandies. Nothing is known of his habits. Food: seeds of wheat, beef, pork, and pota- toes. P. M. — To Martial Miles Meadow, by boat to Nut Meadow Brook. Launched my new boat. It is very steady, too steady for me; does not toss enough and communicate the motion of the waves. Beside, the seats are not well ar- ranged; when there are two in it, it requires a heavy stone in the stern to trim. But it holds its course very well with a side wind from being so flat from stem to stern. The cranberries now make a show under water, and I always make it a point to taste a few. Fresh clamshells have been left by the muskrats at various heights. C. says he saw a painted tortoise yesterday. Very likely. We started two ducks feeding behind a low spit of meadow. From Brooks’s plates I should think them wid- geons.’ They had the grayish-white breasts of the wood duck. ‘They look as if they had dropped from heaven, motionless. Saw a green grasshopper and a common caterpillar, also another beetle similar to that of yester- day, except that this was a sort of slate-color with two or three fawn-colored marks on each wing-case.? The spear-heads of the skunk-cabbage are now quite con- spicuous. I see that many flowers have been destroyed by the cold. In no case is the spathe unrolled, and I think it is not yet in blossom. At Nut Meadow Brook, water-bugs and skaters are now plenty. I see the Emys guttata with red spots. Some which I think to be the same sex have striated scales, while others are smooth above. What I take to be the female has a flat-edged shell as well as depressed sternum. ‘The yellow spots appear like some yellow wood let in. The spots are brightest when they are in the water. They are in couples. C. saw a frog. Some willows will be out in a day or two. Silvery catkins of all sizes shine afar. ‘The two white feathers of the blue snowbird contrast prettily with the slate. Returning to river, the water is blue as blue ink from this side. Hubbard’s field a smooth russet bank lit by the setting sun and the pale skim-milk sky above. I told Stacy the other day that there was another vol- ume of De Quincey’s Essays (wanting to see it in his library). “I know it,” says he, “but I shan’t buy any more of them, for nobody reads them.” I asked what book in his library was most read. He said, “'The Wide, Wide World.” In a little dried and bleached tortoise-shell about an inch and three quarters long, I can easily study his anatomy and the house he lives in. His ribs are now distinctly revealed under his lateral scales, slanted like rafters to the ridge of his roof, for his sternum is so large that his ribs are driven round upon his back. It is won- derful to see what a perfect piece of dovetailing his house is, the different plates of his shell fitting into each other by a thousand sharp teeth or serrations, and the scales always breaking joints over them so as to bind the whole firmly together, all parts of his abode variously inter- spliced and dovetailed. An architect might learn much from a faithful study of it. There are three large dia- mond-shaped openings down the middle of the sternum, covered only by the scales, through [which], perhaps, he feels, he breasts the earth. His roof rests on four stout posts. This young one is very deep in proportion to its breadth. The Emys guttata is first found in warm, muddy ditches. The bzeomyces is not yet dried up.

5 a. M.—TI hear the robin sing before I rise. 6 a. M. — Up the North River. A fresh, cool spring morning. The white maple may perhaps be said to begin to blossom to-day, — the male, —- for the stamens, both anthers and filament, are con- spicuous on some buds. It has opened unexpectedly, and a rich sight it is, looking up through the expanded buds to the sky. This and the aspen are the first trees that ever grow large, I believe, which show the influence of the season thus conspicuously. From Nawshawtuct I see the snow is off the mountains. A large aspen by the Island is unexpectedly forward. I already see the red anthers appearing. It will bloom in a day or two. My boat is very good to float and go before the wind, but it has not run enough to it, —if that is the phrase, — but lugs too much dead water astern. However, it is all the steadier for it. Methinks it will not be a bad sailer. T have seen for a week past fresh holes in the sand made by some early burrowing animal, probably the skunk. One studies books of science merely to learn the language of naturalists,—to be able to communicate with them. The frost in swamps and meadows makes it good walking there still. Away, away to the swamps, where the silver catkins of the swamp willow shine a quarter of a mile off, — those southward-penetrating vales of Rupert’s Land. The birds which are merely migrating or tarrying here for a season are especially gregarious now, — the redpoll, Fringilla hyemalis, fox-colored sparrow, etc. The white maples appear to be confined to the bank of the river. J judge by the dead bodies of frogs, partially devoured, in brooks and ditches that many are killed in their hibernacula. Evelyn and others wrote when the language was in a tender, nascent state and could be moulded to express the shades of meaning; when sesquipedalian words, long since cut and apparently dried and drawn to mill, —not yet to the dictionary lumber-yard, — put forth a