A cold storm still, — the most serious storm since spring.

August 30. 

A cold storm still, — this the third day, — and a fire to keep warm by. This, methinks, is the most serious storm since spring. 

Polygonum amphibium var. aquaticum, which is rather rare. I have not seen it in flower. It is floating. 

Its broad heart-shaped leaves are purplish beneath, like white lily pads, heart-leaves, and water-targets. What is there in the water that colors them? 

The other variety, which [is] rough and upright, is more common, and its flowers very beautiful.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 30, 1852

A cold storm still, — this the third day, — the most serious storm since spring. See August 25, 1852 ("The cricket sounds louder, preparatory to a cheerful storm! How grateful to our feelings is the approach of autumn! We have had no serious storm since spring."); August 29, 1852 ("A warm rain-storm in the night, with wind, and to-day it continues."); August 31, 1852 ("It is worth the while to have had a cloudy, even a stormy, day for an excursion, if only that you are out at the clearing up.")

Polygonum amphibium.  [Water Smartweed] See  August 5, 1856 ("Polygonum amphibium in water, slightly hairy, well out."); August 19, 1858 ("Large, handsome red spikes of the Polygonum amphibium are now generally conspicuous along the shore."); September 18, 1856 ("I have seen no . . . Polygonum amphibium var. aquaticum . . .this year.");  September 22, 1852 ("The Polygonum amphibium var. terrestre is a late flower, and now more common and the spikes larger, quite handsome and conspicuous, and more like a prince's-feather than any.") See also September 1, 1857 ("I have finally settled for myself the question of the two varieties of Polygonum amphibium. I think there are not even two varieties. "); September 18, 1858 ("The perfectly fresh spike of the Polygonum amphibium attracts every eye now. It is not past its prime. C. thinks it is exactly the color of some candy."); September 27, 1858 ("The P. amphibium spikes still in prime. "); October 16, 1858 ("I see some Polygonum amphibium, front-rank,"); November 7, 1855 ("How completely crisp and shrivelled the leaves and stems of the Polygonum amphibium var. terrestre, still standing above the water and grass!")

There are various ways in which you can tell if a watermelon is ripe

August 27

. .. I think that some summer squashes had turned yellow in our yard a fortnight or more ago . There are various ways in which you can tell if a watermelon is ripe . If you have had your eye on the patch much from the first , and so know which formed first , you may presume that these will ripen soonest ; or else you may incline to those which lie nearest the centre of the hill or root , as the oldest . Next the dull dead color and want of bloom are as good signs as any . Some look green and livid and have a very fog or mildew of bloom on them , like a fungus . These are as green as a leek through and through , and you'll find yourself in a pickle if you open one . Others have a dead dark green- ness , the circulations being less rapid in their cuticles and their blooming period passed , and these you may safely bet on . If the vine is quite green and lively , the death of the quirl at the root of the stem is almost a sure sign . For fear we should not discover it before , this is placed for a sign that there is redness and ripeness ( if not mealiness ) within . Of two otherwise similar , take that which yields the lowest tone when struck with your knuckles , i . e . , which is hollowest . The old or ripe ones sing base ; the young , tenor or falsetto . Some use the violent method of pressing to hear if they crack within , but this is not to be allowed . Above all no tapping on the vine is to be tolerated , suggestive of a greediness which defeats its own purpose . It is very childish . One man told me that he could n't raise melons because his children would cut them all up . I thought that he convicted himself out of his own mouth , and was not fit to be the ruler of a country according to Confucius ' . . .

See Late Blackberries

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 27, 1859

All our life is a persistent dreaming awake. See November 12, 1859 ("I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?"); October 29, 1857 ("There are some things of which I cannot at once tell whether I have dreamed them or they are real"); August 8, 1852 ("When the play - it may be the tragedy of life - is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.") May 24, 1851 ("I frequently awake with an atmosphere about me as if my unremembered dreams had been divine, as if my spirit had journeyed to its native place”).

I often see yarrow with a delicate pink tint. See July 5, 1856 ("Pink-colored yarrow.")

The children have done bringing huckleberries to sell for nearly a week. See July 13, 1852 ("It is impossible to say what day — almost what week — the huckleberries begin to be ripe, unless you are acquainted with, and daily visit, every huckleberry bush in the town"); August 4, 1852 (“Most huckleberries and blueberries and low blackberries are in their prime now.”); August 4, 1854 ("On this hill (Smith's) the bushes are black with huckleberries. ...Now in their prime. Some glossy black, some dull black, some blue; and patches of Vaccinium vacillans inter mixed."); August 4. 1856 ("This favorable moist weather has expanded some of the huckleberries to the size of bullets"); August 28, 1856 ("Huckleberries are about given up")

Perfectly fresh and large low blackberries, peculiarly sweet and soft, in the shade of the pines at Thrush Alley,-- so much sweeter, tenderer, and larger. See July 31, 1856 (“How thick the berries — low blackberries, Vaccinium vacillans, and huckleberries — on the side of Fair Haven Hill! ”) August 4, 1852 (“Most huckleberries and blueberries and low blackberries are in their prime now.”); August 19, 1856 ("What countless varieties of low blackberries! Here, in this open pine grove, I pluck some large fresh and very sweet ones when they are mostly gone without. So they are continued a little longer to us"); August 28, 1856 (“low blackberries done, high blackberries still to be had.”); 

Elder-berry clusters swell and become heavy and therefore droop, bending the bushes down, just in proportion as they ripen. See   August 22, 1852 ("The elder bushes are weighed down with fruit partially turned, and are still in bloom at the extremities of their twigs."); August 23, 1856  ("Elder-berries, now looking purple, are weighing down the bushes along fences by their abundance."); August 29, 1854 ("The cymes of elder-berries, black with fruit, are now conspicuous.")

