The St. John's-worts begin to bloom..

July 13. 

July 13, 2020

Purslane, probably to-day.

Chenopodium album.

Pontederias in prime.

Purple bladderwort (Utricularia purpurea), not long, near Hollowell place, the buds the deepest-colored, the stems rather loosely leaved or branched, with whorls of five or six leaves.

On the hard, muddy shore opposite Dennis’s, in the meadow, Hypericum Sarothra in dense fields, also Canadense, both a day or two, also ilysanthes, sium with leaves a third of an inch wide, and the cardinal flower, probably the 11th.

Hypericum mutilum in the meadow, maybe a day or two.

Whorled bladderwort, for some time, even gone to seed; this, the purple, and the common now abundant amid the pads and rising above them.

Potamogeton compressus (?) immersed, with linear leaves. I see no flower.

I believe it is the radical leaves of the heart-leaf, — large, waved, transparent, — which in many places cover the bottom of the river where five or six feet deep, as with green paving-stones. Did not somebody mistake these for the radical leaves of the kalmiana lily?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 13, 1853

Hypericum Sarothra in dense fields, also Canadense, both a day or two, also Hypericum mutilum in the meadow, maybe a day or two. See  July 14, 1854 ("The red capsules of the Hypericum ellipticum, here and there. This one of the fall-ward phenomena in still rainy days."); July 15, 1856 ("Both small hypericums, Canadense and mutilum, apparently some days at least by Stow's ditch."); July 19, 1856 ("It is the Hypericum ellipticum and Canadense (linear- leaved) whose red pods are noticed now."); July 25, 1856 ("Up river to see hypericums out."); July 26, 1856 ("Arranged the hypericums in bottles this morning and watched their opening. . . . The pod of the ellipticum, when cut, smells like a bee."); August 19, 1856 ("The small hypericums have a peculiar smart, somewhat lemon-like fragrance, but bee-like."); August 12, 1856 (“The sarothra — as well as small hypericums generally — has a lemon scent.”)  See also July 19, 1851 ("First came the St. John's-wort and now the goldenrod to admonish us. . . .Yesterday it was spring, and to-morrow it will be autumn. Where is the summer then?") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

Whorled bladderwort, the purple, and the common now abundant. .See  July 13, 1852 ("The pool by Walden is now quite yellow with the common utricularia (vulgaris).") See also August 3, 1856 ("The purple utricularia abundant "); August 5, 1854 ("I see very few whorled or common utricularias, but the purple ones are exceedingly abundant on both sides the river"); September 1, 1857 ("On the west side of Fair Haven Pond, an abundance of the Utricularia purpurea and of the whorled, etc., whose finely dissected leaves are a rich sight in the water")

Did not somebody mistake these for the radical leaves of the kalmiana lily?  See July 27, 1856 ("I am surprised to find kalmiana lilies scattered thinly all along the Assabet, a few small, commonly reddish pads in middle of river, but I see no flowers. It is their great bluish waved (some green) radical leaves which I had mistaken for those of the heart-leaf, the floating leaves being so small. . . .The radical leaves of the heart-leaf are very small and rather triangular.")

July 13. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 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 © 2009-2021

I have found the compass and chart safer guides than the inhabitants

June 16 (continued from June 15)

June 16, 2017
Keeseville lights float over Lake Champlain

 --- he gave thanks that we "of all the pale faces were preserved alive." He was probably a Methodist. 

But the worst of it is that these evidences of "religion" are no evidence to the traveller of hospitality or generosity. Though he hears the sound of family prayer and sees sanctified faces and a greasy Bible or prayer-book, he feels not the less that he is in the hands of the Philistines, and perceives not the less the greasy and musty scent of a household whose single purpose is to scrape more pennies together, when it has already more than enough for its uses, and it is to be preserved and abetted in this enterprise that they pray. 

What's the use of ushering the day with prayer, if it is thus consecrated to turning a few more pennies merely? 

