The summer culminates.

June 21. 

It is so hot I 

have to lift my hat to let 

the air cool my head.  

June 21, 1853

the summer culminates

June 21, 2023

4.30 A.M.––Up river for lilies

No dew even where I keep my boat. The driest night yet, threatening the sultriest day. Yet I see big crystalline drops at the tips or the bases of the pontederia leaves. 

The few lilies begin to open about 5.

The nest of a brown thrasher with three eggs, on some green-briar, perfectly concealed by a grape vine running over it; eggs greenish brown; nest of dry sticks, lined with fibres of grape bark and with roots. Bird  scolded me much.

Carpet weed out. 

I have got a pan full of lilies open.

We have not had rain, except a mere sprinkling in the night of the 17th, since the 26th of May. 

P.M. To Conantum. 

The warmest day yet. For the last two days I have worn nothing about my neck. This change or putting off of clothing is, methinks, as good an evidence of the increasing warmth of the weather as meteorological instruments. 

I thought it was hot weather perchance when a month ago, I slept with a window wide open and laid aside a comfortable, but by and by I found that I had got two windows open, and to-night two windows and the door are far from enough. 

Hypericum perforatum just out.

This year the time when the locust was first heard was the time to put on summer clothes.

Early on the morning of the 18th the river felt lukewarm to my fingers when my paddle dipped deeper than usual. 

The galium with three small white petals (G. trifidum) has been out some time, and I find that erectish, broad-leaved, three-nerved, green-flowered one, perhaps G. circazans at Corner Spring.  

Peltandra Virginica, perhaps a week, for many of its flowers are effete and curved downward .

The Hypericum ellipticum by the riverside.

The only violets I notice nowadays are a few white lanceolate ones in the meadows.

The river has got down quite low, and the muddy shores are covered here and there with a sort of dark brown paper, the dried filaments of confervæ which filled the water. Now is their fall.

The bright little flowers of the Ranunculus reptans var filiformis are seen peeping forth between its interstices. 

Calopogon out. I think it surpasses the pogonia, though the latter is sometimes high colored and is of a handsome form;  but it is inclined to be pale ,is sometimes even white. 

Now see many bright red amelanchier berries and some purple or dark-blue ones amid them. They are mostly injured by insects or apparently pecked and deformed by birds, but, from the few perfectly sound and ripe I have eaten to-day, I should pronounce them superior to either blueberries or huckleberries. Those of the Botryapium have a soft skin; of the shorter bush with a stiffer leaf, a tough skin.  This is a little before blueberries.  

The panicled cornel is the only one of the cornels or viburnums that now is noticed in flower , generally speaking.  The last of our cornels – the C. sericea I think it must be – is just beginning.

The farmers have commenced haying. With this the summer culminates. The most extended crop of all is ready for the harvesting.

Lint still comes off the leaves and shoots.

It is so hot I have to lift my hat to let the air cool my head. 

I notice that that low, rather rigid fern, about two feet high, on the Great Hubbard Meadow, which a month ago was yellow, but now is green and in fruit, and with a harsh-feeling fruit atop, is decidedly inclined to grow in hollow circles from one foot to six or eight feet in diameter.– often, it is true, imperfect on one side, or, if large, filled up in the middle. How to account for it? Can it have anything to do with the hummocks deposited on the meadow? Many small stems near together in circles i. e. not a single line. Is it the Osmunda spectabilis?

Now I hear the spotted (?) flies about my head,–- flies that settle and make themselves felt on the hand sometimes. 

The morning-glory still fresh at 3 P.M.  A fine, large, delicate bell with waved border, some pure white ,some reddened. The buds open perfectly in a vase I find them open when I wake at 4 A .M. Is not this one of the eras or culminating places in the flower season? Not this till the sultry mornings come.

Angelica,  perhaps a day or more. Elder just opening. 

The four leaved asclepias, probably some days, rather handsome flower, with the peculiar fragrance of the milkweeds. 

Observed three or four sweet-briar bushes with white flowers of the usual size, by the wall under Conantum Cliff,– very slightly tinted with red or rose. In the paucity and form of prickles at least I make them answer to the micrantha, but not else  Is it intermediate? Opened at home in a vase in the shade. They are more distinctly rose-tinted. Leaves and all together in the water, they have a strong spirituous or rummy scent. 

There are no flowers nor flower-buds on the bass this year, though it was so full last year.

