A time to visit swamps and meadows

August 18

A great drought now for several weeks.  A good time to visit swamps and meadows. 

We can walk across the Great Meadows now in any direction. They are quite dry. Even the pitcher-plant leaves are empty. The meadows are covered with spatular sundew. Saw a snipe. 

There are fifteen or twenty haymakers here yet, but almost done. They and their loads loom at a distance. Men in their white shirts look taller and larger than near at hand. 

The bobolinks alight on the wool-grass. Do they eat its seeds? 

The zizania on the north side of the river near the Holt, or meadow watering-place, is very conspicuous and abundant.

The solidago nemoralis is now abundantly out on the Great Fields.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 18, 1854

Men in their white shirts look taller and larger than near at hand. See August 24, 1858 ("I distinguish men busily haying in gangs of four or five, revealed by their white shirts, some two miles below, toward Carlisle Bridge, and others still, further up the stream. They are up to their shoulders in the grassy sea, almost lost in it. I can just discern a few white specks in the shiny grass, where the most distant are at work. ")
The bobolinks alight on the wool-grass. See August 18, 1858 (“Almost every bush along this brook is now alive with these birds.”)

The zizania on the north side of the river near the Holt, or meadow watering-place, is very conspicuous and abundant. See August 14, 1859 ("The zizania now makes quite a show along the river"); August 24, 1858 ("The zizania is the greater part out of bloom; i. e., the yellowish-antlered (?) stamens are gone; the wind has blown them away")

The solidago nemoralis is now abundantly out on the Great Fields. See August 21, 1856 ("The prevailing solidagos now are, 1st, stricta (the upland and also meadow one which I seem to have called puberula); 2d, the three-ribbed, of apparently several varieties, which I have called arguta or gigantea (apparently truly the last); 3d, altissima, though commonly only a part of its panicles; 4th, nemoralis, just beginning generally to bloom.Then there is the odora, 5th, out some time, but not common; and, 6th, the bicolor, just begun in some places."); August 30, 1853 ("The sun has shone on the earth, and the goldenrod is his fruit. ")