All genuine goodness is original and as free from cant and tradition as the air. It is heathen in its liberality and independence on tradition. The accepted or established church is in alliance with the graveyards. 

7 a. m. — I go along the sandy road through a region of small hills about half a mile from the sea, between slight gray fences, either post and rail, or slanting rails, a foot apart, resting on two crossed stakes, the rails of unequal length, looking agreeably loose and irregular. 

Within half a mile I come to the house of an Indian, a gray one-storied cottage, and there were two or three more beyond. They were just beginning to build a meeting-house to-day! Mrs. Ellis had told me that they were worthy people, especially such a family, that were members of the church, and the others were decent people, though they were not "professors of religion," — as if they were consequently less trustworthy. Ellis thought that if they should get angry with you they wouldn't make anything of taking your life. He had seen it in their eyes. 

The usual suspicion. 

I asked the way of an Indian whom I met in the road, a respectable-looking young man not darker than a sunburnt white man, with black eyes and the usual straight black hair of his race. He was apparently of mixed race, however. When I observed to him that he was one of the aboriginal stock, he answered, "I suppose so." We could see even to Sandwich Meeting house as we stood in the road, and he showed me where to turn up from the shore to go to Scusset. 

I turned off to the seashore at his house, going down through shrubbery enlivened by the strain of the yellow-throat (or black-throat bunting ?). The seringo and bay-wing were also very common near the sea to-day and yesterday. The shore between Manomet and Sandwich has in it two or three rocky capes, which interrupt the view along it, but are not very obvious on the map, between which are successive curving sandy beaches, Bays of Naples of the approved pattern. 

Swallows have their nests in the high bank from time to time, as at Cape Cod. Crows are seen lazily flapping away from the shore on your approach. Even a robin was seeking its food there. 

The piping plover, as it runs half invisible on the sand before you, utters a shrill peep on an elevated key (different birds on different keys), as if to indicate its locality from time to time to its kind, or it utters a succession of short notes as it flies low over the sand or water. Ever and anon stands still tremblingly, or teeter-ingly, wagtail-like, turning this way and that. 

Now and then a rock or two occurs on the sandy shore left by the undermining of the bank, even as on our Assabet, and I used one to-day (as yesterday) in my bathing. 

From time to time, summer and winter and far inland, I call to mind that peculiar prolonged cry of the upland plover on the bare heaths of Truro in July, heard from sea to sea, though you cannot guess how far the bird may be, as if it were a characteristic sound of the Cape. In a genuine Cape Cod road you see simple dents in the sand, but cannot tell by what kind of foot they were made, the sand is so light and flowing. The whole length of the Cape the beach-flea is skipping and the plover piping. 

Where I turned up to go to Scusset village I saw some handsome patches of Hudsonia tomentosa (not yet had seen the ericoides), its fine bright-yellow flowers open chiefly about the edges of the hemispherical mounds. 

About 11 a. m. take the cars from Scusset to Sandwich. 

See in the marshes by the railroad the Potentilla anserina, now apparently in prime, like a buttercup. 

Stopped on the northwest edge of Yarmouth and in quired of the ticket-master the way to Friends Village in the southeast part of the town. He never heard of it. A stage-driver said it was five miles, and both directed me first northerly a quarter of a mile to the main street and then down that easterly some two miles before I turned off; and when I declared it must be nearer to go across lots, the driver said he would rather go round than get over the fences. 

Thus it is commonly; the landlords and stage-drivers are bent on making you walk the whole length of their main street first, wherever you are going. They know no road but such as is fit for a coach and four. I looked despairingly at this straggling village whose street I must run the gantlet of, — so much time and distance lost. 

Nevertheless, I turned off earlier than they directed, and found that, as usual, I might have taken a shorter route across the fields and avoided the town altogether. 

