The meadows by the railroad appear fresh and tender green.

August  19. 

August 19, 2015

The meadows by the railroad appear to have got an exceedingly fresh and tender green. 

The near meadow is very beautiful now, seen from the railroad through this dog-day haze, which softens its fresh green of so many various shades, blending them harmoniously, — darker and lighter patches of grass and the very light yellowish-green of the sensitive fern which the mowers have left. It has an indescribable beauty to my eye now, which it could not have in a clear day. 

The haze has the effect both of a wash or varnish and of a harmonizing tint. It destroys the idea of definite distance which distinctness suggests. 

It is as if you had painted a meadow of fresh grass springing up after the mower, — here a dark green, there lighter, and there again the yellowish onoclea, — then washed it over with some gum like a map and tinted the paper of a fine misty blue. This is an effect of the dog-days.

There is such a haze we see not further than our Annursnack, which is blue as a mountain.

There is now a remarkable drought, some of whose phenomena I have referred to during several weeks past.  Many white birches long since lost the greater part of their leaves, which cover the ground, sere and brown as in autumn. 

So like tinder is everything now that we passed three places within a mile where the old sleepers heaped up by the track had just been set on fire by the engine, — in one place a large pile.  

Flint's Pond has fallen very much since I was here. The shore is so exposed that you can walk round, which I have not known possible for several years, and the outlet is dry. But Walden is not affected by the drought.

Plucked, about 4.30, one bunch of Viburnum nudum berries, all green, with very little pink tinge even. When I got home at 6.30, nine were turned blue, the next morning thirty. It seems that they do not always pass through the deep-pink stage. They are quite sweet to eat, like raisins. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 19, 1854

Fresh green of so many various shades blending . . . harmoniously. See August 19, 1853 ("The different shades of green of different and the same trees . . . melting into one another . . . make a most glorious soft and harmonious picture, only to be seen at this season of the day and perhaps of the year”)

The very light yellowish-green of the sensitive fern which the mowers have left. See August 6, 1854 ("Small light-green sensitive ferns are springing up full of light on the bank.") September 6, 1856 ("The sensitiveness of the sensitive fern. If you take a tender plant by the stem, the warmth of your hand will cause the leaves to curl.")

There is such a haze we see not further than our Annursnack, which is blue as a mountain. See August 13, 1854 ("Now the mountains are concealed by the dog-day haze”); August 22, 1854 (“The haze is so thick that we can hardly see more than a mile.”); Compare August 19, 1858 ("The dog-day weather is suddenly gone and here is a cool, clear, and elastic air. You may say it is the first day of autumn.")

There is now a remarkable drought.  See July 13, 1854 (“In the midst of July heat and drought.”);  July 14, 1854 (“Awake to day of gentle rain, — very much needed; none to speak of for nearly a month, methinks”); September 10, 1854 ("September 1st and 2d, the thunder-shower of evening of September 6th, and this regular storm are the first fall rains after the long drought.”)

Flint's Pond has fallen very much . . . But Walden is not affected by the drought. See  Walden ("The pond rises and falls, but whether regularly or not, and within what period, nobody knows, though, as usual, many pretend to know. . . . Flint's Pond, a mile eastward . . . sympathize[s] with Walden, and recently attained their greatest height at the same time with the latter.")  and note to December 5, 1852 ("Walden has no visible inlet nor outlet, but it is . . . distantly and indirectly related to Flint's Pond")

One bunch of Viburnum nudum berries, all green, with very little pink tinge even. See August 12, 1854 ("They are a very pretty, irregularly elliptical berry, one side longer than the other, and particularly interesting on account of the mixture of light-green, deep-pink, and dark-purple, and also withered berries, in the same cyme. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Viburnum

August 19. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 19

Fresh and tender green 

of so many shades blending 

harmoniously.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The meadows by the railroad

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-540819

The white caps of the waves on the flooded meadow, seen from the window; signs of spring

March 18

March 18, 2019

Very high wind this forenoon; began by filling the air with a cloud of dust. Never felt it shake the house so much; filled the house with dust through the cracks; books, stove, papers covered with it. Blew down Mr. Frost's chimney again.

Took up my boat, a very heavy one, which was lying on its bottom in the yard, and carried it two rods. 

The white caps of the waves on the flooded meadow, seen from the window, are a rare and exciting spectacle, — such an angry face as our Concord meadows rarely exhibit. 

Walk down the street to post-office. Few inhabitants out more than in a rain. Elms bending and twisting and thrashing the air as if they would come down every moment. 

