A Book of the Seasons: August 9 (walking in swamps, small fruits/flocking birds, thunderstorms, locusts, blue-curls, asters, goldfinch, goldenrods and yellow flowers, rainbows, wood pewee and the sunset sky, Walden published)

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

August 9.

At a little distance

we should see all the colors.

We -- in a rainbow.

August 9, 1851

Dim bluish outline

of the Green Mountains in the

clear red evening sky.

August 9, 1860 

On the horizon

local cloud of the mountain --

isle in sunset sky.

August 9, 1860

August 9, 2017

August 9, 2023

I spend the forenoon in my chamber, writing or arranging my papers, and in the afternoon I walk forth into the fields and woods. August 9, 1853

I turn aside, perchance, into some withdrawn, untrodden swamp, and find these blueberries, large and fair, awaiting me in inexhaustible abundance. August 9, 1853

I taste and am strengthened. August 9, 1853

This is the season of small fruits. I trust, too, that I am maturing some small fruit as palatable in these months, which will communicate my flavor to my kind. August 9, 1853

Now the earliest apples begin to be ripe, but none are so good to eat as some to smell. August 9, 1851

I see under the railroad bridge a mass of meadow which lodged there last spring, not revealed till this low water. August 9, 1859

How fatally the season is advanced toward the fall! August 9, 1853

 I am not surprised now to see the small rough sunflower. August 9, 1853

The Hieracium Canadense is out and is abundant at Peter's well. August 9, 1853

Edith Emerson gives me an Asclepias tuberosa from Naushon, which she thinks is now in its prime there. August 9, 1858

What I have called Aster corymbosus out a day, above Hemlocks. August 9, 1856

I also find one or two heads of the liatris.  It has the aspect of a Canada thistle at a little distance. August 9, 1853

There is much yellow beside now in the fields. August 9, 1853

 How beautiful now the early goldenrods (Solidago stricta), rising above the wiry grass . . .not solid yellow like the sunflower, but little pyramidal or sheaf like golden clouds or mists, supported by almost invisible leafy columns, which wave in the wind.  August 9, 1853

 They give a very indefinite but rich, mellow, and golden aspect to the field. August 9, 1853

Again I am surprised to see the Apocynum cannabinum close to the rock at the Island. August 9, 1856

The Trichostema dichotomum is quite beautiful now in the cool of the morning. August 9, 1851

Among the pines and birches I hear the invisible locust. August 9, 1851

I see the blackbirds flying in flocks (which did not when I went away July 20th) and hear the shrilling of my alder locust. August 9, 1857

I saw the tortoises shedding their scales a week ago. Many of the scales two-thirds off, turned up all around. August 9, 1859

I scare up a couple of wood ducks separately, undoubtedly birds bred and dispersed about here. The rise of the river attracts them. August 9, 1856

The notes of the wood pewee and warbling vireo are more prominent of late, and of the goldfinch twittering over. August 9, 1856. 

The goldfinch twittering over. Does the last always utter his twitter when ascending? These are already feeding on the thistle seeds. August 9, 1856. 

Edward Bartlett shows me this morning a nest which he found yesterday. . . .The eggs were five, pure white or with a faint bluish-green tinge, just begun to be developed. August 9, 1858

The goldfinch nest of this forenoon is saddled on a horizontal twig of an apple, some seven feet from ground and one third of an inch in diameter, supported on one side by a yet smaller branch, also slightly attached to another small branch. It measures three and one half inches from outside to outside, one and three quarters inside, two and one half from top to bottom, or to a little below the twig, and one and one half inside. It is a very compact, thick, and warmly lined nest, slightly incurving on the edge within. . . .This nest shows a good deal of art. August 9, 1858

I did not see the bird. It is but little you learn of a bird in this irregular way, — having its nest and eggs shown you.  How much more suggestive the sight of the goldfinch going of on a jaunt over the hills, twittering to its plainer consort by its side! August 9, 1858

It rained again and again with very vivid lightning, more copiously than ever, last night, and without long intervals all this day. August 9, 1856

Few, if any, can remember such a succession of thunder-storms merged into one long thunder-storm, lasting almost continuously (the storm does) two nights and two days. August 9, 1856

I see a black cloud in the northern horizon and hear the muttering of thunder, and make haste. August 9, 1851

Rowing home in haste 

before a black approaching 

storm from the northeast.