The children have done 

bringing huckleberries to sell 

for nearly a week.

When the leaves are rustling and glistening in the cooler breeze and clear air,

August 25. 

Copious rain at last, in the night and during the day.

A. M. — Mountain-ash berries partly turned. Again see, I think, purple finch eating them. 

I see, after the rain, when the leaves are rustling and glistening in the cooler breeze and clear air, quite a flock of (apparently) Fringilla socialis in the garden.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 25, 1859

Copious rain at last, in the night and during the day. See August 25. 1852 ("One of those serious and normal storms ~ not a shower which you can see through, not a transient cloud that drops rain ~ something regular, a fall rain, coincident with a different mood or season of the mind. ")

Quite a flock of (apparently) Fringilla socialis in the garden. See April 27, 1852 (“Heard also a chipping sparrow (F. socialis)”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Chipping Sparrow

When the leaves are rustling and glistening in the cooler breeze and clear air. See August 15, 1853 ("now it is cooler and beautifully clear at last after all these rains, and. . .I see a distinct, dark shade under the edge of the woods, the effect of the luxuriant foliage seen through the clear air."); August 19, 1853 ("After more rain, with wind in the night, it is now clearing up cool. There is a broad, clear crescent of blue in the west, slowly increasing, and an agreeable autumnal coolness"); August 20, 1853 ("This day, too, has that autumnal character. I am struck by the clearness and stillness of the air, "); August 30, 1854 ("The clearness of the air makes it delicious to gaze in any direction.")

I come to get the now empty nests of the wood pewees found June 27th.

August 13. 

This month thus far has been quite rainy. It has rained more or less at least half the days. You have had to consider each afternoon whether you must not take an umbrella. It has about half the time either been dogdayish or mizzling or decided rain. It would rain five minutes and be fair the next five, and so on, alternately, a whole afternoon. The farmers have not been able to get much of their hay. On the whole it has been rather cool. It has been still decidedly summer, with some reminiscences of autumn. The last week has been the heart of the huckleberry season. 

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

The dullish-blue or lead-colored Viburnum dentatum berries are now seen, not long, overhanging the side of the river, amid cornels and willows and button-bushes. They make a dull impression, yet held close in some lights they are glossy. The umbelled fruits —viburnums and cornels, aralias, etc. — have begun. 

As I am paddling up the north side above the Hemlocks, I am attracted by the singular shadows of the white lily pads on the rich-brown muddy bottom. It is remarkable how light tends to prevail over shadow there. It steals in under the densest curtain of pads and illustrates the bottom. The shadows of these pads, seen (now at 3 P. M.) a little one side, where the water is eighteen inches or two feet deep, are rarely orbicular or entire-edged or resembling the leaf, but are more or less perfect rosettes, generally of an oval form, with five to fifteen or more regularly rounded petals, open half-way to the centre. You cannot commonly refer the shadow to its substance but by touching the leaf with your paddle. 

Light knows a thousand tricks by which it prevails. Light is the rule, shadow the exception. The leaf fails to cast a shadow equal in area to itself. While it is a regular and almost solid disk, the shadow is a rosette or palmate, as if the sun, in its haste [to] illustrate every nook, shone round the shortest corner. Often if you connect the extremities of the petals, you have the general outline and size of the leaf, and the shadow is less than the substance by the amount of the openings. These petals seem to depend for their existence on the some what scalloped, waved, or undulating edge of the pad, and the manner in which the light is reflected from it. Generally the two sharp angles of the pad are almost entirely eroded in the shadow. The shadows, too, have a slight halo about them. 

Such endless and varied play of light and shadow is on the river bottom! It is protean and somewhat weird even. The shadow of the leaf might be mistaken for that of the flower. The sun playing with a lily leaf draws the outline of a lily on the bottom with its shadow. 

The broad-leaved helianthus on bank opposite Assabet Spring is not nearly out, though the H. divaricatus was abundantly out on the 11th. 

I landed to get the wood pewee nest in the Lee Wood. Perhaps those woods might be called Mantatukwet’s, for he says he lived at the foot of Nawshawtuct about fifty years before 1684. 

Hypopytis abundantly out (how long ?), apparently a good while, in that long wood-path on the left side, under the oak wood, before you begin to rise, going from the river end. Very little indeed is yet erect, and that which is not is apparently as forward as the rest. Not generally quite so high as the Monotropa uniflora which grows with it. I see still in their midst the dry upright brown spikes of last year’s seed-vessels. The chimaphila is more of an umbel. 

