P. M. — To Gowing's Swamp and Poplar Hill.
The shad-flies were very abundant probably last evening about the house, for this morning they are seen filling and making black every cobweb on the side of the house, blinds, etc. All freshly painted surfaces are covered with them. The surface of pools and ditches also is remarkably thick with them. The living ones are on the bushes which I pluck, far from any water.
I find one Vaccinium Oxycoccus open. The petals are not white like the common, but pink like the bud.
That low reedy sedge about the edge of the central pool in the swamp is just out of bloom and shows the seeds.
I see a great many tortoises in that pool, showing their heads and backs above water and pursuing each other about the pool. It is evidently their copulating- season. Their shells are yellow-spotted, and their throats are of a reddish yellow (?). Are they the Emys guttata? It is a wonder how they made their way to this water through so many twiggy bushes and over so many tussocks. How should they know of such a wild water? To this wild water, then, the tortoises which inhabit the swamps resort in their breeding-season, and are there undisturbed. You would think it almost the labor of a lifetime for a tortoise to make its way from the surrounding shrubbery to this water, and how do they know that there is water here?
The larch cones are still very beautiful against the light, but some cones, I perceive, are merely green.
Some apparent beach plum (?) almost completely out of bloom, ten to twelve feet high, along the wall behind Adolphus Clark's. This is the largest I know of.
Lamb kill.
The mocker-nuts on Mrs. Ripley's hill apparently a day or more.
Some red maples are much more fertile than others. Their keys are now very conspicuous. But such trees have comparatively few leaves and have grown but little as yet.
At evening, paddle up Assabet. There are many ephemerae in the air; but it is cool, and their great flight is not yet.
Pincushion gall on oak.
I am interested in each contemporary plant in my vicinity, and have attained to a certain acquaintance with the larger ones. They are cohabitants with me of this part of the planet, and they bear familiar names. Yet how essentially wild they are! as wild, really, as those strange fossil plants whose impressions I see on my coal. Yet I can imagine that some race gathered those too with as much admiration, and knew them as intimately as I do these, that even they served for a language of the sentiments. Stigmariae stood for a human sentiment in that race's flower language. Chickweed, or a pine tree, is but little less wild. I assume to be acquainted with these, but what ages between me and the tree whose shade I enjoy! It is as if it stood substantially in a remote geological period.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 5, 1857
Some red maples are much more fertile than others. Their keys are now very conspicuous. See June 3, 1860 ("The roads now strewn with red maple seed. "); June 2, 1859 ("Red maple seed is partly blown off. Some of it is conspicuously whitish or light-colored on the trees.")
The mocker-nuts on Mrs. Ripley's hill apparently a day or more.
Some red maples are much more fertile than others. Their keys are now very conspicuous. But such trees have comparatively few leaves and have grown but little as yet.
At evening, paddle up Assabet. There are many ephemerae in the air; but it is cool, and their great flight is not yet.
Pincushion gall on oak.
I am interested in each contemporary plant in my vicinity, and have attained to a certain acquaintance with the larger ones. They are cohabitants with me of this part of the planet, and they bear familiar names. Yet how essentially wild they are! as wild, really, as those strange fossil plants whose impressions I see on my coal. Yet I can imagine that some race gathered those too with as much admiration, and knew them as intimately as I do these, that even they served for a language of the sentiments. Stigmariae stood for a human sentiment in that race's flower language. Chickweed, or a pine tree, is but little less wild. I assume to be acquainted with these, but what ages between me and the tree whose shade I enjoy! It is as if it stood substantially in a remote geological period.
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| June 5, 2017 |
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 5, 1857
Some red maples are much more fertile than others. Their keys are now very conspicuous. See June 3, 1860 ("The roads now strewn with red maple seed. "); June 2, 1859 ("Red maple seed is partly blown off. Some of it is conspicuously whitish or light-colored on the trees.")
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