With my chart and compass I can generally find a shorter way than the inhabitants can tell me. I stop at a depot a little one side of a village and ask the way to some place I am bound to. The landlords and stage-drivers would fain persuade me to go first down on to the main street and follow that a piece; and when I show them a shorter way on the map, which leaves their village on one side, they shrug their shoulders, and say they would rather go round than get over the fences. 

I have found the compass and chart safer guides than the inhabitants, though the latter universally abuse the maps. 

I do not love to go through a village street any more than a cottage yard. I feel that I am there only by sufferance; but I love to go by the villages by my own road, seeing them from one side, as I do theoretically. When I go through a village, my legs ache at the prospect of the hard gravelled walk. I go by the tavern with its porch full of gazers, and meet a miss taking a walk or the doctor in his sulky, and for half an hour I feel as strange as if I were in a town in China; but soon I am at home in the wide world again, and my feet rebound from the yielding turf. 

I followed a retired road across the Cape diagonally some five miles to Friends Village, the southeast part of the town, on Bass River, over at first bare upland with pine plantations, gradually at last rising a low but very broad and flat-backed hill (German's?) in the woods. The pine and oak woods were quite extensive, but the trees small. See the Hudsonia ericoides, with a peduncle. 

The road ran directly through woods the last half the way. Passed Long Pond just before reaching Friends Village. Passed through the latter and crossed Bass River by a toll-bridge, and so on through Crowell Village, Grand Cove, to Isaiah Baker's in West Harwich, some eight miles from Yarmouth Depot. 

Just after crossing Bass River, plucked a plant in the marsh by the roadside like (if not) mullein pink. 

At Swan Pond River in Dennis, where they were just completing a new bridge, plucked the Potentilla anserina, now apparently in prime, with a handsome leaf, silvery beneath, in the marsh. 

From near Long Pond, Friends Village, thus far, and also the two miles further that I walked due east the next day, or for five miles at least, it was a continuous street, without a distinct village, the houses but a few rods apart all the way on each side. A sandy road, small houses, with small pine and oak wood close bordering the road, making the soil appear more fertile than in reality it is. 

As in Canada along the St. Lawrence, you never got out of the village, only came to a meeting-house now and then. And they told me there was another similar street parallel with this further north. 

But all this street had a peculiarly Sabbath-day appearance, for there was scarcely an inhabitant to be seen, and they were commonly women or young children, for the greater part of the able-bodied men were gone to sea, as usual. This makes them very quiet towns. Baker said that half or three quarters of the men were gone. 

This afternoon it mizzled a little. 

At the supper-table there was a youngish man who, looking very serious, at length observed to me, "Your countenance is very familiar to me, sir." "Where do you think you have seen me?" I asked. "It seems to me that I have been consigned to you," said he. This was said with such a serious tone and look that the suspicion crossed my mind that he meant spiritually, but I soon remembered where I was and the employment of the inhabitants. 

Herring River was near by, and Baker sent a little boy to set an eel-pot for eels for breakfast. We had some of the herring for supper. He said that the eels went down the river in the spring, and up in the fall! That last winter many were found in holes under the ice (where passers broke through), left dry by the tide. He said it was a consideration with poor men who talked of migrating West that here shellfish and eels were abundant and easily obtained. 

Spoke of the large tract of wood running down the centre of the Cape from Sandwich, three miles wide and thirty long, and he declared repeatedly, since I looked surprised, that there was more wood in Barnstable County than in Ohio County. His father-in-law owned $75,000 worth thereabouts. Wood was worth six dollars per cord.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 16, 1857

June 16. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 16

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

One hundred and fifty cowbirds.

August 25

In Dennis’s field this side the river, I count about one hundred and fifty cowbirds about eight cows, running before their noses and in odd positions, awkwardly walking with a straddle, often their heads down and tails up a long time at once, occasionally flying to keep up with a cow, over the heads of the others, and following off after a single cow. 

