It was the event of our walk, and we were proud to wear this badge

September 5. 


P. M. – To Ball's Hill.

The brink of the river is still quite interesting in some respects, and to some eyes more interesting than ever.

Though the willows and button-bushes have already assumed an autumnal hue, and the pontederia is extensively crisped and blackened, the dense masses of mikania, now, it may be, paler than before, are perhaps more remarkable than ever.

I see some masses of it, overhanging the deep water and completely concealing the bush that supports them, which are as rich a sight as any flower we have, — little terraces of contiguous corymbs, like mignonette (?).

Also the dodder is more revealed, also draping the brink over the water.

The mikania is sometimes looped seven or eight feet high to a tree above the bushes, a manifest vine, with its light-colored corymbs at intervals.

See the little dippers back.

Did I not see a marsh hawk in imperfect plumage? Quite brown, with some white midway the wing and tips of wings black?

What further adds to the beauty of the bank is the hibiscus, in prime and the great bidens.

Having walked through a quantity of desmodium under Ball's Hill , by the shore there (Marilandicum or rigidum), we found our pants covered with its seeds to a remarkable and amusing degree. These green scales closely covering and greening my legs reminded me of the lemna on a ditch. It amounted to a kind of coat of mail.

It was the event of our walk, and we were proud to wear this badge, as if he were the most distinguished who had the most on his clothes.
My companion expressed a certain superstitious feeling about it, for he said he thought it would not be right to walk intentionally amid the desmodium so as to get more of the ticks on us, nor yet to pick them off, but they must be carried about till they are rubbed off accidentally.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 5, 1860

Though the willows and button-bushes have already assumed an autumnal hue, the dense masses of mikaniaare perhaps more remarkable than ever. See August 2, 1860 ("Mikania begun, and now, perhaps, the river's brink is at its height. "); August 22, 1858 ("Now that the mikania begins to prevail the button-bush has done . . . and the willows are already somewhat crisped and imbrowned"); August 29, 1858 ("The mikania is apparently in prime or a little past."); September 20, 1859 ("The button-bushes by the river are generally overrun with the mikania.")

See the little dippers back. See September 8, 1859 ("See the black head and neck of a little dipper in mid stream, a few rods before my boat. It disappears, and though I search carefully, I cannot detect it again."); September 9, 1858 ("At length the walker who sits meditating on a distant bank sees the little dipper sail out from amid the weeds and busily dive for its food along their edge: Yet ordinary eyes might range up and down the river all day and never detect its small black head above the water."); September 27, 1860 ("I see a little dipper in the middle of the river.. . .It has a dark bill and considerable white on the sides of the head or neck, with black between it, no tufts, and no observable white on back or tail.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Little Dipper

Did I not see a marsh hawk in imperfect plumage? Quite brown, with some white midway the wing and tips of wings black? See April 10, 1853 ("Saw a pretty large narrow-winged hawk with a white rump and white spots or bars on under ( ?) side of wings. Probably the female or young of a marsh hawk."); April 13, 1854 (" A small brown hawk with white on rump — I think too small for a marsh hawk — sailed low over the meadow. [May it have been a young male harrier?]");  April 23, 1855 ("I have seen also for some weeks occasionally a brown hawk with white rump, flying low, which I have thought the frog hawk in a different stage of plumage; but can it be at this season? and is it not the marsh hawk? Yet it is not so heavy nearly as the hen-hawk -- probably female hen-harrier [i. e. marsh hawk]"); October 18, 1855 ("A large brown marsh hawk comes beating the bush along the river, and ere long a slate-colored one (male), with black tips, is seen circling against a distant wood-side."); May 14, 1857 ("See a pair of marsh hawks, the smaller and lighter-colored male, with black tips to wings, and the large brown female, sailing low") See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  the Marsh Hawk (Northern Harrier)

Having walked through a quantity of desmodium under Ball's Hill we found our pants covered with its seeds to a remarkable and amusing degree. See August 19, 1856 ("Some of these desmodiums, the paniculatum, Marilandicum, nudiflorum, rigidum, and Dillenii, are so fine and inobvious that a careless observer would look through their thin flowery panicles without observing any flower at all.");  August 26, 1856 ("These desmodiums are so fine and inobvious that it is difficult to detect them. I go through a grove in vain, but when I get away, find my coat covered with their pods. They found me, though I did not them.”); September 29, 1856 ("How surely the desmodium, growing on some rough cliff-side, or the bidens, on the edge of a pool, prophesy the coming of the traveller, brute or human, that will transport their seeds on his coat!"); October 2, 1852 ("I also find the desmodium sooner thus. . . than if I used my eyes alone.")

