The sprayey note of toads now more than ever, after the rain.

May 31. 

Rained hard during the night.

May 31, 2020

At 6 P. M. the river has risen to half an inch below summer level, having been three to four inches below summer level yesterday morning. 

I hear the sprayey note of toads now more than ever, after the rain.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 31, 1860

I hear the sprayey note of toads now more than ever, after the rain. See May 31, 1858 ("Does not the voice of the toad along the river sound differently now from what it did a month ago? "); May 13, 1860 ("It is so warm that I hear the peculiar sprayey note of the toad generally at night."); May 16, 1853 ("Nature’appears to have passed a crisis. . . . The sprayey dream of the toad has a new sound."); May 19, 1854 ("I hear the sprayey-note frog now at sunset."); May 25, 1859 ("Hear within a day or two what I call the sprayey note of the toad, different and later than its early ring."); May 25, 1860 ("5 P.M. the toads ring loud and numerously, as if invigorated by this little moisture and coolness.”) See also June 13, 1851 ("The different frogs mark the seasons pretty well,- the peeping hyla, the dreaming frog, and the bullfrog.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Ring of Toads

May 31. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, May 31

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

The brown panicles of the June-grass now paint some fields with the color of early summer.

May 30 .

May 30, 2020

P. M. – To Second Division. A washing southwest wind. 

George Melvin said yesterday that he was still grafting, and that there had been a great blow on the apple trees this year, and that the blossoms had held on unusually long. I suggested that it might be because we had not had so much wind as usual. 

On the wall, at the brook behind Cyrus Hosmer’s barn, I start a nighthawk within a rod or two. It alights again on his barn-yard board fence, sitting diagonally. I see the white spot on the edge of its wings as it sits. It flies thence and alights on the ground in his corn-field, sitting flat, but there was no nest under it. This was unusual. Had it not a nest nearby? 

I observed that some of the June-grass was white and withered, being eaten off by a worm several days ago, or considerably before it blossoms. 

June-grass fills the field south of Ed. Hosmer’s ledge by the road, and gives it now a very conspicuous and agreeable brown or ruddy(?)-brown color, about as ruddy as chocolate, perhaps. This decided color stretching afar with a slightly undulating surface, like a mantle, is a very agreeable phenomenon of the season. The brown panicles of the June-grass now paint some fields with the color of early summer. 

Front-yard grass is mowed by some. 

The stems of meadow saxifrage are white now. 

The Salix tristis generally shows its down now along dry wood-paths. 

The Juncus filiformis not out yet, though some panicles are grown nearly half an inch. Much of it seems to be merely chaffy or effete, but much also plumper, with green sepals and minute stamens to be detected within. It arises, as described, from matted running rootstocks. Perhaps will bloom in a week. 

A succession of moderate thunder and lightning storms from the west, two or three, an hour apart. 

Saw some devil’s-needles (the first) about the 25th. 

I took refuge from the thunder-shower this afternoon by running for a high pile of wood near Second Division, and while it was raining, I stuck three stout cat-sticks into the pile, higher than my head, each a little lower than the other, and piled large flattish wood on them and tossed on dead pine-tops, making a little shed, under which I stood dry.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 30, 1860

A nighthawk alights on the ground in his corn-field, sitting flat, but there was no nest under it. See June 1, 1853 ("Walking up this side-hill, I disturb a nighthawk eight or ten feet from me . .Without moving, I look about and see its two eggs on the bare ground, on a slight shelf of the hill, on the dead pine-needles and sand, without any cavity or nest whatever.") and note to June 3, 1859 ("Nighthawk, two eggs, fresh. ")

The brown panicles of the June-grass now paint some fields with the color of early summer. See June 11, 1853 ("The upland fields are already less green where the June-grass is ripening its seeds.")

I took refuge from the thunder-shower this afternoon by running for a high pile of wood.  See May 30, 1857 ("When first I had sheltered myself under the rock, I began at once to look out on the pond with new eyes, as from my house. I was at Lee's Cliff as I had never been there before. .. .  This Cliff thus became my house. I inhabited it. . . I think that such a projection as this, or a cave, is the only effectual protection that nature affords us against the storm. ") See also  August 9, 1851 ("I meet the rain at the edge of the wood, and take refuge under the thickest leaves, where not a drop reaches me, and, at the end of half an hour, the renewed singing of the birds alone advertises me that the rain has ceased, and it is only the dripping from the leaves which I hear in the woods."); June 14, 1855 (“It suddenly begins to rain with great violence, and we in haste draw up our boat on the Clamshell shore, upset it, and get under, sitting on the paddles, . . .  It is very pleasant to lie there half an hour close to the edge of the water and see and hear the great drops patter on the river, each making a great bubble”); July 22, 1858 ("Took refuge from a shower under our boat at Clamshell; staid an hour at least. A thunderbolt fell close by."); August 17, 1858 (“Being overtaken by a shower, we took refuge in the basement of Sam Barrett’s sawmill, where we spent an hour, and at length came home with a rainbow over arching the road before us.”); October 17, 1859 ("The rain drives me from my berrying and we take shelter under a tree. It is worth the while to sit under the lee of an apple tree trunk in the rain, if only to study the bark and its inhabitants. ")

May 30 See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 30

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

Nests high in white pines.