Where the other day I saw a pigeon woodpecker tapping and enlarging a hole in the dead limb of an apple tree ,when as yet probably no egg was laid, to-day I see two well grown young woodpeckers about as big as the old looking out at the hole, showing their handsome spotted breasts and calling lustily for something to eat, or, it may be, suffering from the heat. Young birds in some situations must suffer greatly from heat these days, so closely packed in their nests and perhaps insufficiently shaded. It is a wonder they remain so long there patiently.

I saw a yellowbird's nest in the willows on the causeway this afternoon and three young birds nearly ready to fly, overflowing the nest ,all holding up their open bills and keeping them steadily open for a minute or more, on noise of my approach. 

Still see cherry-birds in flocks.

Dogsbane and Prinos verticillatus. 

My white lilies in the pan are mostly withering the first day, the weather is so warm.

At sunset to Island. 

The white anemone is withering with drought; else would probably have opened.  

Return while the sun is setting behind thunder clouds, which now shadow us.  Between the heavy masses of clouds, mouse colored, with dark blue bases, the patches of clear sky are a glorious cobalt blue, as Sophia calls it.  

How happens it that the sky never appears so intensely, brightly, memorably blue as when seen between clouds and, it may be, as now in the south at sunset?  This, too, is like the blue in snow. 

For the last two or three days it has taken me all the forenoon to wake up. 

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, June 21, 1853

4.30 A.M.––Up river for lilies . . .The few lilies begin to open about 5. See July 26, 1856 ("At five [A.M.] the lilies had not opened, but began about 5.15 and were abundantly out at six") and note to July 17, 1854 ("I go to observe the lilies. ")

The summer culminates.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Haymaking

Calopogon . . . surpasses the pogonia, See.June 23, 1853 ("Pogonias are now very abundant in the meadow-grass, and now and then a calopogon is mixed with them .The last is broader and of more singular form,  commonly with an unopened bud above on one side."); June 24, 1852 (""The calopogon is a more bluish purple than the pogonia.); July 5, 1852 (The calopogon, or grass-pink, now fully open, . . — its four or five open purple flowers — . . . makes a much greater show than the pogonia. It is of the same character with that and the arethusa. "); July 7, 1852 ("The Arethusa bulbosa, " crystalline purple;" Pogonia ophioglossoides, snake-mouthed arethusa, "pale purple;" and the Calopogon pulchellus, grass pink, "pink purple," make one family in my mind, — next to the purple orchis, or with it, — being flowers par excellence, all flower, all color, with inconspicuous leaves, naked flowers,")

Now see many bright red amelanchier berries and some purple or dark-blue ones amid them.  See June 25, 1853 (" An unusual quantity of amelanchier berries . . . I never saw nearly so many before. It is a very agreeable surprise") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Shad-bush,Juneberry, or Service-berry (Amelanchier canadensis)

How happens it that the sky never appears so intensely, brightly, memorably blue as when seen between clouds and, it may be, as now in the south at sunset? See December 14. 1851 ("There is a beautifully pure greenish-blue sky under the clouds now in the southwest just before sunset."); January 11, 1852 ("The glory of these afternoons, . . . is in the ineffably clear blue, or else pale greenish-yellow, patches of sky in the west just before sunset "); January 17, 1852 ("Those western vistas through clouds to the sky show the clearest heavens, clearer and more elysian than if the whole sky is comparatively free from clouds.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Western Sky

By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe.

August 3

The Hypericum Sarothra appears to be out.

12 M.   At the east window. A temperate noon. I hear a cricket creak in the shade; also the sound of a distant piano.

The music reminds me of imagined heroic ages; it suggests such ideas of human life and the field which the earth affords as the few noblest passages of poetry.

Those few interrupted strains which reach me through the trees suggest the same thoughts and aspirations that all melody, by whatever sense appreciated, has ever done.

I am affected.

What coloring variously fair and intense our life admits of! How a thought will mould and paint it! Impressed by some vague vision, as it were, elevated into a more glorious sphere of life, we no longer know this, we can deny its existence. We say we are enchanted, perhaps.

But what I am impressed by is the fact that this enchantment is no delusion. So far as truth is concerned, it is a fact such as what we call our actual existence, but it is a far higher and more glorious fact.It is evidence of such a sphere, of such possibilities.

It is its truth and reality that affect me. A thrumming of piano-strings beyond the gardens and through the elms. At length the melody steals into my being. I know not when it began to occupy me.

By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe, I am fitted to hear, my being moves in a sphere of melody, my fancy and imagination are excited to an inconceivable degree. 

August 3, 2015

This is no longer the dull earth on which I stood.

It is possible to live a grander life here; already the steed is stamping, the knights are prancing; already our thoughts bid a proud farewell to the so-called actual life and its humble glories.

Now this is the verdict of a soul in health. But the soul diseased says that its own vision and life alone is true and sane.