Where that dense young birch grove, four to eight feet high, was burned over in the spring, — I am pretty sure it was early in May,— I see now a yet more dense green crop of Solidago altissima, three or four feet high and budded to bloom. Where did all the seed come from? I think the burning was too late for any seed to have blown on since. Did it, then, lie in the ground so low as to escape the fire? The seed may have come from plants which grow in the old path along the fence on the west side. 

It is a singular fact, at any rate, that a dense grove of young white birches, covering half a dozen acres, may be burned over in May, so as to kill nearly all, and now, amid the dead brown trees, you see [a] dense green crop of Solidago altissima covering the ground like grass, four feet high. Nature practices a rotation of crops, and always has has some seed ready in the ground. 

Young white maples below Dove Rock are an inch and a half high, and red maples elsewhere about one inch high. 

I come to get the now empty nests of the wood pewees found June 27th. 

In each case, on approaching the spot, I hear the sweet note of a pewee lingering about, and this alone would have guided me within four or five rods. I do not know why they should linger near the empty nest, but perhaps they have built again near there or intend to use the same nest again (?). Their full strain is pe-ah-ee' (perhaps repeated), rising on the last syllable and emphasizing that, then pe’-ee, emphasizing the first and falling on the last, all very sweet and rather plaintive, suggesting innocence and confidence in you. In this case the bird uttered only its last strain, regularly at intervals. 

These two pewee nests are remarkably alike in their position and composition and form, though half a mile apart. They are both placed on a horizontal branch of a young oak (one about fourteen, the other about eighteen, feet from ground) and three to five feet from main trunk, in a young oak wood. Both rest directly on a horizontal fork, and such is their form and composition that they have almost precisely the same color and aspect from below and from above. 

The first is on a dead limb, very much exposed, is three inches in diameter outside to outside, and two inches in diameter within, the rim being about a quarter of an inch thick, and it is now one inch deep within. Its framework is white pine needles, especially in the rim, and a very little fine grass stem, covered on the rim and all without closely with small bits of lichen (cetraria?), slate-colored without and blackish beneath, and some brown caterpillar (?) or cocoon (?) silk with small seed—vessels in it. They are both now thin and partially open at the bottom, so that I am not sure they contain all the original lining. This one has no distinct lining, unless it is a very little green usnea amid the loose pine needles. The lichens of the nest would readily be confounded with the lichens of the limb. Looking down on it, it is a remarkably round and neat nest. 

The second nest is rather more shallow now and half an inch wider without, is lined with much more usnea (the willow down which I saw in it June 27 is gone; perhaps they cast it out in warm weather !), and shows a little of some slender brown catkin (oak ?) beneath, without. 

These nests remind me of what I suppose to be the yellow-throat vireo’s and hummingbird’s. The lining of a nest is not in good condition — perhaps is partly gone — when the birds have done with it. 

The remarkable difference between the two branches of our river, kept up down to the very junction, indicates a different geological region for their channels.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 13, 1858

The dullish-blue or lead-colored Viburnum dentatum berries overhanging the side of the river. See August 27, 1856 ("Then there are the Viburnum dentatum berries, in flattish cymes, dull leadcolored berries, depressed globular, three sixteenths of an inch in diameter, with a mucronation, hard, seedy, dryish, and unpalatable.")

The remarkable difference between the two branches of our river indicates a different geological region for their channels. See July 16, 1859 ("The stream is remarkably different from the [Concord]. It is not half so deep. It is considerably more rapid. The bottom is not muddy but sandy and occasionally stony. Though far shallower, it is less weedy than the other. ... This is owing, perhaps, not only to the greater swiftness of the current, but to the want of mud under the sand. You wonder what makes the difference between this stream and the other. It seems impossible that it should be a geological difference in the beds of the streams so near together. Is it not owing simply to the greater swiftness of this stream?"); July 5, 1852 ("We are favored in having two rivers, flowing into one, whose banks afford different kinds of scenery, the streams being of different characters; one a dark, muddy, dead stream, full of animal and vegetable life, with broad meadows and black dwarf willows and weeds, the other comparatively pebbly and swift, with more abrupt banks and narrower meadows. To the latter I go to see the ripple, and the varied bottom with its stones and sands and shadows; to the former for the influence of its dark water resting on invisible mud, and for its reflections. It is a factory of soil, depositing sediment.")

August 13. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, August 13.

 

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 © 2009-202

I smell the fragrant everlasting concealed in the higher grass and weeds, some distance off.

August 11

P. M. — To Beck Stow’s. 

I see of late a good many young sparrows (and old) of different species flitting about. That blackberry-field of Gowing’s in the Great Fields, this side of his swamp, is a famous place for them. I see a dozen or more, old and young, perched on the wall. As I walk along, they fly up from the grass and alight on the wall, where they sit on the alert with outstretched necks. 

