May 5, 2021
Cobwebs on the grass, — half green, half brown, — this morning; certainly not long, perhaps this the first time; and dews.
2 P. M. — 76º. Warm and hazy (and yesterday warm also); my single thick coat too much.
Wind southeast. A fresher and cooler breeze is agreeable now. The wind becomes a breeze at this season.
The yellowish (or common) winged grasshoppers are quite common now, hopping and flying before me.
Viola blanda, how long?
Clams lie up abundantly.
Bluets have spotted the fields for two or three days mingled with the reddish luzula, as in Conant’s field north of Holden Wood toward the brook. They fill the air with a sweet and innocent fragrance at a few rods’ distance.
I have not worn my outside coat since the 19th of April and now it is the 13th of May; nor, I think, had any fire in my chamber. Latterly have sat with the window open, even at evening.
Anemone and Thalictrum anemonoides are apparently in prime about the 10th of May. The former abounds in the thin young wood behind Lee’s Cliff.
Tent caterpillar nest an inch and a half over. Dicksonia fern up six inches in a warm place.
Yellow butterflies.
Veronica serpyllifolia, say yesterday.
There are some dense beds of houstonia in the yard of the old Conantum house. Some parts of them show of a distinctly bluer shade two rods off. They are most interesting now, before many other flowers are out, the grass high, and they have lost their freshness. I sit down by one dense bed of them to examine it. It is about three feet long and two or more wide. The flowers not only crowd one another, but are in several tiers, one above another, and completely hide the ground, - a mass of white. Counting those in a small place, I find that there are about three thousand flowers in a square foot. They are all turned a little toward the sun, and emit a refreshing odor.
Here is a lumbering humblebee, probing these tiny flowers. It is a rather ludicrous sight. Of course they will not support him, except a little where they are densest; so he bends them down rapidly (hauling them in with his arms, as it were), one after another, thrusting his beak into the tube of each. It takes him but a moment to dispatch one. It is a singular sight, a humblebee clambering over a bed of these delicate flowers. There are various other bees about them.
2 P. M. — 76º. Warm and hazy (and yesterday warm also); my single thick coat too much.
Wind southeast. A fresher and cooler breeze is agreeable now. The wind becomes a breeze at this season.
The yellowish (or common) winged grasshoppers are quite common now, hopping and flying before me.
Viola blanda, how long?
Clams lie up abundantly.
Bluets have spotted the fields for two or three days mingled with the reddish luzula, as in Conant’s field north of Holden Wood toward the brook. They fill the air with a sweet and innocent fragrance at a few rods’ distance.
I have not worn my outside coat since the 19th of April and now it is the 13th of May; nor, I think, had any fire in my chamber. Latterly have sat with the window open, even at evening.
Anemone and Thalictrum anemonoides are apparently in prime about the 10th of May. The former abounds in the thin young wood behind Lee’s Cliff.
Tent caterpillar nest an inch and a half over. Dicksonia fern up six inches in a warm place.
Yellow butterflies.
Veronica serpyllifolia, say yesterday.
There are some dense beds of houstonia in the yard of the old Conantum house. Some parts of them show of a distinctly bluer shade two rods off. They are most interesting now, before many other flowers are out, the grass high, and they have lost their freshness. I sit down by one dense bed of them to examine it. It is about three feet long and two or more wide. The flowers not only crowd one another, but are in several tiers, one above another, and completely hide the ground, - a mass of white. Counting those in a small place, I find that there are about three thousand flowers in a square foot. They are all turned a little toward the sun, and emit a refreshing odor.
Here is a lumbering humblebee, probing these tiny flowers. It is a rather ludicrous sight. Of course they will not support him, except a little where they are densest; so he bends them down rapidly (hauling them in with his arms, as it were), one after another, thrusting his beak into the tube of each. It takes him but a moment to dispatch one. It is a singular sight, a humblebee clambering over a bed of these delicate flowers. There are various other bees about them.
saxifrage, May 5, 2015
See at Lee’s a pewee (phoebe) building. She has just woven in, or laid on the edge, a fresh sprig of saxifrage in flower. I notice that phobes will build in the same recess in a cliff year after year. It is a constant thing here, though they are often disturbed.
Think how many pewees must have built under the eaves of this cliff since pewees were created and this cliff itself built ! ! You can possibly find the crumbling relics of how many, if you should look carefully enough !
It takes us many years to find out that Nature repeats herself annually. But how perfectly regular and calculable all her phenomena must appear to a mind that has observed her for a thousand years !
Vernal grass at this cliff (common at Damon’s Spring the 12th). The marginal shield fern is one foot high here.
Amelanchier Botryapium flower in prime.
Have seen no ducks for a week or more.
Knawel some time.
Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum flowers against rocks, not long.
Sun goes down red.
Hear of bear-berry well out the 29th of April at Cliffs, and there probably some days.
The peepers and toads are in full blast at night.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 5, 1860
Yellow butterflies. See May 5, 1859 ("Near the oak beyond Jarvis land, a yellow butterfly, — how hot! this meteor dancing through the air.")
Think how many pewees must have built under the eaves of this cliff since pewees were created and this cliff itself built ! ! You can possibly find the crumbling relics of how many, if you should look carefully enough !
It takes us many years to find out that Nature repeats herself annually. But how perfectly regular and calculable all her phenomena must appear to a mind that has observed her for a thousand years !
Vernal grass at this cliff (common at Damon’s Spring the 12th). The marginal shield fern is one foot high here.
Amelanchier Botryapium flower in prime.
Have seen no ducks for a week or more.
Knawel some time.
Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum flowers against rocks, not long.
Sun goes down red.
Hear of bear-berry well out the 29th of April at Cliffs, and there probably some days.
The peepers and toads are in full blast at night.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 5, 1860
Yellow butterflies. See May 5, 1859 ("Near the oak beyond Jarvis land, a yellow butterfly, — how hot! this meteor dancing through the air.")
See at Lee’s a pewee (phoebe) building. She has just woven in, or laid on the edge, a fresh sprig of saxifrage in flower. See April 27, 1852 ("I find to-day for the first time the early saxifrage (Saxifraga vernalis) in blossom, growing high and dry in the narrow seams, where there is no soil for it but a little green moss. Following thus early after the bare rock, it is one of the first flowers, not only in the spring of the year, but in the spring of the world."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Phoebe and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Saxifrage in Spring (Saxifraga vernalis)
It takes us many years to find out that Nature repeats herself annually. See September 24, 1859 ("Young men have not learned the phases of Nature; they do not know what constitutes a year, or that one year is like another."); and April 18, 1852 ("For the first time I perceive this spring that the year is a circle.")
Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum flowers against rocks, not long. See May 10, 1856 ("Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum . . . seems to bloom with or immediately after the bear-berry.")
Sun goes down red. See May 4, 1860 (“The sun sets red, shorn of its beams.”);
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