P. M. — Walked round by the west side of the river to Conantum. 

Wind less violent. 

C. has already seen a yellow- spotted tortoise in a ditch. 

(Two sizable elms by river in Merrick's pasture blown down, roots being rotted off on water side.) 

The willow catkins this side M. Miles's five eighths of an inch long and show some red. 

Poplar catkins nearly as large, color somewhat like a gray rabbit. 

Old barn blown down on Conantum. It fell regularly, like a weak box pushed over, without moving its bottom,  the roof falling upon it a little to leeward. The hay is left exposed, but does not blow away. 

The river was at its height last night.

It is very cold and freezing, this wind. The water has been blown quite across the Hubbard's Bridge causeway in some places and incrusted the road with ice.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 18, 1854

Very high wind this forenoon . . . very cold and freezing. See March 14, 1853 ("High winds, growing colder and colder, ground stiffening again. My ears have not been colder the past winter . . . March is rightly famous for its winds. "); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: March is famous for its winds

Took up my boat, a very heavy one. . . and carried it two rods.  See March 12, 1854 (" Men are eager to launch their boats and paddle over the meadows."); March 15, 1854 ("Paint my boat."); March 16, 1854 ("See and hear honey-bees about my boat in the yard, attracted probably by the beeswax in the grafting-wax which was put on it a year ago."); March 22, 1854 ("Launch boat and paddle to Fair Haven. Still very cold.") See also December 5, 1856 ("I love to have the river closed up for a season and a pause put to my boating to be obliged to get my boat in. I shall launch it again in the spring with so much more pleasure. I love best to have each thing in its season only and enjoy doing without it at all other times. ")

The white caps of the waves on the flooded meadow, seen from the window. See March 29, 1852 (“The water on the meadows looks very dark from the street . . . There is more water and it is more ruffled at this season than at any other, and the waves look quite angry and black. ”); April 10, 1856  ("Our meadow looks as angry now as it ever can.")

A yellow-spotted tortoise in a ditch. See February 23, 1857 ("I have seen signs of the spring. . . I have seen the brilliant spotted tortoises stirring at the bottom of ditches."): March 22, 1853 ("The Emys guttata is first found in warm, muddy ditches.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Yellow-Spotted Turtle (Emys guttata) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Frogs, and Turtles Stirring

The willow catkins this side M. Miles's five eighths of an inch long and show some red. See March 10, 1854 ("The willow catkins on the Miles [road] I should say had decidedly started since I was here last, and are all peeping from under their scales conspicuously.")  March 21, 1855 ("Early willow and aspen catkins are very conspicuous now. "); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding

Poplar catkins nearly as large, color somewhat like a gray rabbit. See February 27. 1852 ("The buds of the aspen show a part of their down or silky catkins."); March 4, 1860 ("Aspen down a quarter of an inch out.") ; March 9, 1853 ("The relaxed and loosened (?) alder catkins and the extended willow catkins and poplar catkins are the first signs of reviving vegetation which I have witnessed."); March 10, 1853 ("Methinks the first obvious evidence of spring is the pushing out of the swamp willow catkins, then the relaxing of the earlier alder catkins . . . The early poplars are pushing forward their catkins , though they make not so much display as the willows"); March 22, 1860 ("The phenomena of an average March . . .willow catkins become silvery, aspens downy; osiers, etc., look bright, white maple and elm buds expand and open, oak woods thin-leaved; alder and hazel catkins become relaxed and elongated. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Aspens

March 18. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 18

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, 

The white caps of the waves on the flooded meadow, seen from the window

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024

tinyurl.com/hdt-540318

Winter flooding

February 27

Morning. — Rain over; water in great part run off; wind rising; river risen and meadows flooded.

The rain-water and melted snow have run swiftly over the frozen ground into the river, and raised it with the ice on it and flooded the meadows, covering the ice there; so that you have floating ice everywhere bridging the river, and then a broad meadowy flood above ice again.

The rapidity with which water flowing over the icy ground seeks its level. All that rain would hardly have produced a puddle in midsummer, but now it produces a freshet, and will perhaps break up the river.

It looks as if Nature had a good deal of work on her hands between now and April, to break up and melt twenty-one inches of ice on the ponds, — beside melting all the snow, — and before planting-time to thaw from one to two and a half or three feet of frozen ground.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 27, 1854

Floating ice everywhere bridging the river, and then a broad meadowy flood above ice again. See  February 28, 1855 ("Our meadows present a very wild and arctic scene. Far on every side, over what is usually dry land, are scattered a stretching pack of great cakes of ice.”); January 22, 1855 ("Great cakes of ice lodged and sometimes tilted up against the causeway bridges, over which the water pours as over a dam.”)