What a different aspect will courage put upon the face of things! This suggests what a perpetual flow of spirit would produce.

Of course, no man was ever made so truly generous, was so expanded by any vile draught, but that he might be equally and more expanded by imbibing a saner and wholesomer draught than ever he has swallowed. There is a wine that does not intoxicate; there is a pure juice of the grape, and unfermented.

What kind of draught is that which the aspirant soul imbibes? 

In every part of Great Britain are discovered the traces of the Romans, -- their funereal urns, their lamps, their roads, their dwellings. But New England, at least, is not based on any Roman ruins. We have not to lay the foundation of our houses in the ashes of a former civilization.

P. M. - To Boulder Field.

Vernonia Noveboracensis, iron-weed, by Flint's Bridge, began to open by July 31st; a tall plant with a broad fastigiate corymb of rich dark-purple thistle-like flowers, the middle ones opening first.

Saw two hay carts and teams cross the shallow part of the river in front of N. Barrett's, empty, to the Great Meadows. An interesting sight. The Great Meadows alive with farmers getting their hay. I could count four or five great loads already loaded in different parts.

Clematis Virginiana just begun.

Observed a low prostrate veronica with roundish, regularly opposite leaves, some what crenulate, and white flowers veined with purple, in damp, cool grass. Think I have not seen it before.

A houstonia still.

The huckleberries in the low ground by the river beyond Flint's are large and fresh. The black shine as with a gloss, and the blue are equally large.

Looking down into the singular bare hollows from the back of hill near here, the paths made by the cows in the sides of the hills, going round the hollows, made gracefully curving lines in the landscape, ribbing it. The curves, both the rising and falling of the path and its winding to right and left, are agreeable.

What remarkable customs still prevail at funerals! 

The chief mourner, though it may be a maiden who has lost her lover, consents to be made a sort of puppet and is by them put forward to walk behind the corpse in the street, before the eyes of all, at a time which should be sacred to grief; is, beside, compelled, as it were, to attend to the coarse and unfeeling, almost inevitably to her impertinent, words of consolation or admonition, so called, of whatever clerical gentleman may be in the neighborhood.

Friends and neighbors of the family should bury their dead. It is fitting that they should walk in procession with parade and even assumed solemnity. It is for them to pay this kind of respect to the dead, that it be not left to hirelings alone. It is soothing to the feelings of the absent mourners.

They may fitly listen to the words of the preacher, but the feelings of the mourners should be respected.

Spergularia rubra, spurry sandwort, a pretty, minute red flower spreading flat by roadside, nearly out of blossom.

Apparently Urtica dioica, but not very stinging, may have been out some time.

Hypericum mutilum, probably last part of July.

Took that interesting view from one of the boulder rocks toward Lincoln Hills, between Hubbard's Hill and Grove and Barrett's, whose back or north and wooded side is in front, a few oaks and elms in front and on the right, and some fine boulders slumbering in the foreground.  It is a peculiar part of the town, -- the old bridle-road plains further east. A great tract here of unimproved and unfrequented country, the boulders sometimes crowned with barberry bushes.

I hear crows, the robin, huckleberry-birds, young bluebirds, etc. 

The sun coming out of a cloud and shining brightly on patches of cudweed reminds me of frost on the grass in the morning.

A splendid entire rainbow after a slight shower, with two reflections of it, outermost broad red, passing through yellow to green, then narrow red, then blue or indigo (not plain what), then faint red again. It is too remarkable to be remarked on.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 3, 1852

The Hypericum Sarothra appears to be out.  See August 3, 1856 ("Sarothra apparently now in prime.") See also August 12, 1856 (“The sarothra — as well as small hypericums generally — has a lemon scent.”);  August 19, 1856 ("The small hypericums have a peculiar smart, somewhat lemon-like fragrance, but bee-like. ); August 30, 1856("The sarothra is now apparently in prime on the Great Fields, and comes near being open now, at 3 p. m. Bruised, it has the fragrance of sorrel and lemon, rather pungent or stinging, like a bee.”); September 2, 1859 ("The sarothra grows thickly, and is now abundantly in bloom, on denuded places, i.e., where the sod and more or less soil has been removed, by sandy roadsides. "); September 19, 1852 ("The red capsules of the sarothra."); September 23, 1852 ("The sarothra in bloom") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

At the east window. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, At the east window

I hear the sound of a distant piano. See November 20, 1851 ("It is often said that melody can be heard farther than noise, and the finest melody farther than the coarsest. I think there is truth in this, and that accordingly those strains of the piano which reach me here in my attic stir me so much more."); January 24, 1852 ("I hear the tones of my sister's piano below . It reminds me of strains which once I heard more frequently, when, possessed with the inaudible rhythm, I sought my chamber in the cold and commụned with my own thoughts"); June 18, 1852 ("I hear a man playing a clarionet far off."); December 31, 1853 ("IThe contact of sound with a human ear whose hearing is pure and unimpaired is coincident with an ecstasy.”); January 13, 1857 ("I hear one thrumming a guitar below stairs. It reminds me of moments that I have lived.")

