The ground under the white pines is now strewn with the effete male flowers.

June 25

The ground under the

white pines is now strewn with the

effete male flowers.

June 25, 1858

P. M. — To Conantum. Hotter than yesterday and, like it, muggy or close.

June 25, 2018

So hazy can see no mountains. In many spots in the road and by edge of rye-fields the reflected heat is almost suffocating. 

93° at 1 P. M. 

At my perch pool I hear the pebbly sound of frogs, and some, perhaps below the middle size, hop in before I see them. I suspect that this sound is not made by the bullfrog, but by the fontinalis or palustris. 

In the meadow or partly included in the west end of Hubbard’s Grove, a smooth, rather flaccid rush with roundish spikes, say twenty inches high, apparently fresh, somewhat flava-like.

Sitting on the Conantum house sill (still left), I see two and perhaps three young striped squirrels, two thirds grown, within fifteen or twenty feet, one or more on the wall and another on the ground. Their tails are rather imperfect, as their bodies. They are running about, yet rather feebly, nibbling the grass, etc., or sitting upright, looking very cunning. The broad white line above and below the eye make it look very long as well as large, and the black and white stripes on its sides, curved as it sits, are very conspicuous and pretty. Who striped the squirrel's side? 

Several times I saw two approach each other and playfully and, as it were, affectionately put their paws and noses to each other's faces. Yet this was done very deliberately and affectionately. There was no rudeness nor excessive activity in their sport. At length the old one appears, larger and much more bluish, and shy, and, with a sharp cluck or chip, calls the others gradually to her and draws them off along the wall, they from time to time frisking ahead of her, then she ahead of them. 

The hawks must get many of these inexperienced creatures. 

The Rubus frondosus is hardly past prime, while the villosus is almost wholly done here.

Just south the wall at Bittern Cliff, the Panicum latifolium, hardly yet, with some leaves almost an inch and a half wide. 

We bathe at Bittern Cliff. The water is exceedingly warm near the surface, but refreshingly cold four or five feet beneath. There must be twenty degrees difference at least. 

The ground under the white pines is now strewn with the effete flowers, like an excrement.  

I notice an apparent female bullfrog, with a lustrous greenish (not yellow) throat.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 25, 1858

The ground under the white pines is now strewn with the effete flowers. See June 25, 1852 (" I am too late for the white pine flowers. The cones are half an inch long and greenish, and the male flowers effete."); June 25, 1857 ("White pine effete."); July 1, 1852 ("The path by the wood-side is red with the effete staminiferous flowers of the white pine.")

We bathe at Bittern Cliff. The water is exceedingly warm near the surface, but refreshingly cold four or five feet beneath. See July 9, 1852 ("The pond water being so warm made the water of the brook feel very cold;. . .and when I thrust my arm down where it was only two feet deep, my arm was in the warm water of the pond, but my hand in the cold water of the brook.”); July 23, 1856 ("Bathing in Walden, I find the water considerably colder at the bottom while I stand up to my chin, but the sandy bottom much warmer to my feet than the water.")

An apparent female bullfrog, with a lustrous greenish (not yellow) throat. See June 7, 1858 ("'Are not the females oftenest white-throated?")

July 25. See A Book of the Seasons,, by Henry Thoreau, June 25

A Book of the Seasons,by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021