A fresh cool summer morning.

July 2.

It is a fresh, cool summer morning.

That principle which gives the air an azure color is more abundant.

From the road at N. Barrett's, on my way to P. Blood's at 8:30A.M., the Great Meadows have a slight bluish misty tinge; elsewhere a sort of hoary sheen. Miles of waving grass adorning the surface of the earth, inconceivably fine and silvery far away, - light reflects from the grass blades. 

July 2

It takes but little distance to make the hills and even the meadows look blue to-day. 

To-day the milkweed is blossoming.  Some of the raspberries are ripe, the most innocent and simple of fruits. Cherries are ripe. Strawberries in the gardens have passed their prime.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 2, 1851

To Well Meadow

July 1.

While reclining on the sedge at end of town-bound path, I see a warbler deliberately investigating the smooth sumachs and their old berrybunches, in various positions. It is a slaty blue above, with a bright-yellow front-head and much yellow on the wings, a very distinct black throat, triangularwise, with a broad black line through the eyes, a forked tail dark beneath; belly white or whitish.

It is undoubtedly the golden-winged warbler, which I think must be breeding here.


I see young partridges not bigger than robins fly three or four rods, not squatting fast, now.

Returning over the causeway, the light of the sun was reflected from the awns of a grain-field by Abiel Wheeler's house so brightly and in such a solid mass as to at first impress you as if it were whiter than the densest whiteweed thereabouts, but in fact it was not white, but a very bright sunny gleam from the waving phalanx of awns, more calculated to reflect the light than any object in the landscape.

H. D. Thoreau , Journal, July 1, 1860

Golden-winged warbler. See July 24, 1860 ("The carpenter working for Edward Hoar in Lincoln caught, two or three clays ago, an exhausted or half-furnished golden-winged warbler alive in their yard. It was within half a mile that I saw one a few weeks ago. It is a sufficiently well-marked bird, by the large yellow spot on the wing (the greater coverts), yellow front and crown, and the very distinct black throat and, I should say, upper breast, above which white divided by a broad black line through the eye. Above blue-gray, with much yellowish-green dusting or reflection, i.e. edging, to the feathers.”); May 6, 1855 (“ Bright-yellow head and shoulders and beneath, and dark legs and bill catching insects along base of pitch pine plumes, some, what creeper-like; very active and restless, darting from tree to tree; darts at and drives off a chickadee. I find I have thus described its colors last year at various times, viz.: black throat, this often with dark and light beneath; again, black streak from eyes, slate-colored back (?), forked tail, white beneath (?)”)

I see young partridges not bigger than robins .See June 26, 1857 ("See a pack of partridges as big as robins at least.”);July 5, 1856 ("Young partridges (with the old bird), as big as robins, make haste into the woods from off the railroad.") See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,the Partridge

Summer foliage.

June 30.

It is a world of glossy leaves and grassy fields and meads. 

The foliage of deciduous trees is now so nearly as dark as evergreens that I am not struck by the contrast. The shadows under the edge of woods are less noticed now because the woods themselves are darker.

Standing on the side of Fair Haven Hill the verdure generally appears at its height, the air clear, and the water sparkling after the rain of yesterday. Seen through this clear, sparkling, breezy air, the fields, woods, and meadows are very brilliant and fair. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 30, 1860

The foliage of deciduous trees is now so nearly as dark as evergreens that I am not struck by the contrast. See May 18, 1852 (“[The dark green pines] are now being invested with the light, sunny, yellowish-green of the deciduous trees.");May 27, 1855 (“How important the dark evergreens now seen through the haze in the distance and contrasting with the gauze-like, as yet thin-clad deciduous trees!")

Color after so much brown.

May 4

May 4, 2015

Looking across the Peninsula toward Ball's Hill, I am struck by the bright blue of the river (a deeper blue than the sky), contrasting with the fresh yellow green of the meadow (coarse sedges just starting), and, between them, a darker or greener green next the edge of the river, especially where that small sand-bar island is (the green of the early rank river-grass). 

This is the first painting or coloring in the meadows. These several colors are as distinct and simple as a child's painting.

I am struck by the amount and variety of color after so much brown

The sun sets red, shorn of its beams.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, May 4, 1860

The sun sets red, shorn of its beams. See May 5, 1859 ("The sun sets red (first time), followed by a very hot and hazy day.”)