By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe, I am fitted to hear, my being moves in a sphere of melody. See August 6, 1852 (" We live, as it were, within the calyx of a flower."); August 23, 1853 ("Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. She exists for no other end"); Walden (" Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength."); January 12, 1855 ("What a delicious sound! It is not merely crow calling to crow, for it speaks to me too. I am part of one great creature with him; if he has voice, I have ears. I can hear when he calls."); December 5, 1856 (" I have never got over my surprise that I should have been born into the most estimable place in all the world, and in the very nick of time, too"); February 20, 1857 ("What is the relation between a bird and the ear that appreciates its melody, to whom, perchance, it is more charming and significant than to any else? Certainly they are intimately related, and the one was made for the other. . . . I see that one could not be completely described without describing the other.")

Took that interesting view from one of the boulder rocks toward Lincoln Hills, some fine boulders slumbering in the foreground. . A great tract here of unimproved and unfrequented country, the boulders sometimes crowned with barberry bushes. April 21, 1852 (" In the pasture beyond the brook, where grow the barberries, huckleberries, — creeping juniper, etc., are half a dozen huge boulders, which look grandly now in the storm, covered with greenish-gray lichens, alternating with the slatish-colored rock. Slumbering, silent, . . . A certain personality, or at least brute life, they seem to have. C. calls it Boulder Field.") November 3, 1857 (" As I return down the Boulder Field, I see the now winter-colored — i.e. reddish (of oak leaves) — horizon of hills, with its few white houses, four or five miles distant southward, between two of the boulders. . . — as a landscape between the frame of a picture. . . .It would be something to own that pasture with the great rocks in it")

A splendid entire rainbow. See June 22, 1852 ("What more remarkable phenomenon than a rainbow, yet how little it is remarked!"); August 6, 1852 ("All men beholding a rainbow begin to understand the significance of the Greek name for the world, - Kosmos, or beauty"); August 7, 1852 ("a moment when the sun was setting with splendor in the west, his light reflected far and wide through the clarified air after a rain, and a brilliant rainbow, as now, o'erarching the eastern sky."); August 9, 1851 ("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.") 

August 3. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  August 3

East window at noon –
the sound of crickets and a

distant piano.

By some fortunate 

circumstance I am attuned 

to the universe.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Attuned to the Universe

 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

https://tinyurl.com/HDT-520803

The asters and goldenrods are now in their prime.

August 31.

P. M. – To Moore's Swamp.

Bidens cernua well out, the flowering one.

The asters and goldenrods are now in their prime, I think. 

August 31, 2020

The rank growth of flowers (commonly called weeds) in this swamp now impresses me like a harvest of flowers. I am surprised at their luxuriance and profusion.

The Solidago altissima is now the prevailing one, i. e. goldenrod, in low grounds where the swamp has been cleared. It occupies acres, densely rising as high as your head, with the great white umbel-like tops of the Diplopappus umbellatus rising above it.

There are also intermixed Solidago stricta, erechthites (fire-weed), Aster puniceus and longifolius, Galium asprellum in great beds, thoroughwort, trumpet-weed, Polygonum Hydropiper, Epilobium molle, etc., etc.

There has been no such rank flowering up to this. One would think that all the poison that is in the earth and air must be extracted out of them by this rank vegetation.

The ground is quite mildewy, it is so shaded by them, cellar-like.

Raspberries still fresh.

I see the first dogwood turned scarlet in the swamp.

Great black cymes of elder berries now bend down the bushes.

Saw a great black spider an inch long, with each of his legs an inch and three quarters long, on the outside of a balloon-shaped web, within which were young and a great bag.

Viola pedata out again.

Leaves of Hypericum mutilum red about water.

Cirsium muticum, in Moore's Swamp behind Indian field, going out of flower; perhaps out three weeks.

Is that very dense-flowered small white aster with short branched racemes A. Tradescanti? — now begun to be conspicuous.

A low aster by Brown's Ditch north of Sleepy Hollow like a Radula, but with narrower leaves and more numerous, and scales without herbaceous tips.

An orange-colored fungus.