August 13, 1853

Before I have bathed and dressed, the gusts which precede the tempest are heard roaring in the woods, and the first black, gusty clouds have reached my zenith. August 9, 1851

Hastening toward town, 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. August 9, 1851

River is risen and fuller, and the weeds at bathing-place washed away somewhat. Fall to them. August 9, 1855

The water is cool to the bather after so much rain. August 9, 1856

I cast my eyes toward the dim bluish outline of the Green Mountains in the clear red evening sky. August 9, 1860

To my delight, I detect exactly over the summit of Saddleback Mountain, some sixty miles distant, its own little cloud shaped like a parasol and answering to that which caps ours. August 9, 1860

There is no other cloud to be seen in that horizon. It is a beautiful and serene object, a sort of fortunate isle in the sunset sky, the local cloud of the mountain. August 9, 1860

It is a splendid sunset, a celestial light on all the land, so that all people come to their doors and windows to look on the grass and leaves and buildings and the sky, as the sun’s rays shine through the cloud and the falling rain we are, in fact, in a rainbow. At a little distance we should see all the colors. August 9, 1851

"Walden" published. August 9, 1854

August 9, 2021

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  the Thistles

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Liatris

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Blue-Curls

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Aromatic Herbs

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Goldfinch

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Eastern Wood Pewee

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Luxury of  Bathing

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Lightning

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Western Sky

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Horizon

Trichostema dichotomum
 (blue-curl)

April 12, 1859 ("I look again at the meadow-crust carried off by the ice. There is one by the railroad bridge, say three rods by one, covered with button-bushes and willows. ")

August 5, 1856 ("At the Assabet stone bridge, apparently freshly in flower, . . . apparently the Apocynum cannabinum var. hypericifolium (?).”)

August 6, 1860 ("These are the Green Mountains that we see, but there is no greenness, only a bluish mistiness; and all of Vermont is but a succession of parallel ranges of mountains.”) 

August 7, 1852 ("Sometimes we are completely within it, enveloped by it, and experience the realization of the child's wish")
August 7, 1853 (“The river is dark and smooth these days, reflecting no brightness but dark clouds, and the goldfinch is heard twittering over.”)

August. 8, 1855 ("Blue-curls, how long? Not long.")

August 8, 1856 ("No sooner has one thunder-shower swept over and the sky begun to light up a little, than another darkens the west")

August 10, 1853 ("Saw an alder locust this morning.")

August 10, 1854 ("The tinkling notes of goldfinches and bobolinks which we hear nowadays are of one character and peculiar to the season. . . .It is like the sparkle on water.")

August 11, 1852 ("The autumnal ring of the alder locust.")
August 11, 1852 ("Aster corymbosus, path beyond Corner Spring and in Miles Swamp ")

 August 12, 1858 ("The note of the wood pewee is a prominent and common one now. You see old and young together")

August 13, 1853 ("Rowing home in haste before a black approaching storm from the northeast.")
August 17, 1851 ("The Trichostema dichotomum, — not only its bright blue flower above the sand, but its strong wormwood scent which belongs to the season, -- feed my spirit")

August 18, 1860 ("The note of the wood pewee sounds prominent of late.”)

August 19, 1855 ("See painted tortoise shedding scales, half off and loose")

August 28, 1856 ("A goldfinch twitters away from every thistle now, and soon returns to it when I am past. I see the ground strewn with the thistle-down they have scattered on every side")

August 29, 1857 ("R. W. E. says that he saw Asclepias tuberosa abundant and in bloom on Naushon last week.")
September 6, 1854 ("There is now approaching from the west one of the heaviest thunder-showers (apparently) and with the most incessant flashes that I remember to have seen. ")
September 7, 1857 ("I see a small round flock of birds, perhaps blackbirds, dart through the air, as thick as a charge of shot, — now comparatively thin, with regular intervals of sky be tween them, like the holes in the strainer of a watering-pot, now dense and dark, as if closing up their ranks when they roll over one another and stoop downward.")