Nearest and unalarmed sit the huckleberry-birds; next, quite on the alert, the bay-wings, with which and further off the yellow-browed sparrows, of whom one at least has a clear yellowish breast; add to which that I heard there abouts the seringo note. If made by this particular bird, I should infer it was Fringilla passerina. I still hear there at intervals the bay-wing, huckleberry-bird, and seringo. 

Now is our rainy season. It has rained half the days for ten days past. Instead of dog-day clouds and mists, we have a rainy season. You must walk armed with an umbrella. It is wettest in the woods, where the air has had no chance to dry the bushes at all. 

The Myriophyllum ambiguum, apparently variety natans, is now apparently in its prime. Some buds have gone to seed; others are not yet open. It is floating all over the surface of the pool, by the road, at the swamp, — long utricularia-like masses without the bladders. The emersed part, of linear or pectinate leaves, rises only about half an inch; the rest, eighteen inches more or less in length, consists of an abundance of capillary pinnate leaves, covered with slime or conserve (?) as a web. Evidently the same plant, next the shore and creeping over the mud, only two or three inches long, is without the capillary leaves, having roots instead, and apparently is the variety limosum (?), I suspect erroneously so called. 

Heard a fine, sprightly, richly warbled strain from a bird perched on the top of a bean-pole. It was at the same time novel yet familiar to me. I soon recognized it for the strain of the purple finch, which I have not heard lately. But though it appeared as large, it seemed a different-colored bird. With my glass, four rods off, I saw it to be a goldfinch. It kept repeating this warble of the purple finch for several minutes. A very surprising note to be heard now, when birds generally are so silent. Have not heard the purple finch of late. 

I conclude that the goldfinch is a very fine and powerful singer, and the most successful and remarkable mocking-bird that we have. In the spring I heard it imitate the thrasher exactly, before that bird had arrived, and now it imitates the purple finch as perfectly, after the latter bird has ceased to sing! It is a surprising vocalist. It did not cease singing till I disturbed it by my nearer approach, and then it went off with its usual mew, succeeded by its watery twitter in its ricochet flight. Have they not been more common all summer than formerly?

I go along plum path behind Adolphus Clark’s. This is a peculiar locality for plants. The Desmodium Canadense is now apparently in its prime there and very common, with its rather rich spikes of purple flowers, — the most (?) conspicuous of the desmodiums. It might be called Desmodium Path. 

Also the small rough sunflower (now abundant) and the common apocynum (also in bloom as well as going and gone to seed) are very common. 

I smell the fragrant everlasting concealed in the higher grass and weeds there, some distance off. It reminds me of the lateness of the season. 

Saw the elodea (not long) and a dangle-berry ripe (not long) at Beck Stow’s. 

See a small variety of helianthus growing with the divaricatus, on the north side of Peter’s path, two rods east of bars southeast of his house. It is an imperfect flower, but apparently answers best to the H. tracheliifolius. There is evidently a great variety in respect to form, petiole, venation, roughness, thickness, and color of the leaves of helianthuses. 

Saw yesterday the Utricularia vulgaris, apparently in its prime, yellowing those little pools in Lincoln at the town bound by Walden. Their stems and leaves seem to half fill them. Some pools, like that at bath-place by pond in R. W. E.’s wood, will have for all vegetation only the floating immersed stems and leaves, light brown, of this plant, without a flower, perhaps on account of shade. 

The great bullfrogs, of various colors from dark brown to greenish yellow, lie out on the surface of these slimy pools or in the shallow water by the shore, motionless and philosophic. Toss a chip to one, and he will instantly leap and seize and drop it as quick. Motionless and indifferent as they appear, they are ready to leap upon their prey at any instant.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 11, 1858

Nearest sit the huckleberry-birds; next the bay-wings, with which and further off the yellow-browed sparrows, of whom one at least has a clear yellowish breast I infer was Fringilla passerina. See August 8, 1858 (“I see at Clamshell Hill a yellow-browed sparrow sitting quite near on a haycock, pluming itself.”); and note to July 26, 1858 (“ A broad egg, white with large reddish and purplish brown spots chiefly about large end. . .  Could not see the bird; only saw bay-wings and huckleberry-birds. I suspect it may be the Fringilla passerina? He says the bird had a clear yellowish-white breast!”); June 28, 1858 (“According to Audubon’s and Wilson’s plates, the Fringilla passerina has for the most part clear yellowish-white breast.... Audubon says that the eggs . . .of the yellow-winged sparrow are “of a dingy white, sprinkled with brown spots.”); May 28, 1856 (“A seringo or yellow-browed (?) sparrow’s nest . . .Egg, bluish-white ground, thickly blotched with brown, yet most like a small ground bird’s egg, rather broad at one end, pretty fresh.”)