Baird, in Patent Office Report, says, “In all deer, except, perhaps, the reindeer, if the male be castrated when the horns are in a state of perfection, these will never be shed; if the operation be performed when the head is bare, they will never be reproduced; and if done when the secretion is going on, a stunted, ill formed, permanent horn is the result.”

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 31, 1853


Bidens cernua well out, the flowering one. See August 20, 1852 ("Bidens, either connata or cernua, by Moore's potato- field. "); August 30, 1856 ("Bidens connata abundant at Moore's Swamp, how long?"); September 12, 1859 ("The four kinds of bidens (frondosa, connata, cernua, and chrysanthemoides) abound now")

The asters and goldenrods are now in their prime, I think. See July 26, 1853 ("I mark again, about this time when the first asters open. . . This the afternoon of the year."); July 28, 1852 ("Goldenrod and asters have fairly begun; there are several kinds of each out. "); August 30, 1853 ("Why so many asters and goldenrods now?") See also August 21, 1856 ("The prevailing solidagos now are . . .”); August 24, 1853(Goldenrods and asters);September 1, 1856 ("I think it stands about thus with asters and golden-rods now.”); September 24, 1856 (“Methinks it stands thus with goldenrods and asters now”); October 8, 1856 ("The following is the condition of the asters and goldenrods")

The great white umbel-like tops of the Diplopappus umbellatus [Tall flat-top white aster] See August 1, 1856 ("Diplopappus umbellatus at Peter's wall."); August 24, 1853 ("D. umbellatus is conspicuous enough in some places (low grounds)"); August 24, 1859 ("Diplopappus umbellatus, how long?"); September 1, 1856 ("D. umbellatus, perhaps in prime or approaching it, but not much seen."); September 24, 1856 ("D. umbellatus, still abundant.")

Great black cymes of elder berries now bend down the bushes. See August 29, 1854 ("The cymes of elder-berries, black with fruit, are now conspicuous.");  August 29, 1859 ("Elder-berry clusters swell and become heavy and therefore droop, bending the bushes down, just in proportion as they ripen. Hence you see the green cymes perfectly erect, the half-ripe drooping, and the perfectly ripe hanging straight down on the same bush."); September 1, 1859 ("The elder-berry cyme, held erect, is of very regular form, four principal divisions drooping toward each quarter around an upright central one.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Elder-berries

Viola pedata out again. See August 12, 1858 (“Saw a Viola pedata blooming again.”); September 4, 1856 ("Viola pedata again."); October 23, 1853 (" The Viola pedata looking up from so low in the wood-path makes a singular impression. "); October 22, 1859 (" In the wood-path below the Cliffs I see perfectly fresh and fair Viola pedata flowers, as in the spring, though but few together. No flower by its second blooming more perfectly brings back the spring to us"); November 9, 1850 ("I found many fresh violets (Viola pedata) to-day (November 9th) in the woods.”).

Leaves of Hypericum mutilum red about water See August 27, 1856 ("Hypericum Canadense and mutilum now pretty generally open at 4 P.M., thus late in the season"); October 2, 1856 ("Now and then I see a Hypericum Canadense flower still. The leaves, . . . turned crimson.")  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

Is that very dense-flowered small white aster with short branched racemes A. Tradescanti?  See August 11, 1854 ("Aster Tradescanti, two or three days in low ground; flowers smaller than A. dumosus, densely racemed, with short peduncles or branchlets, calyx-scales narrower and more pointed."); August 14, 1856 ("Aster tradescanti, apparently a day or two."); August 30, 1859 ("Asters, especially Tradescanti, puniceus, corymbosus, dumosus, Diplopappus umbellatus"); September 1, 1854 (" The Aster Tradescanti is perhaps beginning to whiten the shores on moist banks."); September 1, 1856 ("A. Tradescanti, got to be pretty common, but not yet in prime.");
September 7, 1858 ("and now the moist banks and low hollows are beginning to be abundantly sugared with Aster Tradescantia"); September 10, 1853("The Aster Tradescanti, now in its prime, sugars the banks all along the riverside with a profusion of small white blossoms resounding with the hum of bees."): September 13, 1856 ("The Aster Tradescanti now sugars the banks densely, since I left, a week ago. Nature improves this her last opportunity to empty her lap of flowers.");September 14, 1856 ("Now for the Aster Tradescanti along low roads, like the Turnpike, swarming with butterflies and bees. Some of them are pink.");  September 21, 1858 (" Saw no Aster Tradescanti in this walk, but an abundance of A. multiflorus in its prime, in Salem and Marblehead."); September 27, 1856 ("The Aster multiflorus may easily be confounded with the A. Tradescanti. Like it, it whitens the roadside in some places. It has purplish disks, but a less straggling top than the Tradescanti.");  October 8, 1856 ("A. corymbosus, looks fresh! . . . of asters, only corymbosus, undulatus,Tradescanti, and longifolius . . .are common."); October 16, 1856 ("I notice these flowers on the way by the roadside, which survive the frost, . . . yarrow, some Aster Tradescanti, and some red clover."); October 25, 1853 ("In some places along the water's edge the Aster Tradescanti lingers still, some flowers purple, others white. The ground is strewn with pine-needles as sunlight."); November 2, 1853 (Tthough [Aster undulatus ] is the latest aster that is abundant, I am not sure that it lasts absolutely longer than the A. puniceus, or even Tradescanti.")