September 9, 1852 ("Ah! the beauty of the liatris bud just bursting into bloom, the rich fiery rose-purple, like that of the sun at his rising. Some call it button snakeroot.")

September 24, 1854 (“These are the stages in the river fall... The water begins to be clear of weeds”)

November 12, 1852 (“I see a very distant, long, low dark-blue cloud in the northwest horizon beyond the mountains, and against this I see, apparently, a narrow white cloud resting on every mountain and conforming exactly to its outline”)

August 7, 2014

If you make the least correct 

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

August 8  <<<<<     August 9    >>>>>   August 10.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  August 9

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 ©  2009-2022

https://tinyurl.com/HDT09AUGUST 

A witness.

August 9. 

I see under the railroad bridge a mass of meadow which lodged there last spring, not revealed till this low water, and this is now dense with a thrifty growth of bulrushes. 

Minott says that some used to wonder much at the windings of the Mill Brook and could not succeed in accounting for them, but his Uncle Ben Prescott settled the difficulty by saying that a great eel came out of Flint’s Pond and rooted its way through to the river and so made the channel of the Mill Brook. 

Minott says that he can remember when (it may be forty or fifty years ago) the Great Meadows were so dry one year that, they having got off all the grass and cut it quite smoothly, they talked seriously of having a regimental muster there. He assured me it would have been a good place, for the grass was cut smooth, and the earth was baked so hard that you could ride in a carriage right through the middle from the west end clear to Neck. Cannon could have been dragged about there perfectly well. I was thinking it would be rather tussocky ground for soldiers to wheel and manoeuvre on, and rather damp to camp on, but he declared not. 

This appeared to be good evidence for the river meadow proprietors. 

But when I asked him if he thought the meadows were more wet now than fifty years ago, he answered that he did “not think they were,” nor the grass any poorer. 

As he remembered, in one of those years, not far from the dry one referred to, there came a rain in August, when the meadows were partly cut, which raised the water so that it floated off what was left cut and went over the tops of the standing grass, and you could have gone all over the meadows in a boat, and he saw there on the meadows such an immense swarm of sea-birds of various kinds — peeps, plover, yellow-legs, etc. — as he never saw before nor since. He thinks he saw so many in one flock as could not have been packed into his kitchen. He had never seen anything at all like it but once since, and that was the day after he had been to a muster with his company at Waltham — when he was a young man — and had saved the greater part of his allowance of powder all the field. The next day, after getting home, the yellow-legs were so thick on the Mill Brook meadows that he killed a bushel of them. 

I saw the tortoises shedding their scales a week ago. Many of the scales two-thirds off, turned up all around.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 9, 1859

I see under the railroad bridge a mass of meadow which lodged there last spring. See April 12, 1859 ("I look again at the meadow-crust carried off by the ice. There is one by the railroad bridge, say three rods by one, covered with button-bushes and willows. ");  August 3, 1859 ("The low water reveals a mass of meadow sunk under the railroad bridge. Both this and Lee’s Bridge are thus obstructed this year.")


Evidence for the river meadow proprietors.  HDT had been frequently called as an expert witness to give testimony against dams, which he did in 1851 1853 and 1854. On June 4, 1859 Simon Brown and three other men commissioned HDT to study and measure all the bridges from Wayland to Billerica. On June 20 the ConcordTownship hired him to survey the entire river bed.  The Middlesex Canal Company had recently added a 3 foot riser to Billerica dam, and the meadow farmers brought suit. See August 25, 1856 ("It is commonly supposed that our river meadows were much drier than now originally, or when the town was settled. They were probably drier before the dam was built at Billerica"); August 31, 1856 ("Hubbard says he has heard that they have just lowered their dam a foot at Billerica. He sees that the water has fallen a little in his meadow. It leaves a scum on the grass and gives it a smell and taste, which makes the cattle reject it.");;June 24, 1859 ("The 22d, 23d, and 24th, I have been surveying the bridges and river from Heard's Bridge to the Billerica dam.”). See also THE GREAT BILLERICA DAM CONTROVERSY ("Witnesses from Sudbury, Concord, Bedford, Carlisle, Wayland, Lincoln and Billerica testified to recent changes from the good old days, when they could drive wagons onto the meadows to harvest the hay. Now only an inferior type of grass grew there, and the meadows were so soggy that it could not even be harvested. The damage was caused by the wetness which made access onto the meadows impossible, and by the stagnant water which spoiled the quality of the grass.")

