I have for years had a great deal of trouble with my shoe-strings

July 25.

Dodder, probably the 21st.

Blue-curls.

Burdock, probably yesterday.

P. M. – To Le Grosse’s.

Cerasus Virginiana, — choke-cherry, — just ripe.

White and red huckleberries said to be in Le Grosse’s or Wetherbee’s pasture. Could not find them.

Cynoglossum Morisoni, beggar’s-lice, roadside between Sam Barrett’s mill and the next house east, in flower and fruiting probably ten days. Probably the same with plant found beyond the stone bridge, gone to seed, last year. 

I have for years had a great deal of trouble with my shoe-strings, because they get untied continually. They are leather, rolled and tied in a hard knot. But some days I could hardly go twenty rods before I was obliged to stop and stoop to tie my shoes.

My companion and I speculated on the distance to which one tying would carry you, — the length of a shoe-tie, — and we thought it nearly as appreciable and certainly a more simple and natural measure of distance than a stadium, or league, or mile.

Ever and anon we raised our feet on whatever fence or wall or rock or stump we chanced to be passing, and drew the strings once more, pulling as hard as we could. It was very vexatious, when passing through low scrubby bushes, to become conscious that the strings were already getting loose again before we had fairly started.

What should we have done if pursued by a tribe of Indians? My companion sometimes went without strings altogether, but that loose way of proceeding was not ſto] be thought of by me.

One shoemaker sold us shoe strings made of the hide of a South American jack ass, which he recommended; or rather he gave them to us and added their price to that of the shoes we bought of him. But I could not see that these were any better than the old.

I wondered if anybody had exhibited a better article at the World’s Fair, and whether England did not bear the palm from America in this respect. I thought of strings with recurved prickles and various other remedies myself.

At last the other day it occurred to me that I would try an experiment, and, instead of tying two simple knots one over the other the same way, putting the end which fell to the right over each time, that I would reverse the process, and put it under the other.

Greatly to my satisfaction, the experiment was perfectly successful, and from that time my shoe-strings have given me no trouble, except sometimes in untying them at night.

On telling this to others I learned that I had been all the while tying what is called a granny’s knot, for I had never been taught to tie any other, as sailors’ children are; but now I had blundered into a square knot, I think they called it, or two running slip-nooses. Should not all children be taught this accomplishment, and an hour, perchance, of their childhood be devoted to instruction in tying knots? 

Those New Hampshire-like pastures near Asa Melvin’s are covered or dotted with bunches of indigo, still in bloom, more numerously than anywhere that I remember.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 25, 1853

Blue-curls. See note to July 11, 1853 ("The aromatic trichostema now springing up."); July 31, 1856 ("Trichostema has now for some time been springing up in the fields, giving out its aromatic scent when bruised")

Burdock, probably yesterday. See August 1, 1856 ("Burdock, several days at least")

Cerasus Virginiana, — choke-cherry, — just ripe. See July 18, 1852 ("The Cerasus Virginiana, or choke-cherry, is turning, nearly ripe."); July  19, 1854 ("Black choke-berry, several days."); July 30, 1860 ("Am glad to press my way through Miles's Swamp. Thickets of choke-berry bushes higher than my head, with many of their lower leaves already red");August 5, 1856 ("Choke-cherries near . . . begin to be ripe, though still red. They are scarcely edible, but their beauty atones for it. See those handsome racemes of ten or twelve cherries each, dark glossy red, semi- transparent. You love them not the less because they are not quite palatable."); August 5, 1858 (" Choke-berries, fair to the eye but scarcely palatable, hang far above your head, weighing down the bushes."); August 12, 1858 ("I eat the blueberry, but I am also interested in the rich-looking glossy black choke-berries which nobody eats, but which bend down the bushes on every side,—sweetish berries with a dry, and so choking, taste. Some of the bushes are more than a dozen feet high."); August 21, 1854 ("Red choke-berries are dried black; ripe some time ago. ");  August 15, 1852 ("The red choke-berry is small and green still. I plainly distinguish it, also, by its woolly under side."); August 25, 1854 ("Also the choke-berries are very abundant [at Shadbush Meadow], but mostly dried black."); August 26, 1860 ("I thread my way through the blueberry swamp in front of Martial Miles's. . . . And now a far greater show of choke-berries is here, rich to see."); August 28, 1856 ("The bushes are weighed down with choke-berries, which no creature appears to gather. This crop is as abundant as the huckleberries have been. They have a sweet and pleasant taste enough, but leave a mass of dry pulp in the mouth."); August 31, 1858 ("Red choke-berry, apparently not long. ");September 1,1856 ("Red choke-berries, which last further up in this swamp, with their peculiar glossy red and squarish form, are really very handsome.");  September 1, 1859 ("Red choke-berry ripe.")September 6, 1857 ("I see in the swamp black choke berries twelve feet high at least and in fruit.")

Cynoglossum Morisoni, beggar’s-lice, in flower and fruiting probably ten days.See August 6, 1856 ("Cynoglossum Morisoni mostly gone to seed, roadside, at grape-vine just beyond my bean-field. Some is five feet high")

I have for years had a great deal of trouble with my shoe-strings.See August 5, 1855 ("It seems that I used to tie a regular granny’s knot in my shoe-strings, and I learned of myself —rediscovered—to tie a true square knot, or what sailors sometimes call a reef-knot. It needed to be as secure as a reef-knot in any gale, to withstand the wringing and twisting I gave it in my walks")

Bunches of indigo, still in bloom, more numerously than anywhere that I remember. See June 3, 1851 ("I noticed the indigo-weed a week or two ago pushing up like asparagus."); July 10, 1855 ("Indigo out. "); July 17, 1852 ("Some fields are covered now with tufts or clumps of indigo- weed, yellow with blossoms, with a few dead leaves turned black here and there."); August 6, 1858 ("indigo, ' ' 'is still abundantly in bloom. "); August 17, 1851 ("Indigo-weed still in bloom by the dry wood-path-side,"); October 10, 1858 ("The indigo-weed, now partly turned black and broken off, blows about the pastures like the fiyaway grass."); October 22, 1859 ("In my blustering walk over the Mason and Hunt pastures yesterday, I saw much of the withered indigo-weed which was broken off and blowing about, and the seeds in its numerous black pods rattling like the rattlepod though not nearly so loud");February 28, 1860 ("As I stood by Eagle Field wall, I heard a fine rattling sound, produced by the wind on some dry weeds at my elbow. It was occasioned by the wind rattling the fine seeds in those pods of the indigo-weed which were still closed, — a distinct rattling din which drew my attention to it, — like a small Indian's calabash. Not a mere rustling of dry weeds, but the shaking of a rattle, or a hundred rattles, beside.")