fringe of green sprouts here and there along in the angles of their rugged bark, their very bulk insuring some sap remaining; some florid suckers they sustain at least. Which words, split into shingles and laths, will supply poets for ages to come. A man can’t ask properly for a piece of bread and butter without some animal spirits. A child can’t cry without them. P. M. — To Howard’s meadow. The telegraph harp sounds more commonly, now that westerly winds prevail. The winds of winter are too boisterous, too violent or rude, and do not strike it at the right angle when I walk, so that it becomes one of the spring sounds. The ice went out of Walden this forenoon; of Flint’s Pond day before yesterday, I have no doubt. Methinks I see a more reddish chestnut sparrow, with distinct whiter lines and two white feathers in tail, or is this the song sparrow? With a faint, tinkling cheep. Grass or bay-winged finch? or could it have been field sparrow? but not my seringo. The pads at Howard’s meadow are very forward, more than a foot high, their tips above the water. The cat-tail down puffs and swells in your hand like a mist, or the conjurer’s trick of filling a hat with feathers, for when you have rubbed off but a thimbleful, and can close and conceal the wound completely, the expanded down fills your hand to overflowing. Apparently there is a spring to the fine elastic threads which compose the down, which, after having been so long closely packed, on being the least relieved at the base, spring open apace into the form of parachutes to convey the seed afar. Where birds or the winds or ice have assaulted them, this has spread like an eruption.’ Again, when I rub off the down of its spike with my thumb, I am surprised at the sensation of warmth it imparts to my hand, as it flushes over it magically, at the same time revealing a faint purplish-crimson tinge at the base of the down, as it rolls off and expands. It is a very pleasing experi- ment to try. The buds of the shad-blossom look green. ‘The crim- son-starred flowers of the hazel begin to peep out, though the catkins have not opened. The alders are almost generally in full bloom, and a very handsome and inter- esting show they make with their graceful tawny pend- ants, inclining to yellow. They shake like ear-drops in the wind, perhaps the first completed ornaments with which the new year decks herself. Their yellow pollen is shaken down and colors my coat like sulphur as I go through them. I go to look for mud turtles in Heywood’s meadow. The alder catkins, just burst open, are prettily marked spirally by streaks of yellow, contrasting with alternate rows of rich reddish-brown scales, which make one re- volution in the length of the catkin. I see trout glance along .the brook, as indeed a month ago. I hear in Heywood’s north meadow the most unmusical low croak from one or two frogs, though it is half ice there yet, — a remarkable note with which to greet the new year, as if one’s teeth slid off with a grating sound in crack- ing a nut,— but not a frog nor a dimple is to be seen. Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye. He must look through and beyond her. To look at her is fatal as to look at the head of Medusa. It turns the man of science to stone. I feel that I am dissipated by so many obser- vations. I should be the magnet in the midst of all this dust and filings. I knock the back of my hand against a rock, and as I smooth back the skin, I find myself pre- pared to study lichens there. I look upon man but as a fungus. I have almost a slight, dry headache as the re- sult of all this observing. How to observe is how to be- have. O for a little Lethe! To crown all, lichens, which are so thin, are described in the dry state, as they are most commonly, not most truly, seen. ‘Truly, they are dryly described. Without being the owner of any land, I find that I have a civil right in the river, — that, if Iam not a land- owner I am a water-owner. It is fitting, therefore, that I should have a boat, a cart, for this my farm. Since it is almost wholly given up to a few of us, while the other highways are much travelled, no wonder that I improve it. Such a one as I will choose to dwell in a township where there are most ponds and rivers and our range is widest. In relation to the river, I find my natural rights least infringed on. It is an extensive “common” still left. Certain savage liberties still prevail in the oldest and most civilized countries. I am pleased to find that, in Gilbert White’s day, at least, the laborers in that part of England enjoyed certain rights of com- mon in the royal forests, — so called, though no large - wood, — where they cut their turf and other fuel, etc., etc., and obtained materials for broom-making, etc., when other labor failed. It is no longer so, according to his éditor. Nobody legislates for me, for the way would be not to legislate at all. I am surprised as well as delighted when any one wishes to know what I think. It is such a rare use they would make of me, as if they were acquainted with the tool. Commonly, if men want anything of me, it is only to know how many acres I make of their land, or, at most, what trivial news I have burdened myself with. ‘They never will go to law for my meat. They prefer the shell.* I saw probably a milkweed down in the air, the 20th.