The seringo note. See April 22, 1856 ("The seringo also sits on a post, with a very distinct yellow line over the eye,and the rhythm of its strain is ker chick | ker che | ker-char—r-r-r-r | chick, the last two bars being the part chiefly heard."). See June 26, 1856 (" According to Audubon’s and Wilson’s plates, ... the Savannah sparrow no conspicuous yellow on shoulder, a yellow brow, and white crown line. Rode to Sconticut Neck or Point in Fairhaven, five or six miles, and saw, apparently, the F. Savanna near their nests (my seringo note), restlessly flitting about me from rock to rock within a rod. Distinctly yellow-browed and spotted breast, not like plate of passerina. Audubon says that the eggs of the Savannah sparrow “are of a pale bluish color, softly mottled with purplish brown,””); May 28, 1856 ("A seringo or yellow-browed (?) sparrow’s nest . . . Egg, bluish-white ground, thickly blotched with brown . . ..”); October 22, 1855 ("I sit on a bank at the brook crossing, beyond the grove, to watch a flock of seringos, perhaps Savannah sparrows, which, with some F. hyemalis and other sparrows, are actively flitting about amid the alders and dogwood. "); July 16, 1854 ("Is it the yellow-winged or Savannah sparrow with yellow alternating with dark streaks on throat, as well as yellow over eye, reddish flesh-colored legs, and two light bars on wings?“). See also Guide to Thoreau’s Birds "(Thoreau frequently called the Savannah Sparrow Passerculus sandwichensis the seringo or seringo-bird, but he also applied the name to other small birds.)”


Heard a fine, sprightly, richly warbled strain from a bird perched on the top of a bean-pole.I conclude that the goldfinch is a very fine and powerful singer, and the most successful and remarkable mocking-bird that we have. See April 19, 1858 ("This was the most varied and sprightly performer of any bird I have heard this year, and it is strange that I never heard the strain before. It may be this note which is taken for the thrasher’s before the latter comes.") See also June 25, 1853 ("I think it must be the purple finch . . . which I see and hear singing so sweetly and variedly in the gardens . .. on a bean-pole or fence-picket. It has a little of the martin warble and of the canary bird.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Goldfinch

I smell the fragrant everlasting concealed in the higher grass and weeds. See August 10, 1856 ("Fragrant everlasting, maybe some days.”);  August 13, 1856 (“Is there not now a prevalence of aromatic herbs in prime?. . . Does not the season require this tonic?“); August 29, 1856 ("Fragrant everlasting in prime and very abundant, whitening Carter's pasture.”); September 19, 1852 ("The small-flowering Bidens cernua (?) and the fall dandelion and the fragrant everlasting abound. "); September 26, 1852 ("The small cottony leaves of the fragrant everlasting in the fields for some time, protected, as it were, by a little web of cotton against frost and snow, — a little dense web of cotton spun over it, — entangled in it, — as if to restrain it from rising higher."); February 25, 1857 (“The fragrant everlasting has retained its fragrance all winter.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Aromatic Herbs

The small rough sunflower (now abundant) and see a small variety of helianthus growing with the divaricatus, on the north side of Peter’s path. See August 1, 1852 ("The small rough sunflower (Helianthus divaricatus) tells of August heats”); August 11, 1856 ("A new sunflower at Wheeler's Bank, . . ., which I will call the tall rough sunflower; opened say August 1st”); August 12, 1856 (“Am surprised to see still a third species or variety of helianthus (which may have opened near August 1st)”); August 29, 1856 (The Helianthus decapetalus, apparently a variety, with eight petals, about three feet high, leaves petioled, but not wing-petioled, and broader-leaved than that of August 12th“)

It reminds me of the lateness of the season. See July 26, 1853 ("This the afternoon of the year. How apt we are to be reminded of lateness, even before the year is half spent!”); July 30 1852 (After midsummer we have a belated feeling . . .") ; August 18, 1853 ("What means this sense of lateness that so comes over one now”)

August 11.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 11

 

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

New lieferungs of the fall.

August 4

August 4, 2018

To Walden by poorhouse road. 

Have had a gentle rain, and now with a lowering sky, but still I hear the cricket. He seems to chirp from a new depth toward autumn, new lieferungs of the fall. 

The singular thought-inducing stillness after a gentle rain like this. It has allayed all excitement. 

I hear the singular watery twitter of the goldfinch, ter tweeter e et or e ee, as it ricochets over, he and his russet ( ?) female. 

The chirp of the constant chip-bird and the plaintive strain of the lark, also. 

I must make a list of those birds which, like the lark and the robin, if they do not stay all the year, are heard to sing longest of those that migrate. 

The bobolink and thrasher, etc., are silent. 

English-haying is long since done, only meadow-haying going on now. 

I smell the fragrant life-everlasting, now almost out; another scent that reminds me of the autumn. 

The little bees have gone to sleep amid the clethra blossoms in the rain and are not yet aroused. 

What is that weed somewhat like wormwood and amaranth on the ditch by roadside here? 

What the vine now budded like clematis in the wall? 

Most huckleberries and blueberries and low blackberries are in their prime now. 

A pleasant time to behold a small lake in the woods is in the intervals of a gentle rain-storm at this season, when the air and water are perfectly still, but the sky still overcast; first, because the lake is very smooth at such a time, second, as the atmosphere is so shallow and contracted, being low-roofed with clouds, the lake as a lower heaven is much larger in proportion to it. With its glassy reflecting surface, it is somewhat more heavenly and more full of light than the regions of the air above it. 