May 29.

May 29, 2020

P. M. – After hawks with Farmer to Easterbrooks Country.

He tells me of a sterile bayberry bush between his house and Abel Davis, opposite a ledge in the road, say half a dozen rods off in the field, on the left, by a brook. Hearing a warbling vireo, he asked me what it was, and said that a man who lived with him thought it said, “Now I have caught it, О how it is sweet!” I am sure only of the last words, or perhaps, “Quick as I catch him I eat him. O it is very sweet.” 

Saw male and female wood tortoise in a meadow in front of his house,-- only a little brook anywhere near. They are the most of a land turtle except the box turtle.

We proceeded to the Cooper’s hawk nest in an oak and pine wood (Clark’s) north of Ponkawtasset.

I found a fragment of one of the eggs which he had thrown out. Farmer’s egg, by the way, was a dull or dirty white, i. e. a rough white with large dirty spots, perhaps in the grain, but not surely, of a regular oval form and a little larger than his marsh hawk’s egg.

I climbed to the nest, some thirty to thirty-five feet high in a white pine, against the main stem. It was a mass of bark-fibre and sticks about two and a half feet long by eighteen inches wide and sixteen high. The lower and main portion was a solid mass of fine bark-fibre such as a red squirrel uses. This was surrounded and sur mounted by a quantity of dead twigs of pine and oak, etc., generally the size of a pipe-stem or less. The concavity was very slight, not more than an inch and a half, and there was nothing soft for a lining, the bark fibres being several inches beneath the twigs, but the bottom was floored for a diameter of six inches or more with flakes of white oak and pitch pine bark one to two inches long each, a good handful of them, and on this the eggs had lain.

We saw nothing of the hawk. This was a dozen rods south of the oak meadow wall.

Saw, in a shaded swamp beyond, the Stellaria borealis, still out, — large, broadish leaves.

Some eighteen feet high in a white pine in a swamp in the oak meadow lot, I climbed to a red squirrel’s nest. The young were two-thirds grown, yet feeble and not so red as they will be. One ran out and along a limb, and finally made off into another tree. This was a mass of rubbish covered with sticks, such as I commonly see (against the main stem), but not so large as a gray squirrel’s.

We next proceeded to the marsh hawk’s nest from which the eggs were taken a fortnight ago and the female shot. It was in a long and narrow cassandra swamp northwest of the lime-kiln and some thirty rods from the road, on the side of a small and more open area some two rods across, where were few if any bushes and more [?] sedge with the cassandra.

The nest was on a low tussock, and about eighteen inches across, made of dead birch twigs around and a pitch pine plume or two, and sedge grass at bottom, with a small cavity in the middle. The female was shot and eggs taken on the 16th; yet here was the male, hovering anxiously over the spot and neighborhood and scolding at us. Betraying himself from time to time by that peculiar clacking note reminding you of a pigeon woodpecker.

We thought it likely that he had already got another mate and a new nest near by. He would not quite withdraw though fired at, but still would return and circle near us. They are said to find a new mate very soon.

In a tall pine wood on a hill, say southwest of this, or northwest of Boaz’s Lower Meadow, I climbed to a nest high in a white pine, apparently a crow’s just completed, as it were on a squirrel’s nest for a foundation, but finished above in a deep concave form, of twigs which had been gnawed off by the squirrel.

In another white pine nearby, some thirty feet up it, I found a gray squirrel’s nest, with young about as big as the red squirrels were, but yet blind. This was a large mass of twigs, leaves, bark-fibre, etc., with a mass of loose twigs on the top of it, which was conical. Perhaps the twigs are piled on the warmer part of the nest to prevent a hawk from pulling it to pieces.

I have thus found three squirrels’ nests this year, two gray and one red, in these masses of twigs and leaves and bark exposed in the tree-tops and not in a hollow tree, and methinks this is the rule and not the exception.