6 a. M. — By river to Hemlocks. I see where the muskrats opened clams, probably last evening, close to the water’s edge, or in the fork of a willow, or on a tussock just covered with water, the shells remaining, for they bring the clam to the air to eat it. The downy (?) woodpeckers are quite numerous this morning, the skirts of their coats barred with white and a large, long white spot on their backs. ‘They have a smart, shrill peep or whistle, somewhat like a robin, but more metallic. Saw two gray squirrels coursing over the trees on the Rock Island. The forest is to them a vast web over which they run with as lit- tle hesitation as a spider across his net. They appear to have planned or to be familiar with their course before they start. ‘The Island has several bunches of leaves in its trees, probably their nests. For several mornings the water has been perfectly smooth at six o'clock, but by seven the wind has risen with the as- cending sun and the waves with the wind, and the day assumed a new and less promising aspect. I think I may consider the shepherd’s-purse in bloom to-day, for its flowers are nearly as conspicuous as those of the stellaria, which had its spring opening some days since, both being the worse for the frost this morning. Since the cold snap of the 14th, 15th, etc., have walked for the most part with unbuttoned coat, and for the most part without mittens. I find the arrow-headed character on our plains, older than the written character in Persia. Now are the windy days of March drying up the. superabundant moisture. The river does not yet pre- serve a smooth reflecting surface far into the day. The meadows are mostly bare, the water going down, but perchance the April rains will fill them again. Last afternoon was moist and cloudy and still, and the robin sang faintly, as if to usher in a warm rain- storm, but it cleared off at evening. There are very slight but white mists on the river these mornings. It spits a little snow this afternoon. P. M. — To Second Division Brook. The white pine wood, freshly cut, piled by the side of the Charles Miles road, is agreeable to walk beside. I like the smell of it, all ready for the borers, and the rich light-yellow color of the freshly split wood and the purple color of the sap at the ends of the quarters, from which distill perfectly clear and crystalline tears, color- less and brilliant as diamonds, tears shed for the loss of a forest in which is a world of light and purity, its life oozing out. These beautiful accidents that attend on man’s works! Fit pendants to the ears of the Queen of Heaven! How full of interest is one of these wrecks of a wood! C. declares that Miss Ripley spent one whole season studying the lichens on a stick of wood they were about to put on the fire. I am surprised to find that these terebinthine (?) tears have a hard (seemingly soft as water) not film but transparent skin over them. How many curiosities are brought to us with our wood! The trees and the lichens that clothe them, the forest warrior and his shield adhering to him. I have heard of two skeletons dug up in Concord within twenty years, one, at least, undoubtedly an Indian. This was as they were digging away the bank directly behind I. Moore’s house. Dr. Jarvis pronounced it an Indian. The other near the jail. I tied a string round what I take to be the Alnus uncana, two or three rods this side Jenny’s Road, on T. Wheeler’s ditch. The bark is of a more opaque and lighter color, the fruit more orbicular, but the most sure difference was that a part of the pistillate catkins were upright. It was not quite in bloom, but neither were some of those whose fertile catkins drooped, nor could I yet see a difference in the color of the opened catkins. At Second Division, saw pollywogs again, full grown with long tails. The cowslip leaves are in many places above water, and I see what I suppose is that slender rush two inches high at the bottom of the water like - a fine grass. What is that foliaceous plant amid the mosses in the wet which resembles the alge? I find nothing like it in Hooker under head of Algz. In many cases I find that the willow cones are a mere dense cluster of loose leaves, suggesting that the scales of cones of all kinds are only modified leaves, a crowding and stinting of the leaves, as the stem becomes a thorn; and in this view those conical bunches of leaves of so many of the pine family have relation to the cones of the tree as well in origin as in form. The leaf, perchance, becomes calyx, cone, husk, and nutshell. The past has been a remarkable winter; such a one as I donot remember. The ground has been bare almost all the time, and the river has been open about as much. I got but one chance to take a turn on skates over half an acre. The first snow more than an inch deep fell January 13th, but probably was not a foot deep and was soon gone. There was about as much more fell February 13th, and no more to be remembered, 2. e. only two or three inches since. I doubt if there has been one day when it was decidedly better sleighing than wheeling. I have hardly heard the sound of sleigh-bells. A yellow lily bud already yellow at the Tortoise Ditch, Nut Meadow. Those little holes in sandy fields and on the sides of hills, which I see so numerously as soon as the snow is off and the frost out of the ground, are probably made by the skunk in search of bugs and worms, as Rice says. His tracks in the winter are very numerous, considering how rarely he is seen at that season. Probably the tor- toises do not lay their eggs so early as I thought. The skunk gets them too.