Brown's Ditch north of Sleepy Hollow. According to Ray Angelo. Place Names of Henry David Thoreau in Concord, Massachusetts   Brown’s Ditch  was located in part of the Deacon Reuben Brown farm in a wetland north of Sleepy Hollow asssociated with Moore’s Swamp.

It is a sacrament, a communion. The not-forbidden fruits, which no serpent tempts us to taste

July 24.

Sunday. 4.30 A. M. – By boat to Island.

Robins, larks, peawais, etc., as in the spring, at this hour.

The mikania to-morrow or next day.

The zizania, some days.

The low, front-rank polygonums are still imbrowned in many places; as I think, have not recovered from the effect of late frosts.

Mr. Pratt asked me to what animal a spine and broken skull found in the wall of James Adams’s shop belonged, — within the partition.

I found by its having but two kinds of teeth, and they incisive and molar, that it belonged to the order Rodentia, which, with us, consists of the Beaver, Hare, Rat ( including squirrels ), and Porcupine families.

From its having “ incisors 3, molars 3 ” and “ molars with a flat crown and zigzag plates of enamel, ” I knew it to be a muskrat, which probably got into the building at a time of high water.

The molars appeared like one long tooth, their flat, smooth tops zigzagged with the edges of hard plates of 1 in this and some but after looking long and sharply with a microscope, though on the side I could not distinguish the separate teeth, I made out, by tracing about the edges of the enamel which intertwined and m broke joints curiously for strength, three separate inclosures, and, with full faith in this and in science, I told Pratt it was a muskrat, and gave him my proofs; but he could not distinguish the three molars even with a glass, or was still plainly uncertain, for he had thought them one tooth, when, taking his pincers, he pulled one out and was convinced, much to his and to my satisfaction and our confidence in science ! How very hard must be the teeth of this animal whose food is clams!

What keeps his incisors so sharp?

Look at this strong head, with its upper jaw and incisor curved somewhat like a turtle’s beak.

What an apparatus for cutting, holding, crushing ! What a trap to be caught in ! It is amusing to think what grists have come to this mill, though now the upper and nether stones fall loosely apart, and the brain-chamber above, where the miller lodged, is now empty ( passing under the portcullis of the incisors ), and the windows are gone. 

With or without reason, I find myself associating with the idea of summer a certain cellar-like coolness, resulting from the depth of shadows and the luxuriance of foliage.

I think that after this date the crops never suffer so severely from drought as in June, because of their foliage shading the ground and producing dews.

We had fog this morning, and no doubt often the last three weeks, which my surveying has prevented my getting up to see.

It is the palmer-worm which has attacked the apple trees this year.

Surveying one very hot day, a week or two ago, and having occasion to strip a sapling of its bark, I was surprised to observe how cool the freshly exposed and sappy wood was, as if it extracted coolness from the cool cellars of the earth.

Sophia's Viola pedata, taken up in the spring, blossomed again a day or two ago. 

I perceive the peculiar scent of corn-fields.

Yesterday a dew-like, gentle summer rain.

You scarcely know if you are getting wet.

At least two kinds of grass as tall as the zizania have preceded it along the river.

One has long since gone to seed, and looks flavid or yellowish now.

The other is still in blossom, its chaff ( ? ) being remarkably and regularly on one side of the glume (?). 

For a week or more I have perceived that the evenings were considerably longer and of some account to sit down and write in.


Ate an early-harvest apple of my own raising yesterday; not quite ripe.

The scent of some very early ones which I have passed in my walks, imparting some ripeness to the year, has excited me somewhat.

It affects me like a performance, a poem, a thing done; and all the year is not a mere promise of Nature’s.

How far behind the spring seems now, — farther off, perhaps, than ever, for this heat and dryness is most opposed to spring.

Where most I sought for flowers in April and May I do not think to go now; it is either drought and barrenness or fall there now.