Farmer says that he finds the nests or holes or forms of the gray rabbit in holes about a foot or a foot and a half deep, made sideways into or under a tussock, especially amid the sweet-fern, in rather low but rather open ground. Has found seven young in one.

Has found twenty-four eggs in a quail’s nest.

In many places in the woods where we walk to-day we notice the now tender branches of the brakes eaten off, almost in every case, though they may be eighteen or more inches from the ground. This was evidently done by a rabbit or a woodchuck.

The wild asparagus beyond Hunt’s Bridge will apparently open in two days.

C. has seen to-day an orange-breasted bird which may be the female (?) Blackburnian warbler. The leaves now conceal the warblers, etc., considerably. You can see them best in white oaks, etc., not maples and birches.

I hear that there was some frost last night on Hildreth’s plain; not here.

On the 28th, the latest trees and shrubs start thus in order of leafing

1. Locust

2. Dangle-berry      21st

3. Mountain rhus     22d

4. Poison-dogwood 23d

5. Black spruce       23d

6. Black ash           24th

7. Button-bush       26^th

8. Hemlock            27^th

9. Bayberry           

10. Vaccinium dumosum

11. Holbrook aspens

I hear from vireos (probably red-eyes) in woods a fine harsh note, perhaps when angry with each other

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 29, 1860

Some eighteen feet high in a white pine in a swamp in the oak meadow lot, I climbed to a red squirrel’s nest. See April 1, 1858 ("I see a squirrel's nest twenty-three or twenty-four feet high in a large maple, and, climbing to it, — for it was so peculiar, having a basketwork of twigs about it."); April 23, 1859 ("The owl-hole contains a squirrel's nest . . This nest, which I suppose was that of a red squirrel, was at the bottom of a large hole some eighteen inches deep and twenty-five feet from the ground, where a large limb had been broken off formerly.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Red Squirrel.

We next proceeded to the marsh hawk’s nest from which the eggs were taken a fortnight ago and the female shot. See May 27, 1860 ("J. Farmer found a marsh hawk's nest on the 16th, — near the Cooper ' s hawk nest, — with three fresh eggs")

We thought it likely that he had already got another mate and a new nest near by. See June 4, 1860 ("I hear that the nest of that marsh hawk which we saw on the 29th (q. v.) has since been found with five eggs in it. So that bird (male), whose mate was killed on the 16th of May, has since got a new mate and five eggs laid.") See also  November 20, 1858 ("Martial Miles. . . says that a marsh hawk had his nest in his meadow several years, and though he shot the female three times, the male with but little delay returned with a new mate.") and see  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Marsh Hawk (Northern Harrier)

I have thus found three squirrels’ nests this year, two gray and one red, in these masses of twigs and leaves and bark exposed in the tree-tops and not in a hollow tree, and methinks this is the rule and not the exception. See note to June 1, 1860 ("This makes three gray squirrels' nests that I have seen and heard of (seen two of them) this year, made thus of leaves and sticks open in the trees, and I hear of some more similar ones found in former years, so that I think this mode of nesting their young may be the rule with them here. Add to this one red squirrel's nest of the same kind.")

The carnival of the year commencing.

May 28.

A rose in a garden.

5 P. M. – To Lupine Hill by boat.

The carnival of the year commencing — a warm, moist, hazy air, the water already smooth and uncommonly high, the river overflowing, and yellow lilies all drowned, their stems not long enough to reach the surface.

I see the boat-club, or three or four in pink shirts, rowing at a distance.

Beech-drops out apparently some days, the old bridge landing at Nawshawtuct; also just out green-briar.

Already the ringing croak of a toad begins to be heard here and there along the river, and the troonk of a bullfrog from time to time.

What is peculiar now, beginning yesterday, after rains, is the sudden heat, and the more general sound of insects by day, and the loud ringing croak of common toads and tree-toads at evening and in the night.

Our river has so little current that when the wind has gone down, as at present, it is dark and perfectly smooth, and at present dusty as a stagnant pool in every part of it; far from there being any murmur, there is no ripple nor eddy for the most part.

Hubbard has plowed up the low-lying field at the bathing place and planted it with potatoes; and now we find that the field we resort to was equally used by the Indians, for their arrowheads are now exposed by the plow.

The sidesaddle-flower conspicuous, but no pollen yet.

The bulbous arethusa out a day or two — probably yesterday. Though in a measure prepared for it, still its beauty surprised me; it is by far the highest and richest color yet. Its intense color in the midst of the green meadow made it look twice as large as reality; it looks very foreign in the midst of our plants - its richly speckled, curled, and bearded lip.

Devil’s needles begin to fly; saw one the 14th.

