February 11, 1912 continued- February 25, 1912
commercially made, lined paper notebook
8-1/4 x 6-3/4 inches
reminded me that the transforming power was real and not imaginative – that it was the ordinary witchery of nature in her most capricious mood. Here were ironweed stalks, each seed head holding a cluster of white ray like frost, about a half inch long; there were clumps of swamp grass, whose feathery seeds heads, weighted with frost, hung over a tiny sparkling rivulet, in a graceful curve. Grey empty fish-shaped milkweed pods, too were edged with frost clusters. In one place I came to some dry poke weed stalks. Frost had formed on the berries, the juice of which had run out into the frost making it a bright crimson! Hawthorne trees, with their dense branches, reminded one vividly of “Christmas-trees.”
The most beautiful sight of all was in a “pine-tree” Hawthorne. I was walking slowly along reveling in the frosty scene, when a sharp flutter of wings in an apple tree startled me. Presently I descried a pair of cardinals, in a Haw, whither they had flown. The brilliant red of the male was a strikingly beautiful contrast to the white branches around him.