There is a pleasing vista southward over and through a wide indentation in the hills which form its shore, where their opposite sides slope to each other so as to suggest a stream flowing from it in that direction through a wooded valley, toward some distant blue hills in Sudbury and Framingham, Goodman's and Nobscot; that is, you look over and between the low near and green hills to the distant, which are tinged with blue, the heavenly color. 

Such is what is fair to mortal eyes. In the meanwhile the wood thrush sings in the woods around the lake.

Pycnanthemum lanceolatum, probably as early as the other variety, Hypericum corymbosum. Spotted St. John's-wort, some time in July. 

History has not been so truthfully or livingly, convincingly, written but that we still need the evidence, the oral testimony of an eye-witness. Hence I am singularly surprised when I read of the celebrated Henry Jenkins (who lived to be some one hundred and sixty nine years old), who used to preface his conversation in this wise, "About a hundred and thirty years ago, when I was butler to Lord Conyers," etc. I am surprised to find that I needed this testimony to be convinced of the reality of Lord Conyers's existence.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 4, 1852

Hear the cricket. He seems to chirp from a new depth toward autumn, new lieferungs of the fall. See August 4, 1851 ("I hear the note of a cricket, and am penetrated with the sense of autumn.”); August 4, 1856 ("Have heard the alder cricket some days. The turning-point is reached.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Cricket in August

I smell the fragrant life-everlasting, now almost out; another scent that reminds me of the autumn.See August 4, 1851 (“ I scent the sweet-scented life-everlasting, which is half expanded.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Aromatic Herbs

The singular thought-inducing stillness after a gentle rain like this. See August 7, 1853 (“When I came forth it was cloudy and from time to time drizzling weather, . . .  soothing and inducing reflection. The river is dark and smooth these days, reflecting no brightness but dark clouds, and the goldfinch is heard twittering over; though presently a thicker mist or mizzle falls, and you are prepared for rain. The river and brooks look late and cool. The stillness and the shade enable you to collect and concentrate your thoughts.”)

A small lake in the woods. See Walden (“This small lake was of most value as a neighbor in the intervals of a gentle rain storm in August, when, both air and water being perfectly still, but the sky overcast, mid-afternoon had all the serenity of evening, and the wood-thrush sang around, and was heard from shore to shore. A lake like this is never smoother than at such a time; and the clear portion of the air above it being shallow and darkened by clouds, the water, full of light and reflections, becomes a lower heaven itself so much the more important. From a hill top near by, where the wood had recently been cut off, there was a pleasing vista southward across the pond, through a wide indentation in the hills which form the shore there, where their opposite sides sloping toward each other suggested a stream flowing out in that direction through a wooded valley, but stream there was none. That way I looked between and over the near green hills to some distant and higher ones in the horizon, tinged with blue.”) [a view from Heywood's Peak? ~ see walden pond a history p. 109]

As early as Hypericum corymbosum. Spotted St. John's-wort. See .July 9, 1854 ("Hypericum corymbosum, not yet ");July 11, 1854 ("Hypericum corymbosum in front of Lee's Cliff, a day or two"); July 21, 1856 ("Hypericum corymbosum, a day or two. The small hypericums are open only in the forenoon. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

August 4. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  August 4 

Most huckleberries

 blueberries and  blackberries 

are in their prime now.

Small lake in the woods

full of light and reflections

as the wood thrush sings.

 A gentle rain and 

a lowering sky, but still 

I hear the cricket.

The little bees sleep

amid clethra in the rain

yet are not aroused.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, New lieferungs of the fall.

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 © 2009-2025

Goldenrod and Asters.

August 21 

Solidago

Rains still all day, and wind rises, and shakes off much fruit and beats down the corn.

The prevailing solidagos now are, 

• lst, stricta (the upland and also meadow one which I seem to have called puberula); 
• 2d, the three-ribbed, of apparently several varieties, which I have called arguta or gigantea (apparently truly the last); 
• 3d, altissima, though commonly only a part of its panicles; 
• 4th, nemoralis, just beginning generally to bloom.
• Then there is the odora, 5th, out some time, but not common; and, 
• 6th, the bicolor, just begun in some places. 

Wood Aster

The commonest asters now are, 

• 1st, the Radula; 
• 2d, dumosus; 
• 3d, patens; 
• 4th, say puniceus; 
• 5th, cordtfolius; 
• 6th, macrophyllus; (these two a good while); 
• 7th, say Tradescanti; 
• 8th, miser; 
• 9th, longifolius ; (these three quite rare yet);
• 10th, probably acuminatus, some time (not seen); 
• 11th, undulatus; 
• 12th, loevis; (these two scarcely to be seen yet). 

N. B. Water so high I have not seen early meadow aster lately.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 21, 1856

Wind rises, and shakes off much fruit and beats down the corn. See August 26, 1851('The ground is strewn with windfalls."); August 29, 1852 ("The ground in orchards is covered with windfalls; imperfect fruits now fall."); September 13, 1852 ("Yesterday, it rained all day, with considerable wind, which has strewn the ground wth apples and peaches, and, all the country over, people are busy picking up the windfalls"); September 17, 1858 ("The orchards are strewn with windfalls, mostly quite green.")