Thesium just beams now at six o’clock, and the lupines do not look so well for it; their lilac tints show best looking at them towards the sun, for they are transparent. Last night in the dark they were all a pale, whitish color like the moon by day — a mere dull luminousness, as if they reflected light absorbed by day.

Seen from this point now, the pitch pines on Bear Garden Hill, the fresh green foliage of the deciduous trees now so prevails, the pitch pines, which lately looked green, are of a dark brownish or mulberry color by contrast, and the white pines almost as dark, but bluer. In this haziness no doubt they are a little darker than usual.

The grass on pretty high ground is wet with dew an hour before sunset. Whiteweed now, and cotton-grass. 

May 27, 2019

For three quarters of an hour the sun is a great round red ball in the west, reflected in the water; at first a scarlet, but as it descends growing more purple and crimson and larger, with a blue bar of a cloud across it; still reflected in the water, two suns, one above the other, below the hilly bank; as if it were a round hole in the cope of heaven, through which we looked into a crimson atmosphere. If such scenes were painted faithfully they would be pronounced unnatural. 

May 28, 2017

It is remarkable at how little distance a hillside covered with lupines looks blue, while a house or board painted blue is seen so great a distance.

A sprig of wilted fir now grown an inch emits that rich fragrance somewhat like strawberries and pineapples, yet peculiar.

Mayhew, in his “London Labour and London Poor,” treating of the costermongers, or those who get their living in the streets of London, speaks of “the muscular irritability begotten by continued wande ing,” making one “unable to rest for any time in one place.”

Mentions the instance of a girl who had been accustomed to sell sprats in the streets, who having been taken into a gentleman ‘ s house out of charity, the pressure of shoes was intolerable to her.” “ ut no sooner did she hear from her friends, that sprats were again in the market, than as if there were some magical influence in the fish, she at once requested to be freed from the confinement, and permitted to return to her old calling.”

I am perhaps equally accustomed to a roaming field-life, experience a good deal of that muscular irritability, and have a good many friends who let me know when sprats are in the market.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 28, 1853

Our river has so little current. See July 30, 1859 ("It is a mere string of lakes which have not made up their minds to be rivers. As near as possible to a standstill."); April 16, 1852 ("A succession of bays it is, a chain of lakes, . . .There is just stream enough for a flow of thought; that is all. Many a foreigner who has come to this town has worked for years on its banks without discovering which way the river runs. ")

The bulbous arethusa out a day or two — probably yesterday. Though in a measure prepared for it, still its beauty surprised me; it is by far the highest and richest color yet. See May 30, 1854 ("I am surprised to find arethusas abundantly out in Hubbard's Close, maybe two or three days ... This high-colored plant shoots up suddenly, all flower, in meadows where it is wet walking. A superb flower.”) and note to May 29, 1856 ("Two Arethusa bulbosa at Hubbard’s Close apparently a day or two")

The sidesaddle-flower conspicuous, but no pollen yet. See May 30, 1852 ("The sidesaddle-flowers . . . are just beginning to blossom. The last are quite showy flowers when the wind turns them so as to show their under sides.");  June 10, 1854 ("Sidesaddle generally out; petals hang down, apparently a day or two. It is a conspicuous flower."); and note to June 12, 1856 ("Sidesaddle flower numerously out now")

It is remarkable at how little distance a hillside covered with lupines looks blue, See June 5, 1852 ("The transparency of the flower makes its color changeable. It paints a whole hillside with its blue,. . .No other flowers exhibit so much blue. That is the value of the lupine. The earth is blued with them.")

May 28. SeeA Book of the Seasons,, by Henry Thoreau, May 28

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

The black-polls are very numerous all over the town this spring.

May 27.

Fire in house again. 

The Sylvia striata are the commonest bird in the street, as I go to the post-office, for several days past. I see six (four males, two females) on one of our little fir trees; are apparently as many more on another close by. The white bars on the wings of both sexes are almost horizontal. 

I see them thus early and late on the trees about our houses and other houses the 27th and 28th and 29th also, - peach trees, etc., but especially on the firs.

They are quite tame. I stand within seven or eight feet while they are busily pecking at the freshly bursting or extending glaucous fir twigs, deliberately examining them on all sides, and from time to time one utters a very fine and sharp, but faint tse tse, tse tse, tse tse, with more or less of these notes. I hear the same in the woods.

Examining the freshly starting fir twigs, I find that there are a great many lice or aphides amid the still appressed leafets or leaves of the buds, and no doubt they are after these. Occasionally a summer yellowbird is in company with them, about the same business.

They, the black-polls, are very numerous all over the town this spring. The female has not a black, but rather, methinks, a slate - colored crown, and is a very different bird, — more of a yellowish brown.