The reign of moisture is long since over.

For a long time the year feels the influence of the snows of winter and the long rains of spring, but now how changed! It is like another and a fabulous age to look back on, when earth’s veins were full of moisture, and violets burst out on every hillside. 

Spring is the reign of water; summer, of heat and dryness; winter, of cold. 

Whole families of plants that lately flourished have disappeared.

Now the phenomena are tropical.

Let our summer last long enough, and our land would wear the aspect of the tropics.

The luxuriant foliage and growth of all kinds shades the earth and is con verting every copse into a jungle.

Vegetation is rampant.

There is not such rapid growth, it is true, but it slumbers like a serpent that has swallowed its prey.

Summer is one long drought.

Rain is the exception.

All the signs of it fail, for it is dry weather.

Though’it may seem so, the current year is not peculiar in this respect.

It is a slight labor to keep count of all the showers, the rainy days, of a summer.

You may keep it on your thumb nail.



P. M.--To Corner Spring and Fair Haven Hill.

Mimulus ringens at Heywood Brook, probably several days.

The fruit of the skunk-cabbage is turned black.

At Hubbard’s Bathing-Place I tread on clams all across the river in mid-channel, flattening them down, for they are on their edges.

The small linear leaved hypericum (H. Canadense) shows red capsules.

The black choke-berry, probably some days.

The dark indigo-blue (Sophia says), waxy, and like blue china blue berries of the clintonia are already well ripe. For some time, then, though a few are yet green.  They are numerous near the edge of Hubbard’s lower meadow. They are in clusters of half a dozen on brittle stems eight or ten inches high, oblong or squarish round, the size of large peas with a dimple atop.

Seen thus, above the handsome, regular green leaves which are still perfect in form and color and which, here growing close together, checker the ground, and also in the dense shade of the copse, there is something peculiarly celestial about them. This is the plant’s true flower, for which it has preserved its leaves fresh and unstained so long.

Eupatorium pubescens at Hubbard’s burnt meadow.

There is much near his grove.

Also Epilobium molle there (put it with the coloratum), and coloratum and the common still in blossom.

There is erechthites there, budded.

Also Lysimachia ciliata and, by the causeway near, the ovate-leaved, quite distinct from the lanceolate, — I think not so early as the last.

At the Corner Spring the berries of the trillium are already pink.

The medeola is still in flower, though with large green berries.

The swamp-pink still blooms and the morning-glory is quite fresh; it is a pure white, like a lady’s morning gown.

The aspect of vegetation about the spring reminds me of fall.

The angelica, skunk-cabbage, trillium, arum, and the lodged and flattened grass are all phenomena of the fall.

A spikenard just beyond the spring has already pretty large green berries, though a few flowers. Say July 10th.

It is a great plant, six feet high, seven long, with the largest pinnate leaves of this kind I think of. More than two feet by two, with single leafets eleven inches by nine.

The two-leaved convallaria and the Smilacina racemosa show ripening clusters.

I hear incessantly a cricket or locust, inspired by the damp, cool shade, telling of autumn.

I have not observed it more than a week.

Scutellaria galericulata, maybe some time.

The berries of the Vaccinium vacillans are very abundant and large this year on Fair Haven, where I am now.

Indeed these and huckleberries and blackberries are very abundant in this part of the town.

Nature does her best to feed man.

The traveller need not go out of the road to get as many as he wants; every bush and vine teems with palatable fruit.

Man for once stands in such relation to Nature as the animals that pluck and eat as they go.

The fields and bills are a table constantly spread.

Wines of all kinds and qualiities, of noblest vintage, are bottled up in the skins of countless berries, for the taste of men and animals.

To men they seem offered not so much for food as for sociality, that they may picnic with Nature, — diet drinks, cordials, wines.

We pluck and eat in remembrance of Her.

It is a sacrament, a communion.

The not-forbidden fruits, which no serpent tempts us to taste.

Slight and innocent savors, which relate us to Nature, make us her guests and entitle us to her regard and protection.

It is a Saturnalia, and we quaff her wines at every turn.

This season of berrying is so far respected that the children have a vacation to pick berries, and women and children who never visit distant hills and fields and swamps on any other errand are seen making baste thither now, with half their domestic utensils in their hands.

The woodchopper goes into the swamp for fuel in the winter; his wife and children for berries in the summer.

The late rose, — R. Carolina, swamp rose, – I think has larger and longer leaves; at any rate they are duller above (light beneath), and the bushes higher.

The shaggy hazelnuts now greet the eye, always an agreeable sight to me, with which when a boy I used to take the stains of berries out of my hands and mouth.

