Went down to the pond-hole behind where I used to live.

September 5 

P. M. — To Walden.

Prinos verticillatus berries reddening. 

I hear two or more wood pewees this afternoon, but had not before for a fortnight or more. The pewee days are over for some time. 

Went down to the pond-hole behind where I used to live. It is quite full of water. The middle or greater part is densely covered with target leaves, crowding one another and.curling up on their edges. Then there is a space or canal of clear water, five to twenty feet wide, quite around them, and the shore is thickly covered with rattlesnake grass, now ripe. 

I find many high blueberries, quite fresh, overhanging the south shore of Walden. 

I find, all about Walden, close to the edge on the steep bank, and at Brister’s Spring, a fine grass now generally past prime, Agrostis perennans, thin grass, or hair grass, on moist ground or near water. The branches of the panicle are but slightly purplish.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 5, 1858


To Walden. Prinos verticillatus berries reddening. See August 20, 1854 ("Prinos berries have begun to redden. ");   September 28, 1851 ("The swamp is bordered with the red-berried alder, or prinos,"); October 10, 1857 ("To Walden over Fair Haven Hill. Some Prinos verticillatus yellowing and browning at once, and in low ground just falling and leaving the bright berries bare") and note to October 2, 1856 (“The prinos berries are in their prime.”)

The pewee days are over for some time. See August 14. 1858 (" The wood pewee, with its young, peculiarly common and prominent. . . . These might be called the pewee-days.")

Many high blueberries, quite fresh, overhanging the south shore of Walden. See December 27, 1857 ("It appears, then, that some of those old gray blueberry bushes which overhang the pond-holes have attained half the age of man. ")