Eleocharis acicularis, not long, on the low exposed bank of the river; if it is that that greens the very low muddy banks.

J. Farmer found a marsh hawk's nest on the 16th, — near the Cooper ' s hawk nest, — with three fresh eggs.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 27, 1860

Fire in house again. See May 21, 1860 (“Cold, at 11 A.M. 50°; and sit by a fire”); and note to May 22, 1860 ("Another cold and wet day, requiring fire")

They, the black-polls, are very numerous all over the town this spring. See May 20, 1856 ("The Sylvia striata, or black-poll warbler, busily picking about the locust buds and twigs. Black head and above, with olive (green) wings and two white bars; white all beneath, with a very distinct black line from throat to shoulders; flesh-colored legs; bill, dark above, light beneath."); and note to June 4, 1860 ("The black-poll warblers (Sylvia striata) appear to have left, and some other warblers, if not generally, with this first clear and bright and warm, peculiarly June weather, immediately after the May rain.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Black-poll Warbler

J. Farmer found a marsh hawk's nest on the 16th with three fresh eggs. See May 29, 1860 ("We next proceeded to the marsh hawk’s nest from which the eggs were taken a fortnight ago and the female shot")

A meadow and an island.

In all my rambles I have seen no landscape which can make me forget Fair Haven. I still sit on its Cliff in a new spring day, and look over the awakening woods and the river, and hear the new birds sing, with the same delight as ever. It is as sweet a mystery to me as ever, what this world is. Fair Haven Lake in the south, with its pine-covered island and its meadows, the hickories putting out fresh young yellowish leaves, and the oaks light-grayish ones, while the oven-bird thrums his sawyer-like strain, and the chewink rustles through the dry leaves or repeats his jingle on a tree-top, and the wood thrush, the genius of the wood, whistles for the first time his clear and thrilling strain, - it sounds as it did the first time I heard it. The sight of these budding woods intoxicates me, — this diet drink.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May, 1850


In all my rambles I have seen no landscape which can make me forget Fair Haven. See November 21, 1850 ("I see Fair Haven Pond with its island, and meadow between the island and the shore, and a strip of perfectly still and smooth water in the lee of the island, and two hawks, fish hawks perhaps, sailing over it. I do not see how it could be improved. Yet I do not see what these things can be."); February 14, 1851 ("One afternoon in the fall, November 21st, I saw Fair Haven Pond with its island and meadow; between the island and the shore, a strip of perfectly smooth water in the lee of the island; and two hawks sailing over it; and something more I saw which cannot easily be described . . .") April 14, 1852 ("Fair Haven Pond -- the pond, the meadow beyond the button-bush and willow curve, the island, and the meadow between the island and mainland with its own defining lines -- are all parted off like the parts of a mirror. A fish hawk is calmly sailing over all . . . "); May 17, 1853 ("I was surprised, on turning round, to behold the serene and everlasting beauty of the world.”)May 22, 1854 ("How many times I have been surprised thus, on turning about on this very spot, at the fairness of the earth!”); October 7, 1857 ("When I turn round half-way up Fair Haven Hill, by the orchard wall, and look northwest, I am surprised for the thousandth time at the beauty of the landscape, and I sit down to behold it at my leisure. I think that Concord affords no better view.");  March 18, 1858 ("When I get two thirds up the hill, I look round and am for the hundredth time surprised by the landscape of the river valley and the horizon with its distant blue scalloped rim. “)

On the hill where Billington climbed a tree.

May 24.

The cooing of a dove reminded me of an owl this morning. 

Counted just fifty violets (pedata) in a little bunch, three and a half by five inches, and as many buds, there being six plants close together; on the hill where Billington climbed a tree. 

A calabash at Pilgrim Hall nearly two feet high, in the form of a jar, showed what these fruits were made for. Nature's jars and vases. 

Holbrook says the Bufo Americanus is the most common in America and is our representative of the Bufo communis of Europe; speaks of its trill; deposits its spawn in pools. 

Found in College Yard Trifolium procumbens, or yellow clover. 

Concord. — Celandine in blossom, and horse-chest nut.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 24, 1852


Counted just fifty violets (pedata) in a little bunch. See May 20, 1853 ("Plucked to-day a bunch of Viola pedata, consisting of four divisions or offshoots around a central or fifth root, all united and about one inch in diameter at the ground and four inches at top") See also May 10, 1858 ("How much expression there is in the Viola pedata! I do not know on the whole but it is the handsomest of them all, it is so large and grows in such large masses. [I]t spreads so perfectly open with its face turned upward that you get its whole expression."); May 17, 1853 ("The V. pedata there presents the greatest array of blue of any flower as yet. The flowers are so raised above their leaves, and so close together, that they make a more indelible impression of blue on the eye; it is almost dazzling. . . .The effect and intensity is very much increased by the numbers.")