Prevailing solidagos . . .  commonest asters. See August 6, 1853 ("Do not the flowers of August and September generally resemble suns and stars?”); August 12, 1854 ("The common asters now are the patens, dumosus, Radula, and Diplopappus umbellatus."); August 14, 1856 ("Solidago odora abundantly out.”); August 21, 1851 ("This afternoon I noticed a yellow spider on a goldenrod; as if every condition might have its expression in some form of animated being . . .Spear-leaved goldenrod in path to northeast of Flint's Pond.”); August 18, 1854 ("The solidago nemoralis is now abundantly out on the Great Fields.”); August 24, 1853 ("The goldenrods which I have observed in bloom this year .(1) stricta, (2) lanceolata, (3) arguta (?), (4) nemoralis etc. . . .The asters are about in this order: (1) Radula, (2) D. cornifolius (?), (3) A. corymbosus, etc"); August 19, 1858 ("We have our first green corn to-day, but it is late."); August 30, 1853 ("Why so many asters and goldenrods now? The sun has shone on the earth, and the goldenrod is his fruit. The stars, too, have shone on it, and the asters are their fruit.”); August 30, 1859 ("The prevailing flowers, considering both conspicuous-ness and numbers, at present time, as I think now: Solidagos, especially large three-ribbed, nemoralis, tall rough, etc.; Asters, especially Tradescanti, puniceus, corymbosus, dumosus, Diplopappus umbellatus"); August 31, 1853 ("The asters and goldenrods are now in their prime, I think.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Asters in August

August 21. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, August 21

Rains still all day wind 

rises and shakes off much fruit 

and beats down the corn.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Goldenrod and Asters

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 © 2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560821 

 

In the evening some lightning in the horizon – soon a gentle rain. (An irresistible necessity for mud turtles.)

August 26. 

August 26, 2016

I hear of a great many fires around us, far and near, both meadows and woods; in Maine and New York also. There may be some smoke in this haze, but I doubt it.  

I hear part of a phoebe's strain, as I go over the railroad bridge. It is the voice of dying summer. 

I think I hear a red-eye. 

Rudbeckia, — the small one, — still fresh. 

Open one of my snapping turtle's eggs. Its eyes are open. It puts out its head, stretches forth its claws, and liberates its tail. With its great head it has already the ugliness of the full-grown, and is already a hieroglyphic of snappishness. 

If Iliads are not composed in our day, snapping turtles are hatched and arrive at maturity. It already thrusts forth its tremendous head, — for the first time in this sphere, — and slowly moves from side to side, — opening its small glistening eyes for the first time to the light, — expressive of dull rage, as if it had endured the trials of this world for a century. 

When I behold this monster thus steadily advancing toward maturity, all nature abetting, I am convinced that there must be an irresistible necessity for mud turtles. With what tenacity Nature sticks to her idea!

Hear by telegraph that it rains in Portland and New York. In the evening, some lightning in the horizon, and soon after a little gentle rain ...

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 26, 1854

There may be some smoke in this haze, but I doubt it .) See August 25, 1854 ("Many refer all this to smoke . . . This blue haze is not dissipated much by the night, but is seen still with the earliest light."") See also note to August 31, 1854 ("There must be more smoke in this haze than I have supposed.")

I hear part of a phoebe's [sic] strain . . . It is the voice of dying summer. See  April 14, 1852 ("I do not hear those peculiar tender die-away notes from the pewee yet. Is it another pewee, or a later note?"); August 20, 1854 ("The pewees sit still on their perch a long time . . . It often utters a continous pe-e-e. ");  August 21, 1853 ("The peawai still,"); August 22, 1853 ("Hear a peawai whose note is more like singing — as if it were still incubating — than any other.") See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Wood-Pewee

I am convinced that there must be an irresistible necessity for mud turtles. See September 11, 1852 ("Genius is like the snapping-turtle born with a great developed head."); September 11, 1854 ("It does not so much impress me as an infantile beginning of life as an epitome of all the past of turtledom and of the earth. I think of it as the result of all the turtles that have been. "); September 16, 1854 ("I find the mud turtle’s eggs at the Desert all hatched, one still left in the nest . . . At length it puts out its head and legs, turns itself round, and crawls to the water."); April 1, 1858 ("I see on the wet mud a little snapping turtle evidently hatched last year . . . Talk of great heads, look at this one!"). See also August 28, 1856 ("I open the painted tortoise nest of June 10th,\ and find a young turtle partly out of his shell. . . .What's a summer? Time for a turtle's eggs to hatch. So is the turtle developed, fitted to endure, for he outlives twenty French dynasties. One turtle knows several Napoleons. "); September 9, 1854 ("Thus the earth is the mother of all creatures.”)

Hear by telegraph that it rains in Portland and New York. See May 31, 1856 ("It has been very cold for two or three days, and to-night a frost is feared. The telegraph says it snowed in Bangor to-day"); October 20, 1859 ("I learn the next day that snow fell to-day in northern New York and New Hampshire . . . We feel the cold of it here as soon as the telegraph can inform us.")