What further adds to the beauty of the bank is the great bidens. September 13, 1852 ("The great bidens in the sun in brooks affects me as the rose of the fall, the most flavid product of the water and the sun. They are low suns in the brook. The golden glow of autumn concentrated, more golden than the sun. . . . If I come by at this season, a golden blaze will salute me here from a thousand suns.")

The scarlet of the dogwood is the most conspicuous and interesting of the autumnal colors at present.

September 25

September 25, 2020

Polygonum dumetorum, climbing false-buck wheat, still; also dodder.

The fall dandelions are a prevailing flower on low turfy grounds, especially near the river.

Ranunculus reptans still.

The small galium (trifidum).

A rose again, apparently lucida (?). This is always unexpected.

The scarlet of the dogwood is the most conspicuous and interesting of the autumnal colors at present. You can now easily detect them at a distance; every one in the swamps you overlook is revealed.

The smooth sumach and the mountain is a darker, deeper, bloodier red.

Found the Bidens Beckii (?) September 1st, and the fringed gentian November 7th, last year.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 25, 1852

The scarlet of the dogwood is the most conspicuous and interesting of the autumnal colors at present. See September 23, 1853 ("I observe the rounded tops of the dogwood bushes, scarlet in the distance, on the edge of the meadow . . . more full and bright than any flower."); see also August 30, 1854 (“Dogwood leaves have fairly begun to turn”); August 31, 1853 ("I see the first dogwood turned scarlet in the swamp"): October 28, 1858 ("The dogwood on the island is perhaps in its prime, — a distinct scarlet, with half of the leaves green in this case."); November 11, 1858 ("The flowering dogwood, though still leafy, is uninteresting and partly withered.")

A rose again, apparently lucida (?). This is always unexpected. See June 12, 1854 ("Rosa lucida, probably yesterday, the 11th . . . A bud in pitcher the 13th.”); June 18, 1854 (“The Rosa lucida is pale and low on dry sunny banks like that by Hosmer's pines.”);  July 26, 1853 ("Saw one of the common wild roses (R. lucida?)."); September 8, 1853 ("Roses, apparently R. lucida, abundantly out on a warm bank on Great Fields by Moore's Swamp.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Rose

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

July 25.

Dodder, probably the 21st.

Blue-curls.

Burdock, probably yesterday.

P. M. – To Le Grosse’s.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In my latter years, let me have some shad-bush thoughts.

October 13. 

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

Many of the small hypericums, mutilum and Canadense, have survived the frosts as yet, after all.

Hypericum mutilum, dwart St. John’s-wort,
August 2, 2019

The hemlock seed is now in the midst of its fall, some of it, with the leaves, floating on the river. The cones, being thus expanded, are more conspicuous on the trees. 

Many feverwort berries are fresh yet, though the leaves are quite withered. They are remarkable for their peculiar color. 

The thorn fruit on the hill is considerably past prime, though abundant and reddening the bushes still. 

The common alder up the Assabet is nerved like the hornbeam. 

I see no acorns on the trees. They appear to have all fallen before this. 

The swamp amelanchier is leafing again, as usual. What a pleasing phenomenon, perhaps an Indian- summer growth, an anticipation of the spring, like the notes of birds and frogs, etc., an evidence of warmth and genialness. Its buds are annually awakened by the October sun as if it were spring. The shad-bush is leafing again by the sunny swamp-side. It is like a youthful or poetic thought in old age. Several times I have been cheered by this sight when surveying in former years. The chickadee seems to lisp a sweeter note at the sight of it. I would not fear the winter more than the shad-bush which puts forth fresh and tender leaves on its approach. In the fall I will take this for my coat-of-arms. It seems to detain the sun that expands it. These twigs are so full of life that they can hardly contain themselves. They ignore winter. They anticipate spring. What faith! Away in some warm and sheltered recess in the swamp you find where these leaves have expanded. It is a foretaste of spring. In my latter years, let me have some shad-bush thoughts. 