Found in College Yard Trifolium procumbens, or yellow clover. See May 30, 1856 ("Yellow clover abundantly out, though the heads are small yet. Are they quite open?"); September 21, 1858 ("Saw, in Salem, . . . Trifolium procumbens, still abundant"). [Trifolium procumbens is now called Trifolium campestre, commonly known as hop trefoil, field clover and low hop clover, is a species of clover  growing in dry, sandy grassland habitats, fields, woodland margins, roadsides, wastelands and cultivated land. The species name campestre means "of the fields".]

Celandine in blossom. See May 24, 1855 ("Celandine pollen."); See also May 14, 1858 ("Celandine by cemetery. "); May 16, 1853 ("Celandine is out a day or more"); May 18, 1854 ("Celandine yesterday.");

May 24. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 24 

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

The native and aboriginal crab-apple.

May 23.

You have a wild savage in you, and a savage name is perchance somewhere recorded as yours. And wilder still there grows elsewhere, I hear, a native and aboriginal crab-apple. 
. . .

This genus, so kind to the human race, the Malus or Pyrus; Rosaceæ the family, or others say Pomaceæ.

Its flowers are perhaps the most beautiful of any tree. I am frequently compelled to turn and linger by some more than usually beautiful two-thirds-expanded blossoms. If such were not so common, its fame would be loud as well as wide. Its most copious and delicious blossoms. 

But our wild apple is wild perchance like myself, who belong not to the aboriginal race here, but have strayed into the woods from the cultivated stock , – where the birds, where winged thoughts or agents, have planted or are planting me. 

Even these at length furnish hardy stocks for the orchard. You might call one 

• Malus oculata; 
• another M. Iridis  M. cum parvuli dæmonis oculis, or Imp-eyed;
• Blue-Jay Apple, or M. corvi cristati; 
• Wood -Dell Apple (M. silvestri-vallis); 
• Field-Dell Apple (M. campestri-vallis); 
• Meadow Apple (M. pratensis); 
• Rock Meadow Apple (saxopratensis ); 
• Partridge or Grouse Apple or bud [sic]; 
• Apple of the Hesperides (Malus Hesperidum); Woodside Apple; 
• Wood Apple (M. silvatica); 
• the Truant's Apple (M. cessatoris); 
• Saunterer's Apple (M. erronis vel vagabundi); 
• the Wayside Apple (M. trivialis); 
• Beauty of the Air (decus aëris); 
• December-eating; 
• Frozen-thawed (gelato-soluta or gelata regelata); 
• the Concord Apple (M. Concordiensis); 
• the Brindled Apple;
•  Wine of New England (M. vinosa); 
• the Chickaree Apple;
•  the Green Apple (M. viridis); 
• the Dysentery or Cholera-morbus Apple.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 23, 1851

See May 18, 1857 ("Interesting to see a wild apple tree in the old cellar there . . . Call it Malus cellaris, that grows in an old cellar-hole.") See also Wild Apples ("There is, first of all, the Wood-Apple (Malus sylvatica); the Blue-Jay Apple; the Apple which grows in Dells in the Woods, (sylvestrivallis) also in Hollows in Pastures (campestrivallis); the Apple that grows in an old Cellar-Hole (Malus cellaris); the Meadow-Apple; the Partridge-Apple; the Truant's Apple, (Cessatoris,) which no boy will ever go by without knocking off some, however late it may be; the Saunterer's Apple,—you must lose yourself before you can find the way to that; the Beauty of the Air (Decus Aëris); December-Eating; the Frozen-Thawed, (gelato-soluta,) good only in that state; the Concord Apple, possibly the same with the Musketaquidensis; the Assabet Apple; the Brindled Apple; Wine of New England; the Chickaree Apple ; the Green Apple (Malus viridis);—this has many synonymes; in an imperfect state, it is theCholera morbifera aut dysenterifera, puerulis dilectissima;—the Apple which Atalanta stopped to pick up; the Hedge Apple (Malus Sepium); the Slug-Apple (limacea); the Railroad-Apple, which perhaps came from a core thrown out of the cars; the Apple whose Fruit we tasted in our Youth; our Particular Apple, not to be found in any catalogue,—Pedestrium Solatium; also the Apple where hangs the Forgotten Scythe; Iduna's Apples, and the Apples which Loki found in the Wood; and a great many more I have on my list, too numerous to mention,—all of them good.")