I saw the tortoises shedding their scales a week ago. See August 31, 1856 ("A painted tortoise shedding its scales"); September 15, 1855 ("See many painted tortoise scales being shed, half erect on their backs. ") September 22, 1855 ("Many tortoise-scales about the river now."); October 12, 1855 ("Is not this the only way they get rid of the moss, etc., which adhere to them?")

August 9. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  August 9

 

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

A goldfinch nest

August 9.

Edward Bartlett shows me this morning a nest which he found yesterday. It is saddled on the lowest horizontal branch of an apple tree in Abel Heywood’s orchard, against a small twig, and answers to Nuttall’s description of the goldfinch’s nest, which it probably is. The eggs were five, pure white or with a faint bluish-green tinge, just begun to be developed. 

I did not see the bird. 

It is but little you learn of a bird in this irregular way, — having its nest and eggs shown you. How much more suggestive the sight of the goldfinch going of on a jaunt over the hills, twittering to its plainer consort by its side!

It is surprising to what extent the world is ruled by cliques. They who constitute, or at least lead, New England or New York society, in the eyes of the world, are but a clique, a few “men of the age” and of the town, who work best in the harness provided for them. The institutions of almost all kinds are thus of a sectarian or party character. Newspapers, magazines, colleges, and all forms of government and religion express the superficial activity of a few, the mass either conforming or not attending. The newspapers have just got over that eating-fullness or dropsy which takes place with the annual commencements and addresses before the Philomathean or Alpha Beta Gamma societies. Neither they who make these addresses nor they who attend to them are representative of the latest age. The boys think that these annual recurrences are part and parcel of the annual revolution of the system. There are also regattas and fireworks and “surprise parties” and horse-shows. So that I am glad when I see or hear of a man anywhere who does not know of these things nor recognizes these particular fuglers. 

I was pleased to hear the other day that there were two men in Tamworth, N. H., who had been fishing for trout there ever since May; but it was a serious drawback to be told that they sent their fish to Boston and so catered for the few. The editors of newspapers, the popular clergy, politicians and orators of the day and office-holders, though they may be thought to be of very different politics and religion, are essentially one and homogeneous, inasmuch as they are only the various ingredients of the froth which ever floats on the surface of society. 

I see a pout this afternoon in the Assabet, lying on the bottom near the shore, evidently diseased. He permits the boat [to] come within two feet of him. Nearly half the head, from the snout backward diagonally, is covered with an inky-black kind of leprosy, like a crustaceous lichen. The long feeler on that side appears to be wasting, and there stands up straight in it, about an inch high, a little black tree-like thorn or feeler, branched at top. It moves with difficulty. 

Edith Emerson gives me an Asclepias tuberosa from Naushon, which she thinks is now in its prime there. 

It is surprising what a tissue of trifles and crudities make the daily news. For one event of interest there are nine hundred and ninety-nine insignificant, but about the same stress is laid on the last as on the first. The newspapers have just told me that the transatlantic telegraph-cable is laid. That is important, but they instantly proceed to inform me how the news was received in every larger town in the United States, — how many guns they fired, or how high they jumped, —in New York, and Milwaukee, and Sheboygan; and the boys and girls, old and young, at the corners of the streets are reading it all with glistening eyes, down to the very last scrap, not omitting what they did at New Rochelle and Evansville. And all the speeches are reported, and some think of collecting them into a volume ! ! ! You say that you have travelled far and wide. How many men have you seen that did not belong to any sect, or party, or clique? Did you go further than letters of introduction would avail?

