elm samara
It rained last night, and now I see the elm seed or samaras generally fallen or falling. It not only strews the street but the surface of the river, floating off in green patches to plant other shores. The rain evidently hastened its fall. This must be the earliest of trees and shrubs to go to seed or drop its seed. The white maple keys have not fallen. The elm seed floats off down the stream and over the meadows, and thus these trees are found bordering on the stream.
By the way, I notice that birches near meadows, where there is an exceedingly gentle inclination, grow in more or less parallel lines a foot or two apart, parallel with the shore, apparently the seed having been dropped there either by a freshet or else lodged in the parallel waving hollows of the snow. ~ May 12, 1858
A single gentle rain in the spring makes the grass look many shades greener.
I too revive as does the grass after rain. We are never so flourishing, our day is never so fair, but that the sun may come out a little brighter through mists and we yearn to live a better life.
In all my rambles I have seen no landscape which can make me forget Fair Haven. I still sit on its Cliff in a new spring day, and look over the awakening woods and the river, and hear the new birds sing, with the same delight as ever. It is as sweet a mystery to me as ever, what this world is.
Fair Haven Lake in the south, with its pine-covered island and its meadows, the hickories putting out fresh young yellowish leaves, and the oaks light-grayish ones, while the oven-bird thrums his sawyer-like strain, and the chewink rustles through the dry leaves or repeats his jingle on a tree-top, and the wood thrush, the genius of the wood, whistles for the first time his clear and thrilling strain - it sounds as it did the first time I heard it. The sight of these budding woods intoxicates me - this diet drink. ~ May 12, 1850