See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau May 23

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

This is the first truly lively summer Sunday.

May 22. 

May 22, 2015

Sunday. 

To Nobscot with W. E. C. 

This is the third windy day following the two days’rain. A washing day, such as we always have at this season, methinks. 

The grass has sprung up as by magic since the rains. The birds are heard through the pleasant dashing wind, which enlivens everything. It is clear June, the first day of summer. 

The rye, which, when I last looked, was one foot high, is now three feet high and waving and tossing its heads in the wind. We ride by these bluish-green waving rye fields in the woods, as if an Indian juggler had made them spring up in a night. Why, the sickle and cradle will soon be taken up. Though I walk every day I am never prepared for this magical growth of the rye. I am advanced by whole months, as it were, into summer. 

Sorrel reddens the fields. Cows are preparing the milk for June butter. 

Already the falling apple blossoms fill the air and spot the roads and fields, and some are already turned dark with decay on the ground. 

With this warmth and wind the air is full of haze, such as we have not had before. 

The lilac is scented at every house. 

The wood pewee’s warm note is heard. 

We ride through warm, sandy shrub oak roads, where the Viola pedata blues the edge of the path, and the sand cherry and the choke-cherry whiten it. The crickets now first are generally heard. Houstonias whiten the fields and are now in their prime. The thorn bushes are full of bloom. 

Observed a large sassafras tree in bloom, – a rich lemon (?) yellow. 

Left our horse at the Howe tavern. The oldest date on the sign is “ D. H. 1716. ” An old woman, who had been a servant in the family and said she was ninety-one, said this was the first house built on the spot. 

Went on to Nobscot. Very warm in the woods, — and hear the hoarse note of the tanager and the sweet pe-a-wai, — but pleasantly breezy on the bare hilltops. Can’t see the mountains. 

Found an abundance of the Viola Muhlenbergii (debilis of Bigelow), a stalked violet, pale blue and bearded. 

The krigia out, a redder, more July, yellow than the dandelion; also a yellow Bethlehem-star and ribwort; and the mountain cranberry still here and there in blossom, though for the most part small berries formed. 

An abundance of saxifrage going to seed, and in their midst two or three looking densely white like the pearly everlasting — round dense white heads, apparently an abortion, an abnormal state, without stamens, etc., which I cannot find described. 

The pastures on this hill and its spurs are sprinkled profusely with thorny pyramidal apple scrubs, very thick and stubborn, first planted by the cows, then browsed by them and kept down stubborn and thorny for years, till, as they spread, their centre is protected and beyond reach and shoots up into a tree, giving a wine-glass form to the whole; and finally perchance the bottom disappears and cows come in to stand in the shade and rub against and redden the trunk. They must make fine dark shadows, these shrubs, when the sun is low; perfectly pyramidal, they are now, many of them. You see the cow-dung every where now with a hundred little trees springing up in it. Thus the cows create their own shade and food. 

This hill, Nobscot, is the summit of the island (?) or cape between the Assabet and Musketaquid — per haps the best point from which to view the Concord River valley. The Wayland hills bound it on the east; Berlin, Bolton, [and] Harvard hills on the west. The Sudbury meadows, seen here and there in distance, are of a peculiar bluish green. 

This is the first truly lively summer Sunday, what with lilacs, warm weather, waving rye, slight dusty sandy roads in some places, falling apple blossoms, etc., etc., and the wood pewee. 

The country people walk so quietly to church, and at five o’clock the farmer stands reading the newspaper while his cows go through the bars. 

I ought perhaps to have measured the great white oak by Howe’s. 

A remarkably thick white pine wood this side of Willis’s Pond ! !

...

Our quince blossomed yesterday. 

Saw many low blackberries in bloom to-day

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 22, 1853

The wood pewee’s warm note is heard. See May 22, 1854 ("I hear also pe-a-wee pe-a-wee, and then occasionally pee-yu, the first syllable in a different and higher key emphasized, — all very sweet and naive and innocent") See also May 17, 1853 ("I hear the wood pewee, — pe-a-wai. The heat of yesterday has brought him on."); May 17, 1854 ("Hear the wood pewee, the warm weather sound."). And see A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Wood-Pewee

Already the falling apple blossoms fill the air and spot the roads and fields. See May 17, 1853 ("The air filled with the sweetness of apple blossoms ( this is blossom week )"); May 20, 1854 ("Methinks we always have at this time those washing winds as now, when the choke-berry is in bloom, — bright and breezy days blowing off some apple blossoms”); May 25, 1852 (It is blossom week with the apples.”); May 27 1852 ("The road is white with the apple blossoms fallen off, as with snowflakes.”); June 1, 1855 ("A very windy day, . . . scattering the remaining apple blossoms.”)