I perceive the peculiar scent of the witch-hazel in bloom for several rods around, which at first I refer to the decaying leaves. 

I see where dodder was killed, with the button-bush, perhaps a week. 

British naturalists very generally apologize to the reader for having devoted their attention to natural history to the neglect of some important duty. 

Among plants which spring in cellars (vide September 22d) might be mentioned funguses. I remember seeing in an old work a plate of a fungus which grew in a wine-cellar and got its name from that circumstance. It is related in Chambers's Journal that Sir Joseph Banks, having caused a cask of wine to be placed in a cellar in order to improve it, "at the end of three years he directed his butler to ascertain the state of the wine, when, on attempting to open the cellar door, he could not affect it, in consequence of some powerful obstacle; the door was consequently cut down, when the cellar was found to be completely filled with a fungous production, so firm that it was necessary to use an axe for its removal. This appeared to have grown from, or to have been nourished by, the decomposing particles of the wine, the cask being empty, and carried up to the ceiling, where it was supported by the fungus." Perhaps it was well that the fungus instead of Sir Joseph Banks drank up the wine. The life of a wine-bibber is like that of a fungus.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 13, 1859

Many of the small hypericums, mutilum and Canadense, have survived the frosts as yet, after all. See July 15, 1856 ("Both small hypericums, Canadense and mutilum, apparently some days at least by Stow's ditch."); July 26, 1856 ("Arranged the hypericums in bottles this morning and watched their opening"); August 12, 1856 ("11 a. m. — To Hill. The Hypericum mutilum is well out at this hour."); August 15, 1859 ("Hypericum Canadense, Canadian St. John's-wort, distinguished by its red capsules."); August 17, 1856 ("Hypericum Canadense well out at 2 p. m.");  August 19, 1856 ("I see Hypericum Canadense and mutilum abundantly open at 3 p. m"); August 27, 1856 ("Hypericum Canadense and mutilum now pretty generally open at 4 P.M., thus late in the season"); September 15, 1856 ("The hypericums generally appear to be now about done. I see none."); October 2, 1856 ("Now and then I see a Hypericum Canadense flower still. The leaves, . . . turned crimson."); October 19, 1856 ("The hypericums — the whole plant — have now generally been killed by the frost")  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

The hemlock seed is now in the midst of its fall, some of it, with the leaves, floating on the river. The cones, being thus expanded, are more conspicuous on the trees. Compare  October 28, 1858 (The hemlock is in the midst of its fall, and the leaves strew the ground like grain. They are inconspicuous on the tree.")/  See also  October 8, 1857 (“Hemlock leaves are copiously falling. They cover the hillside like some wild grain. ”); October 15, 1856 ("A great part of the hemlock seeds fallen."); October 16, 1857 (“Hemlock leaves are falling now faster than ever, and the trees are more parti-colored. The falling leaves look pale-yellow on the trees, but become reddish on the ground.”); October 31, 1853 ("The hemlock seeds are apparently ready to drop from their cones.”); November 1. 1853 ("As I paddle under the Leaning Hemlocks, the breeze rustles the boughs, and showers of their fresh winged seeds come wafted down to the water and are carried round and onward in the great eddy there.");   November 11, 1855 (“At the Hemlocks I see a narrow reddish line of hemlock leaves . .. mathematically level. This chronicles the hemlock fall, which I had not noticed, we have so few trees, and also the river’s rise”)

The swamp amelanchier is leafing again, as usual. See October 22, 1855 ("The swamp pyrus (Amelanchier) is leafing again. One opening leafet is an inch long, while the reddish yellow leaves still hold on at the end of the twig above. Its green swollen buds are generally conspicuous, curving round the stems. It is a new spring there. "); November 1, 1853 (I notice the shad-bush conspicuously leafing out. Those long, narrow, pointed buds, prepared for next spring, have anticipated their time. I noticed some thing similar when surveying the Hunt wood-lot last winter.); November 4, 1854 (“The shad-bush buds have expanded into small leaflets already.”).