Blue of the river 

yellow green of the meadow 

next to greener green 

These several colors 

are as distinct and simple

as a child's painting.

*****

May 4. River three and one fourth inches below summer level. Scales of turtles are coming off (painted turtle). Quite a warm day, — 70 at 6 P. M. 

Currant out a day or two at least, and our first gooseberry a day later.

P. M. – To Great Meadows by boat. I see Haynes with a large string of pickerel, and he says that he caught a larger yesterday. There were none of the brook pickerel in this string. He goes every day, and has good luck. It must be because the river is so low. Fishing, then, has fairly commenced. It is never any better pickerel - fishing than now. 

He has caught three good - sized trout in the river within a day or [ two ]; one would weigh a pound and a half. One above the railroad bridge, and one off Abner Buttrick’s, Saw Mill Brook. He has caught them in the river before, but very rarely. He caught these as he was fishing for pickerel. This, too, may be because the river is low and it is early in the season. 

He says that he uses the Rana halecina for bait; that a pickerel will spit out the yellow legged one. 

Walking over the river meadows to examine the pools and see how much dried up they are, I notice, as usual, the track of the musquash, some five inches wide always, always exactly in the lowest part of the muddy hollows connecting one pool with another, winding as they wind, as if loath to raise itself above the lowest mud. 

At first he swam there, and now, as the water goes down, he follows it steadily, and at length travels on the bare mud, but as low and close to the water as he can get. Thus he first traces the channel of the future brook and river, and deepens it by dragging his belly along it. He lays out and engineers its road. As our roads are said to follow the trail of the cow, so rivers in another period follow the trail of the musquash. 

They are perfect rats to look at, and swim fast against the stream. When I am talking on a high bank I often see one swimming along within half a dozen rods and land openly, as if regardless of us. Probably, being under water at first, he did not hear us. 

When the locomotive was first introduced into Concord, the cows and horses ran in terror to the other sides of their pastures as it passed along, and I suppose that the fishes in the river manifested equal alarm at first; but I notice (to - day, the 11th of May) that a pickerel by Derby’s Bridge, poised in a smooth bay, did not stir perceptibly when the train passed over the neighboring bridge and the locomotive screamed remarkably loud. The fishes have, no doubt, got used to the sound.

 I see a bullfrog under water. Land at the first angle of the Holt. 

Looking across the Peninsula toward Ball’s Hill, I am struck by the bright blue of the river (a deeper blue than the sky), contrasting with the fresh yellow green of the meadow (i. e. of coarse sedges just starting), and, between them, a darker or greener green next the edge of the river, especially where that small sand - bar island is, — the green of that early rank river - grass. 

This is the first painting or coloring in the meadows. These several colors are, as it were, daubed on, as on chinaware, or as distinct and simple as a child’s painted [ sic ]. 

I am struck by the amount and variety of color after so much brown. As I stood there I heard a thumping sound, which I referred to Peter’s, three quarters of a mile off over the meadow. But it was a pigeon woodpecker excavating its nest within a maple within a rod of me. Though I had just landed and made a noise with my boat, he was too busy to hear me, but now he hears my tread, and I see him put out his head and then withdraw it warily and keep still, while I stay there. Pipes (Equisetum limosum) are now generally three to seven inches high, but so brown as yet that I mistook them at a little distance for a dead brown stubble amid the green of springing sedge, and not a fresh growth at all. 

They are at last a very dark green still, if I remember. The river is very low, but I find that the meadows, though bare, are not very dry, except for the season, and I am pretty sure that within two or three years, and at this season, I have seen the pools on the meadows drier when there was more water in the river. · 

The Great Meadows are wet to walk over, after all, and the great pools on them are rather unapproachable, even in india - rubber boots. Apparently it is impossible for the meadows to be so dry at this season, however low the river may be, as they may be at midsummer and later. Their own springs are fuller now. 

A Nuphar advena in one of these pools what you may call out, for it is rather stale, though no pollen is shed. 

What little water there is amid the pipes and sedge is filled and swarming with apparently the larva of some insect, perhaps ephemeræ. They keep up an undulating motion, and have many feathery fringes on the sides.

 I observe fishes close inshore, active and rippling the water when not scared, as if breeding; often their back fins out. 

The sun sets red, shorn of its beams.

 Those little silvery beetles in Ed. Emerson’s aquarium that dash about are evidently the Notonecta, or water boatmen. I believe there is a larger and somewhat similar beetle, which does not swim on its back, called Dytiscus. 

Missouri currant out; how long?