The goldfinch nest of this forenoon is saddled on a horizontal twig of an apple, some seven feet from ground and one third of an inch in diameter, supported on one side by a yet smaller branch, also slightly attached to another small branch. It measures three and one half inches from outside to outside, one and three quarters inside, two and one half from top to bottom, or to a little below the twig, and one and one half inside. It is a very compact, thick, and warmly lined nest, slightly incurving on the edge within. It is composed of fine shreds of bark — grape-vine and other— and one piece of twine, with, more externally, an abundance of pale-brown slender catkins of oak (?) or hickory (?), mixed with effete apple blossoms and their peduncles, showing little apples, and the petioles of apple leaves, some times with half-decayed leaves of this year attached, last year’s heads of lespedeza, and some other heads of weeds, with a little grass stem or weed stem, all more or less disguised by a web of white spider or caterpillar silk, spread over the outside. It is thickly and very warmly lined with (apparently) short thistle-down, mixed with which you see some grape-vine bark, and the rim is composed of the same shreds of bark, catkins, and some fine fibrous stems, and two or three hairs (of horse) mixed with wool (?); for only the hollow is lined with the looser or less tenacious thistle-down. This nest shows a good deal of art. 

The mind tastes but few flavors in the course of a year. We are visited by but few thoughts which are worth entertaining, and we chew the end of these unceasingly. What ruminant spirits we are! I remember well the flavor of that rusk which I bought in New York two or three months ago and ate in the cars for my supper. A fellow-passenger, too, pretended to praise it, and yet, O man of little faith! he took a regular supper at Springfield. They cannot make such in Boston. The mere fragrance, rumor, and reminiscence of life is all that we get, for the most part. If I am visited by a thought, I chew that cud each successive morning, as long as there is any flavor in it. Until my keepers shake down some fresh fodder. Our genius is like a brush which only once in many months is freshly dipped into the paint-pot. It becomes so dry that though we apply it incessantly, it fails to tinge our earth and sky. Applied to the same spot incessantly, it at length imparts no color to it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 9, 1858

The sight of the goldfinch going of on a jaunt over the hills, twittering to its plainer consort by its side. See note to August 9, 1856 (". . .the goldfinch twittering over. Does the last always utter his twitter when ascending? These are already feeding on the thistle seeds. ")

Edith Emerson gives me an Asclepias tuberosa from Naushon. See August 29, 1857 ("R. W. E. says that he saw Asclepias tuberosa abundant and in bloom on Naushon last week.")

August 9. SeeA Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  August 9 

Our genius is like 

a brush never freshly dipped 

into the paint-pot.

It becomes so dry

it fails to tinge earth and sky.

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

Signs of fall.

August 9. 

Sunday. 

I see the blackbirds flying in flocks (which did not when I went away July 20th) and hear the shrilling of my alder locust.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 9, 1857

Blackbirds flying in flocks.  See August 18, 1858 ("See large flocks of blackbirds, blackish birds with chattering notes. It is a fine sight when you can look down on them just as they are settling on the ground with outspread wings, — a hovering flock.");   September 7, 1857 ("I see a small round flock of birds, perhaps blackbirds, dart through the air, as thick as a charge of shot, — now comparatively thin, with regular intervals of sky be tween them, like the holes in the strainer of a watering-pot, now dense and dark, as if closing up their ranks when they roll over one another and stoop downward."); October 29, 1859 (''Also a flock of blackbirds fly eastward over my head from the to
p of an oak, either red-wings or grackles"). See also October 6, 1860 ("The crow, methinks, is our only large bird that hovers and circles about in flocks in an irregular and straggling manner, filling the air over your head and sporting in it as if at home here. They often burst up above the woods where they were perching, like the black fragments of a powder-mill just exploded.")

The shrilling of my alder locust. See August 9, 1851 ("Among the pines and birches I hear the invisible locust.") and 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.");  August 10, 1853 ("Saw an alder locust this morning."); August 11, 1852 ("The autumnal ring of the alder locust.");   August 12, 1858 (“Hear what I have called the alder locust (?) as I return over the causeway, and probably before this.”); August 13, 1860 ("Hear the steady shrill of the alder locust."); August 15, 1852 ("That clear ring like an alder locust (is it a cricket ?) for some time past is a sound which belongs to the season.")

August 9. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  August 9

 

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

A succession of thunder-storms merged into one long thunder-storm, lasting almost continuously two nights and two days.