Found an abundance of the Viola Muhlenbergii (debilis of Bigelow), a stalked violet, pale blue and bearded. See May 22, 1856 ("To Viola Muhlenbergii, which is abundantly out; how long? A small pale-blue flower growing in dense bunches, but in spots a little drier than the V. cucullata and blanda.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Violets

The pastures on this hill and its spurs are sprinkled profusely with thorny pyramidal apple scrubs, very thick and stubborn, first planted by the cows, then browsed by them and kept down stubborn and thorny for years, till, as they spread, their centre is protected and beyond reach and shoots up into a tree. See October 28, 1857 ("I see some shrubs which cattle have browsed for twenty years, keeping them down and compelling them to spread, until at last they are so broad they become their own fence and some interior shoot darts upward and bears its fruit. ")

The hickories are budded and show the red anthers.

May 21. 

May 11, 2020

(Avesong)

P. M. — Up Assabet to cress, with Sophia. 

Land on Island.

One of the most beautiful things to me now is the reddish-ash, and, higher, the silvery, canopies of half a dozen young white oak leaves over their catkins, — thousands of little tents pitched in the air for the May training of the flowers, so many little parasols to their tenderer flowers. 

Young white oaks and shrub oaks have a reddish look quite similar to their withered leaves in the winter. 

It is still windy weather, and while I hear the bobolink strain dying away in the distance through the maples, I can [ sic ] the falling apple blossoms which I do not see, as if they were his falling notes. 

Yet the water is quite still and smooth by the Hemlocks, and as the weather is warm, it is a soothing sight to see it covered with dust there over the Deep Eddy. 

Landed beyond the grape-vine bower and cleared out the spring of leaves and sticks and mud, and deepened it, making an outlet, and it soon ran clear and cold. 

The cress, which proves to be the rock cress, or herb of St. Barbara, is now luxuriant and in bloom in many places along the river, looking like mustard. 

Found the Ranunculus abortivus, apparently some time in blossom, in the woods opposite to the cress. Put it after the repens. 

There are, apparently, two kinds of thorns close together on Nawshawtuct,-one now and for some days in blossom, both bushes and the largest tree, – which are evidently varieties of the Cratægus coccinea, or scarlet-fruited thorn. The tree one is about eleven feet high by ten feet, and would be taken for an apple tree; is crowded full with white bloom very compact and handsome; the most showy of any native tree in these parts when in bloom. Its thorns are stout. 

But there is another kind, thin, wisp-shaped trees, not yet in bloom, with very long, slender, straight needle-shaped thorns and two or three stipules to each peduncle. As it has the usual petioles, is not the cockspur, but may be a variety of the first-named. 

The grass begins to be conspicuously reddened with sorrel. 

The white maple keys are nearly two inches long by a half-inch wide, in pairs, with waved inner edges like green moths ready to bear off their seeds. 

The red maple keys are not half so large now, and are a dull red, of a similar form. 

The hickories are budded and show the red anthers.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 21, 1853

Canopies of half a dozen young white oak leaves over their catkins. See May 17, 1853 ("The blossoms of the red oak hang down under its young leaves as under a canopy.")

The Deep Eddy. See March 29, 1853 ("A pleasant short voyage is that to the Leaning Hemlocks on the Assabet, just round the Island under Nawshawtuct Hill. The river here has in the course of ages gullied into the hill, at a curve, making a high and steep bank, on which a few hemlocks grow and overhang the deep, eddying basin.")

The grass begins to be conspicuously reddened with sorrel. See May 21, 1852 ("Sorrel in bloom, beginning. I am eager to taste a handful.") See also May 22, 1854 ("The sorrel beginning to redden the fields with ruddy health, — all these things make earth now a paradise. How many times I have been surprised thus, on turning about on this very spot, at the fairness of the earth!")

The hickories are budded and show the red anthers. See May 14, 1855 ("Some hickories, just opening their leaves, make quite a show with the red inner sides of the bud-scales turned back."); May 17, 1853 ("How red are the scales of some hickory buds, now turned back!"); May 24, 1860 (“I notice the first shadows of hickories, - not dense and dark shade, but open-latticed, a network of sun and shadow on the north sides of the trees.”); May 26, 1857 ("The very sudden expansion of the great hickory buds, umbrella-wise."); May 29, 1857 (“Those great hickory buds, how much they contained! You see now the large reddish scales turned back at the base of the new twigs. Suddenly the buds burst, and those large pinnate leaves stretched forth in various directions.”)