They keep close to the cow’s head and feet, and she does not mind them; but when all go off in a whirring (rippling?) flock at my approach, the cow (about whom they were all gathered) looks off after them for some time, as if she felt deserted.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 25, 1855

The sun concealed by haze.

August 25

August 25, 2017

I think I never saw the haze so thick as now, at 11 A.M., looking from my attic window. 

I cannot quite distinguish J. Hosmer's house, only the dark outline of the woods behind it. There appears to be, as it were, a thick fog over the Dennis plains. Between me and Nawshawtuct is a very blue haze like smoke. Indeed many refer all this to smoke. 

Opposite the bath place, the pools are nearly all dry, and many little pollywogs, an inch long, lie dead or dying together in the moist mud. Others are covered with the dry brown-paper conferva.  

The Viburnum nudum berries, in various stages, — green, deep-pink, and also deep-blue, not purple or ripe, — are very abundant at Shadbush Meadow. They appear to be now in their prime and are quite sweet, but have a large seed. Interesting for the various colors on the same bush and in the same cluster. 

Also the choke-berries are very abundant there, but mostly dried black. 

We still continue to have strong wind in the middle of the day. The sun is shorn of his beams by the haze before 5 o'clock P.M., round and red, and is soon completely concealed, apparently by the haze alone.

This blue haze is not dissipated much by the night, but is seen still with the earliest light.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 25, 1854

I cannot quite distinguish J. Hosmer's house, only the dark outline of the woods behind it. See July 26, 1854 ("I am going over the hill through Ed. Hosmer's orchard, when I observe this light reflected from the shorn fields, contrasting affectingly with the dark smooth Assabet, reflecting the now dark shadows of the woods. The peculiarity of . . . the bordering woods [is] in a dog-day density of shade reflected darkly in the water."); August 6, 1854 ("As I look westward up the stream , the oak , etc. , on Ponkawtasset are of a very dark green, almost black, which, methinks, they have worn only since midsummer. Has this anything to do with the bluish mistiness of the air?"); August 20, 1854 ("There is so thick a bluish haze these dog-days that single trees . . . stand out distinctly a dark mass, almost black, as seen against the more distinct blue woods.") Compare April 30, 1852 ("Hosmer's house and cottage under its elms and on the summit of green smooth slopes looks like a terrestrial paradise, the abode of peace and domestic happiness. Far over the woods westward, a shining vane, glimmering in the sun.")

Many refer all this[blue haze] to smoke. See note to August 31, 1854 ("There must be more smoke in this haze than I have supposed.")

Opposite the bath place, the pools are nearly all dry , and many little pollywogs, an inch long, lie dead or dying See August 22, 1854 ("At the lower end of these meadows, between the river and the firm land, are a number of shallow muddy pools or pond-holes"); August 28, 1854 ("The meadow is drier than ever, and new pools are dried up."); June 15, 1852 ("This half-stagnant pond-hole, drying up and leaving bare mud, with the pollywogs and turtles making off in it."); ,June 21, 1859 ("that little pool near the Assabet, above our bath-place there") See aksi December 3, 1858 ("I have often seen pollywogs in small numbers in the winter, in spring-holes, etc., but never such crowding to air-holes in the ice."); December 11, 1858 ("I find at the Pout’s Nest, now quite frozen over, air-holes and all, twenty-two pollywogs frozen in and dead within a space of two and a half feet square"); December 21, 1857 ("They appear to keep in motion in such muddy pond-holes, where a spring wells up from the bottom till midwinter, if not all winter.”)