August 9.

Saturday. 

Notwithstanding the very copious rain, with lightning, on the night of August 5th and the deluge which fell yesterday, raising the river still higher, it rained again and again with very vivid lightning, more copiously than ever, last night, and without long intervals all this day. 

Few, if any, can remember such a succession of thunder-storms merged into one long thunder-storm, lasting almost continuously (the storm does) two nights and two days. 

We are surprised to see that it can lighten just as vividly, thunder just as loud, rain just as copiously at last as at first. 

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

The river is raised about two feet! My boat is nearly even full, though under the willows. The water stands nearly a foot over the highest part of the large flat rock by Island. There is more current. The pads are drowned; hardly one to be seen afloat; the utmost length of their tethers does not permit them to come within a foot or ten inches of the surface. They lay smoothly on the top before, with considerable spare coil beneath; now they strain in vain toward the surface. All the Bidens Beckii is drowned too, and will be delayed, if not exterminated for this year. The water is cool to the bather after so much rain.

The notes of the wood pewee and warbling vireo are more prominent of late, and of the goldfinch twittering over. 

Does the last always utter his twitter when ascending? These are already feeding on the thistle seeds. 

Again I am surprised to see the Apocynum cannabinum close to the rock at the Island, several plants, apparently not more than ten days out; say July 25th, including the ones I saw before. The flowers of this are white, with divisions of the corolla erect or nearly so, corolla not one eighth of an inch wide, calyx-segments lanceolate, pointed, as long as the tube of the corolla. I now notice that all the branches are about equally upright, and hence the upper ones are much more upright than the upper ones of the A. andro-soemifolium. The plant is inclined to be taller and narrower than that, perhaps because it grows by water. The leaves are more oblong or lanceolate and pointed, the downiness and petioles about the same with that of the common; in this case, none heart-shaped. The one found the 5th was between this and the common, a rose-streaked one, in fact colored like the common; this, a white one with still longer calyx-segments and no heart-shaped leaves. This is rather smooth. Say, then, for that of the 5th and this, they are varieties of the A. cannabinum.

I scare up a couple of wood ducks separately, undoubtedly birds bred and dispersed about here. The rise of the river attracts them. 

What I have called Aster corymbosus out a day, above Hemlocks. It has eight to twelve white rays, smaller than those of the macrophyllus, and a dull-red stem commonly. It differs from Gray's corymbosus in the achenia being apparently not slender, not opening in July, and there being no need of distinguishing it from A. macrophyllus; from his cordifolius in the rays not being numerous, nor the panicled heads very numerous (sometimes pretty numerous), and the rays not pale-blue.

Perhaps I must call it A. cordifolius, yet the lower and principal petioles are naked (Gray makes them so commonly!), not at all winged, though the upper are. Found one individual at Miles Swamp whose lower petioles were winged. Its petioles (the lower) are only sometimes winged here. The flowers of A. macrophyllus are white with a very slight bluish tinge, in a coarse flat-topped corymb. Flowers nine to ten eighths of an inch in diameter. A. cordifolius flowers six eighths of an inch diameter.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 9, 1856

Few, if any, can remember such a succession of thunder-storms. See September 6, 1854 ("There is now approaching from the west one of the heaviest thunder-showers (apparently) and with the most incessant flashes that I remember to have seen. ")

 The water stands nearly a foot over the highest part of the large flat rock by Island. See March 17, 1859 ("Here is Mantatuket Rock, commonly a rocky peninsula with a low or swampy neck and all covered with wood. It is now a small rocky island, and not only the swampy neck but a considerable portion of the upland is blotted out by the flood, covered and concealed under water."); August 1, 1859 ("The west edge of the Rock above Island is eleven and a half inches above summer level. . . . Is this rise owing to the water let on from various mill-ponds this Monday morning?")

The notes of the wood pewee and warbling vireo are more prominent of late. See August 18, 1860 ("The note of the wood pewee sounds prominent of late.”)