In the evening, some lightning in the horizon, and soon after a little gentle rain See  March 25, 1860 (" The first lightning is seen in the horizon by one who is out in the evening"); June 16, 1852 (“Heat lightning in the horizon. A sultry night. A flute from some villager.”); July 23, 1854 ("As so often, the rain comes, leaving thunder and lightning behind. ") July 29, 1857 ("Heat lightning flashes, which reveal a distant horizon to our twilight eyes. But my fellows simply assert that it is not broad day, which everybody knows, and fail to perceive the phenomenon at all. ")

August 26.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 26

 In the evening some

 lightning in the horizon –

 soon a gentle rain.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, lightning in the horizon

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 ©  2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-540826

August rain and mist contract our horizon

August 4.

P.M. — Via Turnpike to Smith's Hill. 

August 4, 2023

A still, cloudy day with from time to time a gentle August rain. Rain and mist contract our horizon and we notice near and small objects.

Purple gerardia, by brook. 

The autumnal dandelion is now more common. 

Ranunculus aquatilis var. fluviatilis, white petals with a yellow claw, small flowers on surface of Hosmer's ditch, west end, by Turnpike. A new plant.

The swamp blackberry on high land, ripe a day or two. 

I hear the pigeon woodpecker still, — wickoff, wickoff, wickoff, wickoff, from a neighboring oak. 

See a late rose still in flower. 

On this hill (Smith's) the bushes are black with huckleberries. They droop over the rocks with the weight and are very handsome. Now in their prime. Some glossy black, some dull black, some blue; and patches of Vaccinium vacillans intermixed.

It is already fall in low swampy woods where the cinnamon fern prevails. There are the sight and scent of beginning decay. 

I see a new growth on oak sprouts, three to six inches, with reddish leaves as in spring. Some whole trees show the lighter new growth at a distance, above the dark green. 

Cannabis sativa.

After sunset, a very low, thick, and flat white fog like a napkin, on the meadows, which ushers in a foggy night.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  August 4, 1854

A gentle August rain. Rain and mist contract our horizon. See August 4, 1852 ("A pleasant time to behold a small lake in the woods is in the intervals of a gentle rain-storm at this season , . . as the atmosphere is so shallow and contracted, being low-roofed with clouds, the lake as a lower heaven is much larger in proportion to it.”)

Purple gerardia, by brook. See August 20, 1852 ("The purple gerardia is very beautiful now in green grass.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Purple Gerardia (Gerardia purpurea)

The autumnal dandelion is now more common. See July 27, 1853 ("The autumnal dandelion now appears more abundantly within a week"); August 24, 1852 ("Autumnal dandelions are more common now. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Autumnal Dandelion

The swamp blackberry on high land, ripe a day or two.  See August 6, 1856 (“Rubus hispidus ripe.”); August 15, 1852 ("The swamp blackberry begins.”); August 23, 1856 (“ At the Lincoln bound hollow, Walden, there is a dense bed of the Rubus hispidus, matting the ground seven or eight inches deep, and full of the small black fruit, now in its prime. It is especially abundant where the vines lie over a stump. Has a peculiar, hardly agreeable acid.”)

I hear the pigeon woodpecker still, — wickoff, wickoff, wickoff, wickoff.  See  August 14, 1858 ("The flicker‘s cackle, once of late."); October 5, 1857 ("The pigeon woodpecker utters his whimsical ah-week ah-week, etc., as in spring.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Pigeon Woodpecker (flicker)

See a late rose still in flower. See July 23, 1860 ("The late rose is now in prime along the river, a pale rose-color but very delicate, keeping up the memory of roses.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Rose

The bushes are black with huckleberries . . . in their prime. Some glossy black, some dull black, some blue; and patches of Vaccinium vacillans intermixed. See August 4, 1852 “Most huckleberries and blueberries and low blackberries are in their prime now.”); August 4. 1856 (" large blue and also shining black huckleberries (Gaylussacia resinosa) of various flavors and qualities; and over all runs rampant the low blackberry (Rubus Canadensis), weighing down the thicket with its wreaths of black fruit. . . .This favorable moist weather has expanded some of the huckleberries to the size of bullets.") See also The Whortleberry Family

It is already fall in low swampy woods where the cinnamon fern prevails. See September 6, 1854 ("The cinnamon ferns along the edge of woods next the meadow are many yellow or cinnamon, or quite brown and withered.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cinnamon Fern

I see a new growth on oak sprouts. See July 14, 1852 ("Trees have commonly two growths in the year, a spring and a fall growth . . .These two growths are now visible on the oak sprouts, the second already nearly equalling the first.")

Cannabis sativa. See August 11, 1852 ("Cannabis sativa, apparently out.")

Low, thick, and flat white fog like a napkin, on the meadows, which ushers in a foggy night. See August 7, 1860 (" I am struck by the localness of the fogs. . . If we awake into a fog it does not occur to us that the inhabitants of a neighboring town may have none.")

August 4. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  August 4 

August rain and mist

contract our horizon

to the near and small.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August rain and mist

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 © 2009-2025

tinyurl.com/HDT-540805