Many feverwort berries are fresh yet, though the leaves are quite withered. They are remarkable for their peculiar color. See August 23, 1853 ("The feverwort berries are yellowing and yellowed."); Septmeber 6, 1859 ("The feverwort berries are apparently nearly in their prime, of a clear "corn yellow " and as large as a small cranberry, in whorls at the axils of the leaves of the half- prostrate plants.")

I perceive the peculiar scent of the witch-hazel in bloom for several rods around, which at first I refer to the decaying leaves. See October 9, 1851 (I"ts blossoms smell like the spring, like the willow catkins; by their color as well as fragrance they belong to the saffron dawn of the year. . . Its spray, so jointed and angular, is not to be mistaken for any other."); October 11, 1858 ("It is a cool seat under the witch-hazel in full bloom, which has lost its leaves! The leaves are greenish and brownish yellow")

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

In my latter years

let me have some shad-bush thoughts –

the shad-bush leafing!

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, In my latter years

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

The pulse of the River.

August 2

P. M. — To Hill. 

A green bittern comes, noiselessly flapping, with stealthy and inquisitive looking to this side the stream and then that, thirty feet above the water. This antediluvian bird, creature of the night, is a fit emblem of a dead stream like this Musketicook. 

This especially is the bird of the river. There is a sympathy between its sluggish flight and the sluggish flow of the stream, — its slowly lapsing flight, even like the rills of Musketicook and my own pulse sometimes.  

August 2, 2021

August 2, 2026

Very common now are the few green emerald leafets of the Bidens Beckii, which will ere long yellow the shallow parts. 

Acalypha, apparently not long. 

Dodder, not long (not out 27th of July at railroad bridge), say four or five days. 

A three-ribbed goldenrod by small apple, by wall at foot east side of Hill (S. gigantea ? or one of the two preceding), not nearly out. It differs from my gigantea apparently only in the leaves being perfectly smooth above and the stem smooth and pink (?) glaucous (excepting a little pubescence near the top). Very tall. Vide it by and by. 

The lower leaves of some catnep are now of that delicate lake or claret color. 

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.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 2, 1856

A green bittern comes noiselessly flapping. See July 30, 1856 ("A green bittern. . . with heavy flapping flight"); July 31, 1859 ("The small green bitterns are especially numerous."); August 1, 1858 ("So the green bitterns are leaving the nest now"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. The Green Bittern

Very common now are the few green emerald leafets of the Bidens Beckii, which will ere long yellow the shallow parts. See August 1, 1859 ("The B. Beckii (just beginning to bloom) just shows a few green leafets above its dark and muddy masses, now that the river is low."); ); August 9, 1856 ("All the Bidens Beckii is drowned too, and will be delayed, if not exterminated for this year."); August 11, 1853 ("The weeds still covered by the flood, so that we have no Bidens Beckii."); August 12, 1854 ("The Bidens Beckii yellows the side of the river just below the Hubbard Path, but is hardly yet in fullest flower generally."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Bidens Beckii

A three-ribbed goldenrod . . . differs from my gigantea. See July 31, 1856  ("The Solidago gigantea (?), three-ribbed, out a long time at Walden shore by railroad, more perfectly out than any solidago I have seen. I will call this S. gigantea, yet it has a yellowish-green stem, slightly pubescent above, and leaves slightly rough to touch above, rays small, about fifteen"); August 16, 1858 ("A three-ribbed goldenrod on railroad causeway, two to three feet high, abundantly out"); August 21, 1856 ("The prevailing solidagos now are . . .2d, the three-ribbed, of apparently several varieties, which I have called arguta or gigantea (apparently truly the last)")

Waxwork leaves have felt the heat. See August 9, 1854 (""Walden" published. Elder-berries. 

Waxwork yellowing.")

August 2. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  August 2

A green bittern comes

noiselessly flapping – sluggish

pulse of the river.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The pulse of the River

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-560802