The goldfinch twittering over. . . already feeding on the thistle seeds. See August 6, 1852 (“With the goldenrod comes the goldfinch. About the time his cool twitter is heard, does not the bobolink, thrasher, catbird, oven-bird, veery, etc ., cease?”); August 7, 1853 (“The river is dark and smooth these days, reflecting no brightness but dark clouds, and the goldfinch is heard twittering over.”); August 10, 1854 (“The tinkling notes of goldfinches and bobolinks which we hear nowadays are of one character and peculiar to the season. They are nuts of sound, --ripened seeds of sound. . . like the sparkle on water.”); August 12, 1854 (“I see goldfinches nowadays on the lanceolate thistles, apparently after the seeds.”); August 15, 1854 (“On the top of the Hill I see the goldfinch eating the seeds of the Canada thistle. I rarely approach a bed of them or other thistles nowadays but I hear the cool twitter of the goldfinch about it.“); August 14, 1858 ("The Canada thistle down is now begun to fly, and I see the goldfinch upon it."); September 4, 1860 (“The goldfinch is very busy pulling the thistle to pieces.”)

Again I am surprised to see theApocynum cannabinum close to the rock at the Island: . . . See August 1, 1857 ("Small Apocynum cannabinum on the rocks .") July 11, 1857 ("Apocynum cannabinum, with its small white flowers and narrow sepals . . "); August 5, 1856 ("At the Assabet stone bridge, apparently freshly in flower, . . . apparently the Apocynum cannabinum var. hypericifolium (?).”) and note to September 2, 1856 ("Some years ago I sought for Indian hemp (Apocynum cannabinum) hereabouts in vain, and concluded that it did not grow here. A month or two ago I read again, as many times before, that its blossoms were very small, scarcely a third as large as those of the common species, and for some unaccountable reason this distinction kept recurring to me, and I regarded the size of the flowers I saw, though I did not believe that it grew here; and in a day or two my eyes fell on it, aye, in three different places, and different varieties of it.")

Apocynum means "poisonous to dogs". All parts of the plant are poisonous and can cause cardiac arrest if ingested. The cannabinum in the scientific name and the common names Hemp Dogbane and Indian Hemp refer to its similarity to cannabis as a fiber plant.  ~ Wikipedia

What I have called Aster corymbosus out a day, above Hemlocks. Perhaps I must call it A. cordifolius. See August 11, 1852 ("Aster corymbosus, path beyond Corner Spring and in Miles Swamp "); September 22, 1858 [from Salem to Cape Ann on foot] ("I had seen in this day’s walk an abundance of Aster cordifolius . . . also saw A. corymbosus, which is a handsome white wood aster"); September 6, 1856 ("For the first time distinguish the Aster cordifolius, a prevailing one in B[rattleboro] and but just beginning to flower")

Aster corymbosus and Aster cordifolius -- white and blue wood asters. Wood asters are now classified as genus Eurybia This genus’s species in New England:
Eurybia divaricata [Aster corymbosus ]
Eurybia macrophylla
Eurybia radula
Eurybia schreberi
Eurybia spectabilis

August 9. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  August 9

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

At the bathing-place.

August 9.

River is risen and fuller, and the weeds at bathing-place washed away somewhat. Fall to them.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 9, 1855

Fall to them. ... See September 24, 1854 (“These are the stages in the river fall... The water begins to be clear of weeds”)

August 9. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 9

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

"Walden" published.

August 9

Wednesday – To Boston.

"Walden" published. Elder-berries. 

Waxwork yellowing.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 9, 1854

"Walden" published. See March 28, 1854 ("Got first proof of "Walden.”); August 2, 1854 ("Fields to-day sends me a specimen copy of my "Walden." It is to be published on the 12th. "); See also  August 17, 1851  ("Ah! if I could so live that . . . when small fruits are ripe, my fruits might be ripe also! that I could match nature always with my moods ! that in each season when some part of nature especially flourishes, then a corresponding part of me may not fail to flourish! "); August 9, 1853 ("This is the season of small fruits. I trust, too, that I am maturing some small fruit as palatable in these months, which will communicate my flavor to my kind."); August 18, 1853 (“[N]ow is the season of fruits; but where is our fruit?”); June 17, 1854 (“The season of small fruits has arrived. We are a little saddened, because we begin to see the interval between our hopes and their fulfillment.”)