These and green grapes are found at berry time.

High blueberries, when thick and large, bending the twigs, are a very handsome cool, rich, acid berry.

On Fair Haven a quarter of an hour before sunset.

— How fortunate and glorious that our world is not roofed in, but open like a Roman house, — our skylight so broad and open! We do not climb the hills in vain.

It is no crystal palace we dwell in.

The windows of the sky are always open, and the storms blow in at them.

The field sparrow sings with that varied strain.

The night wind rises.

On the eastern side of this hill it is already twilight.

The air is cooler and clearer.

The mountains which were almost invisible grow more distinct.

The various heights of our hills are plainly shown by the more or less of the mountain bases seen * from them.

The atmosphere of the western horizon is impurpled, tingeing the mountains.

A golden sheen is reflected from the river so brightly that it dazzles me as much as the sun.

The now silver-plated river is burnished gold there, and in midst of all I see a boat ascending with regular dip of its seemingly gilt oars.

That which appears a strip of smooth, light silvery water on each side of the stream, not reflecting the sky, is the reflection of light from the pads.

From their edges, there stream into the smooth channel sharp blue serrations or ripples of various lengths, sometimes nearly across, where seemingly a zephyr gliding off the pads strikes it.

A boy is looking after his cows, calling “ker ker ker ker,” impatient to go home.

The sun is passing under the portcullis of the west.

The nighthawk squeaks, and the chewink jingles his strain, and the wood thrush; but I think there is no loud and general serenade from the birds.

I hear no veery. 

How much more swiftly the sun seems to perform the morning and evening portions of his journey, when he is nearest his starting-place or goal!

He is now almost ready to dip, — a round red disk shorn of his beams, — his head shaved like a captive led forth for execution.

Meanwhile the night is rapidly gathering her forces in deepening lines of shade under the east side of the willow causeway and the woods.

Now the sun has dipped into the western ocean.

He is one half below the horizon, and I see lines of distinct forest trees, miles and miles away on some ridge, now revealed against his disk.

It takes many a western woodland — go far enough, a whole Iowa-to span it.

Now only the smallest segment of its sphere, like a coal of fire rising above the forest, is seen sending a rosy glow up the horizon sky.

The illustrious traveller with whom we have passed a memorable day has gone his way, and we return slowly to our castle of the night.

But for some minutes the glowing portal clouds are essentially unchanged.

Pycnanthemum muticum behind Wheeler’s cottages; put it with the earliest of its class



H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 24, 1853

Sophia's Viola pedata blossomed again a day or two ago. August 12, 1858 ("Saw a Viola pedata blooming again. "); September 4, 1856 ("Viola pedata again."); October 22, 1859 (" I see perfectly fresh and fair Viola pedata flowers, as in the spring, though but few together. No flower by its second blooming more perfectly brings back the spring to us.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Violets

The small linear leaved hypericum (H. Canadense) shows red capsules. See July 19, 1856 ("It is the Hypericum ellipticum and Canadense (linear- leaved) whose red pods are noticed now.");  August 15, 1859 ("Hypericum Canadense, Canadian St. John's-wort, distinguished by its red capsules.");  August 19, 1851 ("Now for the pretty red capsules or pods of the Hypericum Canadense") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

Where most I sought for flowers in April and May I do not think to go now. See July 18, 1854 ("Where I looked for early spring flowers I do not look for midsummer ones.")

The dark indigo-blue (Sophia says), waxy, and like blue china blue berries of the clintonia are already well ripe. See July 19, 1854 ("Clintonia berries in a day or two."); August 27, 1856 ("the peculiar large dark blue indigo clintonia berries of irregular form and dark-spotted, in umbels of four or five on very brittle stems which break with a snap and on erectish stemlets or pedicels.")

At the Corner Spring the berries of the trillium are already pink See July 22, 1852 ("The green berries of the arum are seen, and the now reddish fruit of the trillium, and the round green-pea-sized green berries of the axil-flowering Solomon's-seal.")

This season of berrying is so far respected that the children have a vacation to pick berries. See July 16, 1851 ("Berries are just beginning to ripen, and children are planning expeditions after them."); July 31, 1856 ("The children should grow rich if they can get eight cents a quart for black berries, as they do."); August 5, 1852 ("The men, women, and children who perchance come hither blueberrying in their season get more than the value of the berries in the influences of the scene")

A golden sheen is reflected from the river so brightly that it dazzles me as much as the sun. See October 19 1855 ("if there were eyes enough to occupy all the east shore, the whole pond would be seen as one dazzling shimmering lake of melted gold.")

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

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