The Viburnum nudum berries, in various stages, — green, deep-pink, and also deep-blue, not purple or ripe. See August 25, 1852 (“One of the most noticeable wild fruits at present is the Viburnum nudum berries, their variegated cymes amid the green leaves in the swamps or low grounds, some whitish, some greenish, some red, some pink, some rose-purple and very beautiful”) See also August 23, 1858 (“Viburnum nudum berries, apparently but a day or two.”); August 28, 1852 ("The viburnums, dentatum and nudum, are in their prime. The sweet viburnum not yet purple, and the maple-leaved still yellowish. ");August 28, 1856 ("Viburnum nudum berries are beginning; I already see a few shrivelled purple ones amid the light green. "); August 31, 1856 ("The Viburnum nudum berries are now in prime, a handsome rose-purple. I brought home a bunch of fifty-three berries, all of this color, and the next morning thirty were turned dark purple. In this state they are soft and just edible, having somewhat of a cherry flavor, not a large stone." ); September 3, 1856 ("Gather four or five quarts of Viburnum nudum berries, now in their prime, attracted more by the beauty of the cymes than the flavor of the fruit. The berries, which are of various sizes and forms, — elliptical, oblong, or globular, — are in different stages of maturity on the same cyme, and so of different colors, — green or white, rose-colored, and dark purple or black, — i. e. three or four very distinct and marked colors, side by side.. . . Remarkable for passing through so many stages of color before they arrive at maturity.")

The choke-berries are very abundant there, but mostly dried black. See 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 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.")

The sun is shorn of his beams by the haze before 5 o'clock P.M., round and red, and is soon completely concealed, apparently by the haze alone. See June 5, 1854 ("The sun goes down red and shorn of his beams, a sign of hot weather,"); June 16, 1854 ("Once or twice the sun has gone down red, shorn of his beams"); August 22, 1854 ("The haze, accompanied by much wind, is so thick this forenoon that the sun is obscured as by a cloud. I see no rays of sunlight."); August 24, 1854 ("To-night, as for at least four or five nights past, and to some extent, I think, a great many times within a month, the sun goes down shorn of his beams, half an hour before sunset, round and red, high above the horizon.")

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

I never saw haze

so thick as now from my

attic window.

The sun round and red

shorn of his beams and concealed 

by the haze alone.

 Viburnum nudum 

berries various colors 

in the same cluster.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The sun concealed by haze.

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-540825

The dark shade of June.

June 26

P. M. — I am struck, as I look toward the Dennis shore from the bathing-place, with the peculiar agreeable dark shade of June, a clear air, and bluish light on the grass and bright silvery light reflected from fresh green leaves.

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

The peculiar agreeable dark shade of June. . . .See note to June 6, 1855 ("You see the dark eye and shade of June on the river as well as on land"); and June 11, 1856 ("I think that this peculiar darkness of the shade, or of the foliage as seen between you and the sky, is not accounted for merely by saying that we have not yet got accustomed to clothed trees, but the leaves are rapidly acquiring a darker green, are more and more opaque, and, besides, the sky is lit with the intensest light.”)

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

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  The dark shade of June

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

tinyurl.com/hdt-540626 

A phalanx of yellow rye.

July 8. 

Walk along the Clamshell bank after sundown. A cloudy sky. The heads of the grass in the pasture behind Dennis's have a reddish cast, but another grass, with a lighter-colored stem and leaves, on the higher parts of the field gives a yellowish tinge to those parts, as if they reflect a misty sunlight. Even much later in the night these light spots are distinguishable.

Here are some rich rye-fields waving over all the land, their heads nodding in the evening breeze with an alternating motion.  How rich a sight this cereal fruit, now yellow for the cradle. It is an impenetrable phalanx. I walk for half a mile beside these Macedonians, looking in vain for an opening.
       
The yellow, waving, rustling rye extends far up and over the hills on either side, leaving only a narrow and dark passage at the bottom of a deep ravine . How rankly it has grown! These long grain-fields which you must respect, - must go round, - occupying the ground like an army.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  July 8, 1851

I walk for half a mile ... looking in vain for an opening. See July 6, 1859 ("Grass now for a week or more has been seriously in the way of the walker,... It requires skillful tacking, a good deal of observation, and experience to get across the country now.); July 4, 1860 ("We are wading and navigating at present in a sort of sea of grass,").