Elder-berries. See August 11, 1856 ("Elder-berries in a day or two."); August 15, 1852 ("Elder-berry ripe."); August 22, 1852 ("The elder bushes are weighed down with fruit partially turned"); August 23, 1856 ("Elder-berries, now looking purple, are weighing down the bushes along fences by their abundance. "); August 24, 1851 ("Elderberries are ripe."); August 27, 1859 (" Elder-berry clusters swell and become heavy and therefore droop, bending the bushes down, just in proportion as they ripen. "); August 29, 1854 ("The cymes of elder-berries, black with fruit, are now conspicuous."); August 31, 1853 ("Great black cymes of elder berries now bend down the bushes."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Elder-berries

Waxwork yellowing. [Climbing Bittersweet (Celastrus scandens) ] See August 2, 1853 ("The waxwork berries are yellowing."); August 2, 1856 ("Some waxwork leaves have felt the heat and slight drought. Their green is spotted with yellow, distinct yellow and green; others a very delicate clear yellow; others faded quite white."); August 31, 1852 ("Waxwork berries orange now,")

August 9. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 9

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, "Walden" published

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-540809

This is the season of small fruits

August 9.

The Hieracium Canadense is out and is abundant at Peter's well. I also find one or two heads of the liatris. Perhaps I should have seen it a few days earlier, if it had not been for the mower. It has the aspect of a Canada thistle at a little distance. 

How fatally the season is advanced toward the fall! I am not surprised now to see the small rough sunflower. There is much yellow beside now in the fields. 

How beautiful now the early goldenrods (Solidago stricta), rising above the wiry grass of the Great Fields in front of Peter's where I sit ( which is not worth cutting), not solid yellow like the sunflower, but little pyramidal or sheaf like golden clouds or mists, supported by almost invisible leafy columns, which wave in the wind, like those elms which run up very tall and slender without a branch and fall over like a sheaf on every side! They give a very indefinite but rich, mellow, and golden aspect to the field.

I spend the forenoon in my chamber, writing or arranging my papers, and in the afternoon I walk forth into the fields and woods. I turn aside, perchance, into some withdrawn, untrodden swamp, and find these blueberries, large and fair, awaiting me in inexhaustible abundance, for I have no tame garden. They embody for me the essence and flavor of the swamp, — cool and refreshing, of various colors and flavors. Here they hang for many weeks unchanged, in dense clusters, half a dozen touching each other, — black, blue, and intermediate colors. I prefer the large blue, with a bloom on them, and slightly acid ones. 

I taste and am strengthened. This is the season of small fruits. I trust, too, that I am maturing some small fruit as palatable in these months, which will communicate my flavor to my kind.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 9, 1853

This is the season of small fruits. I trust, too, that I am maturing some small fruit as palatable in these months, which will communicate my flavor to my kind.  See August 9, 1854 ("Walden" published.”) Compare August 17, 1851 (“Ah! if I could so live that . . . when small fruits are ripe, my fruits might be ripe also! that I could match nature always with my moods ! that in each season when some part of nature especially flourishes, then a corresponding part of me may not fail to flourish!”); August 6, 1852 ("Methinks there are few new flowers of late. An abundance of small fruits takes their place. Summer gets to be an old story. Birds leave off singing, as flowers blossoming.");  August 18, 1853 (“The season of flowers or of promise may be said to be over, and now is the season of fruits; but where is our fruit ? The night of the year is approaching. What have we done with our talent?”); June 17, 1854 (“The season of hope and promise is past; already the season of small fruits has arrived. We are a little saddened, because we begin to see the interval between our hopes and their fulfillment. The prospect of the heavens is taken away, and we are presented only with a few small berries.”);

The dispersion of seeds

August 9

The OEnothera biennis along the railroad now. Do the cars disperse seeds?

The Trichostema dichotomum is quite beautiful now in the cool of the morning. 

The epilobium in the woods still. 

Now the earliest apples begin to be ripe, but none are so good to eat as some to smell. Some knurly apple which I pick up in the road reminds me by its fragrance of all the wealth of Pomona.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 9, 1851

August 9. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  August 9

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

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