I forgot to say yesterday that several little groves of alders on which I had set my eye had been cut down the past winter. One in Trillium Woods was a favorite because it was so dense and regular, its outline rounded as if it were a moss bed; and another more than two miles from this, at Dugan’s, which I went to see yesterday, was then being cut, like the former, to supply charcoal for powder. Dugan does most of this work about the town. The willow hedges by causeways are regularly trimmed and peeled. The small wood brings eight dollars a cord. Alders, also, and poplars are extensively used. 6 a. mM. — To Brister’s Hill. The Fringilla hyemalis sing most in concert of any bird nowadays that I hear. Sitting near together on an oak or pine in the woods or an elm in the village, they keep up a very pleasant, enlivening, and incessant jingling and twittering chill-lill-lill, so that it is difficult to distinguish a single bird’s note, — parts of it much like a canary. This sound advances me furthest toward summer, unless it be the note of the lark, who, by the way, is the most steady singer at present. Notwith- standing the raw and windy mornings, it will sit on a low twig or tussock or pile of manure in the meadow and sing for hours, as sweetly and plaintively as in sum- mer. I see the white-breasted nuthatch, head down- - ward, on the oaks. First heard his rapid and, as it were, angry gnah gnah gna, and a faint, wiry creaking note about grubs as he moved round the tree. I thought I heard the note of a robin and of a bluebird from an oak. It proceeded from a small bird about as big as a blue- [bird], which did not perch like a woodpecker, utter- ing first some notes robin-like or like the golden robin, then perfect bluebird warbles,’ and then it flew off with a flight like neither. From what I saw and heard after- ward I suspected it might be a downy woodpecker. I see fine little green beds of moss peeping up at Brister’s Spring above the water. When I saw the fungi in my lamp, I was startled and awed, as if I were stooping too low, and should next be found classifying carbuncles and ulcers. Is there not sense in the mass of men who ignore and confound these things, and never see the cryptogamia on the one side any more than the stars on the other? Underfoot they catch a transient glimpse of what they call toad- stools, mosses, and frog-spittle, and overhead of the heavens, but they can all read the pillars on a Mexican quarter. They ignore the worlds above and below, keep straight along, and do not run their boots down at the heel as I do. How to keep the heels up I have been obliged to study carefully, turning the nigh foot pain- fully on side-hills. I find that the shoemakers, to save a few iron heel-pegs, do not complete the rows on the inside hy three or four, — the very place in the whole boot where they are most needed, — which has fatal consequences to the buyer. I often see the tracks of them in the paths. It is as if you were to put no under- pinning under one corner of your house. I have man- aged to cross very wet and miry places dry-shod by moving rapidly on my heels. I always use leather strings tied in a hard knot; they untie but too easily even then. The various lights in which you may regard the earth, e. g. the dry land as sea bottom, or the sea bottom as a dry down. : Those willow cones appear to be galls, for, cutting open one of the leafy ones, I found a hard core such as are often seen bare, the nucleus of the cone, and in it a grub. This gall had completely checked the exten- sion of the twig, and the leaves had collected and over- flowed it as the water at a dam. Perchance when the twig is vigorous and full of sap the cone is leafy; other- wise a hard cone. 11 a. mM. — To Framingham. A Lincoln man heard a flock of geese, he thinks it was day before yesterday. Measured a white oak in front of Mr. Billings’s new house, about one mile beyond Saxonville, — twelve and one twelfth feet in circumference at four feet from the ground (the smallest place within ten feet from the ground), fourteen feet circumference at ground, and a great spread. Frank’s place is on the Concord River within less than ten miles of Whitehall Pond in Hopkinton, one of [the sources], perhaps the principal source, of the river. I thought that a month hence the stream would not be twenty feet wide there. Mr. Wheeler, auctioneer, of Framingham, told me that the timber of the factory at Saxonville was brought by water to within about one mile of where the mill stands. ‘There is a slight rapid. Brown says that he saw the north end of Long Pond covered with ice the 22d, and that R. W. E. saw the south end entirely open. The red maple buds already redden the swamps and riverside. The winter rye greens the ground.

There is a large specimen of what I take to be the common alder by the poplar at Egg Rock, five inches in diameter. It may be considered as begin- ning to bloom to-day. Some white maples appear still as backward as the red.

Sunday. After a long spell of fair weather, the first April-like rain fell last night. But it is fair again this morning with a cool breeze, which will hardly per- mit the catkins to open. I miss very much the early willows along the railroad, which have been cut down the past winter to prevent catching fire from the engines and spreading to the woods. And hence my neighbor the switch-man has bean-poles to sell. P. M. — To Martial Miles’s. The skunk-cabbage in full bloom under the Clamshell Hill; undoubtedly was open yesterday afternoon. Per- haps I might have found one a day earlier still, had I looked here carefully. Call it the 26th. The spathes of those in bloom are open at least half an inch wide. Many are decaying, having been killed by that severe cold a fortnight ago, probably; else it would have blos- somed earlier. Nevertheless, the spathes appear to furnish a remarkable protection to the spadix, they are so curved over it as well as involved about it, and so roomy. What meant those little pellets of the pollen in one of these vegetable shells? Had some bee left them yesterday ? The inside of the shell-like vessel which the spathe makes contains considerable of the yellow pollen of the flower. I fear I may not have got so early a specimen of this as of the other plants thus far, after all. Clusters of stout, curved spear-heads about three inches high; in some the mahogany-color, in some the yellowish green prevails. Some are a very dark mahogany, others almost a clear light yellow. Also the thistles, johns- wort (radical leaves), buttercups, clover, mullein, have grown very decidedly. I see but one tortoise (Emys guttata) in Nut Meadow Brook now; the weather is too raw and gusty. The hazel is fully out. The 23d was perhaps full early to date them. It is in some respects the most inter- esting flower yet, though so minute that only an observer of nature, or one who looked for them, would notice it. It is the highest and richest colored yet, — ten or a dozen little rays at the end of the buds which are [at] the ends and along the sides of the bare stems. Some of the flowers are a light, some a dark crimson. The high color of this minute, unobserved flower, at this cold, leafless, and almost flowerless season! It is a beautiful greeting of the spring, when the catkins are scarcely re- laxed and there are no signs of life in the bush. More- over, they are so tender that I never get one home in good condition. They wilt and turn black. Tried to see the faint-croaking frogs at J. P. Brown’s Pond in the woods. They are remarkably timid and shy; had their noses and eyes out, croaking, but all ceased, dove, and concealed themselves, before I got within a rod of the shore. Stood perfectly still amid the bushes on the shore, before one showed himself; finally five or six, and all eyed me, gradually approached me within three feet to reconnoitre, and, though I waited about half an hour, would not utter a sound nor fake their eyes off me, — were plainly affected by curiosity. Dark brown and some, perhaps, dark green, about two inches long; had their noses and eyes out when they croaked. If described at all, must be either young of Rana pipiens or the R. palustris. That earliest willow I can find, behind Miles’s, shel- tered by a wood on the north but on high and dry land (!!), will bloom to-morrow if it is pleasant.’ I see the yellow now. I see the earth freshly stirred and tracks about the woodchuck-holes. So they have been out. You hear that faint croak of frogs and, toward night, a few hylas regularly now. Did not see frog spawn in the pool by Hubbard’s Wood. Still the hardhack and meadow-sweet tops are perfect.