I see where the crickets are eating the wild strawberries.

June 20. 

 Tuesday. 

June 20, 2014

Motherwort to-morrow. 

Elder. 

A cloud of minute black pollywogs in a muddy pool. I see where the crickets are eating the wild strawberries. 

P. M. - To Shadbush Meadow. 

Heard a new bird –– chut-cheeter-varrer-chutter-wit ––on the low bushes, about the size of Wilson's thrush apparently. Apparently olivaceous (?) above, most so on head, yellow front, dark bill, dark wings with two white bars, all yellow or yellowish breast and beneath. Perhaps never heard it before. 

Cow-wheat, apparently two or three days.

A three-leaved Lysimachia stricta apparently, with reddish flower-buds, not open. 

Shad-berries almost, but scarce. 

There seems to be much variety in the Rosa lucida, some to have stouter hooked prickles than the R. Carolina.  

Upland haying begun, or beginning. 

Common nettle.

H. D Thoreau, Journal, June 20, 1854


Motherwort to-morrow. See June 29, 1852 ("Leonurus Cardiaca, motherwort, a nettle-like plant by the street-side.")

Elder. See June 21, 1852 ("Elder is blossoming; flowers opening now where black berries will be by and by.")

A cloud of minute black pollywogs in a muddy pool..See June 15, 1852 ("This half-stagnant pond-hole, drying up and leaving bare mud, with the pollywogs and turtles making off in it, is agreeable and encouraging to behold, as if it contained the seeds of life, the liquor rather, boiled down. The foulest water will bubble purely.");  See also June 15, 1851 ("The pollywogs in the pond are now fulltailed"); June 15, 1855 ("Many pollywogs an inch long.") and note to May 19, 1857 ("See myriads of minute pollywogs, recently hatched, in the water of Moore's Swamp.")

I see where the crickets are eating the wild strawberries. See June 22, 1851 ("Only in the quiet of evening do I so far recover my senses as to hear the cricket, which in fact has been chirping all day.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cricket in Spring and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: Strawberries

Cow-wheat, apparently two or three days. See June 14, 1859 ("Cow-wheat, how long ?"); June 16, 1856 ("Cow-wheat numerously out."); June 19, 1853 ("Cow-wheat out"); August 6, 1851("After how few steps, how little exertion, the student stands in pine woods above the Solomon's-seal and the cow-wheat, in a place still unaccountably strange and wild to him, and to all civilization!") [Cow-wheat is a native annual hemiparasite (partially parasitic), using specialized root structures to invade the roots of its host and steal nutrients, while also performing photosynthesis. Its hosts may be several species of pine (Pinus) and poplar (Populus) ~ GoBotany].

Shad-berries almost, but scarce. See June 25, 1853. ("An unusual quantity of amelanchier berries, – I think of the two common kinds . . . Both these are now in their prime. These are the first berries after strawberries. . .I  never saw nearly so many before. It is a very agreeable surprise."); June 25, 1854 ("Shad-berry ripe.") 

The Rosa lucida . . . have stouter hooked prickles than the R. Carolina. See June 21, 1852 (" I observe a rose (called by some moss rose), with a bristly reddish stem; another, with a smooth red stem and but a few prickles; another, with many prickles and bristles."); July 24, 1853 ("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.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Rose
Upland haying begun. See June 21, 1853 ("The farmers have commenced haying. With this the summer culminates.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Haymaking

July 20. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 20

Rosa lucida –

stouter hooked prickles than the

R. Carolina.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Crickets are eating the Wild Strawberries

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-540620

A Book of the Seasons: Strawberries

 I would make a chart of our life,

know why just this circle of creatures completes the world.

Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852

June 13, 2024

Many strawberries

this season in meadows now –

just fairly begun 

 June 18, 1854

June 9. A strawberry half turned on the sand of the causeway side, — the first fruit or berry of the year that I have tasted. June 9, 1854

June 9. Got two or three handfuls of strawberries on Fair Haven . . . Little natural beds or patches on the sides of dry hills, where the fruit sometimes reddens the ground. June 9, 1853

June 10. Ripe strawberries, even in a meadow on sand thrown out of a ditch, hard at first to detect amid the red radical leaves. June 10, 1856

June 13. What a sweetness fills the air now in low grounds or meadows, reminding me of times when I went strawberrying years ago! It is as if all meadows were filled with some sweet mint. June 13, 1852

June 13. Stop to pick strawberries on Fair Haven. June 13, 1854

June 13. Strawberries. June 13, 1858

June 14. As soon as the rain is over I crawl out, straighten my legs, and stumble at once upon a little patch of strawberries within a rod, -- the sward red with them. These we pluck while the last drops are thinly falling. June 14, 1855

June 14. Early strawberries begin to be common. The lower leaves of the plant are red, concealing the fruit. June 14, 1859

June 15. Quite a feast of strawberries on Fair Haven, — the upland strawberry. The largest and sweetest on sand. The first fruit. June 15, 1852

June 15. Strawberries in the meadow now ready for the picker. They lie deep at the roots of the grass in the shade. You spread aside the tall grass, and deep down in little cavities by the roots of the grass you find this rich fruit. June 15, 1853

June 15. How interesting a thin patch of strawberry vines now on a rocky hillside, though the fruit is quite scarce! June 15, 1859

June 17. The season of hope and promise is past; already the season of small fruits has arrived. We are a little saddened, because we begin to see the interval between our hopes and their fulfillment. The prospect of the heavens is taken away, and we are presented only with a few small berries. Before sundown I reach Fair Haven Hill and gather strawberries. I find beds of large and lusty strawberry plants in sprout-lands, but they appear to run to leaves and bear very little fruit, having spent themselves in leaves by the time the dry weather arrives. It is those still earlier and more stinted plants which grow on dry uplands that bear the early fruit, formed before the droughts. But the meadows produce both leaves and fruit. June 17, 1854

June 18. There are many strawberries this season, in meadows now, just fairly begun there. June 18, 1854

June 19. Got quite a parcel of strawberries on the hill. June 19, 1853

June 20. I see where the crickets are eating the wild strawberries. June 20, 1854

July 2. Strawberries in the gardens have passed their prime. July 2, 1851

July 4. Strawberries were abundant by the roadside and in the grass on hillsides everywhere, with the seeds conspicuous, sunk in pits on the surface. July 4, 1858

July 12. I find many strawberries deep in the grass of the meadow near this Hosmer Spring; then proceed on my way with reddened and fragrant fingers, till it gets washed off at new springs. July 12, 1857

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau: Strawberries

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-straw

The different colors of the various parts of this bark, at various times.

June 8.

Sunday. 

June 8, 2024

In F. A. Michaux's, i. e. the younger Michaux's “Voyage à l'ouest des Monts Alléghanys, 1802,” printed at Paris, 1808: 

. . . A Vermonter told him that the expense of clearing land in his State was always defrayed by the potash obtained from the ashes of the trees which were burnt, and sometimes people took land to clear on condition that they should have what potash they could make. 

June 8, 2017

***

Gathered the first strawberries to-day. 

Observed on Fair Haven a tall pitch pine, such as some call yellow pine, very smooth, yellowish, and destitute of branches to a great height. The outer and darker-colored bark appeared to have scaled off, leaving a fresh and smooth surface. At the ground, all round the tree, I saw what appeared to be the edges of the old surface scales, extending to two inches more in thickness. The bark was divided into large, smooth plates, one to two feet long and four to six inches wide.

I noticed that the cellular portion of the bark of the canoe birch log from which I stripped the epidermis a week or two ago was turned a complete brick-red color very striking to behold and reminding me of the red man and all strong, natural things, — the color of our blood somewhat. Under the epidermis it was still a sort of buff. The different colors of the various parts of this bark, at various times, fresh or stale, are extremely agreeable to my eye.

I found the white-pine-top full of staminate blossom buds not yet fully grown or expanded, with a rich red tint like a tree full of fruit, but I could find no pistillate blossom. 

The fugacious-petalled cistus, and the pink, and the lupines of various tints are seen together.

***

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 8, 1851

The different colors of the various parts of this bark, at various times, fresh or stale, are extremely agreeable to my eye. See  May 18, 1851 ("The log of a canoe birch on Fair Haven, cut down the last winter . . . all parts of the epidermis exposed to the air and light were white, but the inner surfaces freshly exposed, were a buff or salmon-color."); January 24, 1858 ("The sprouts of the canoe birch are not reddish like the white, but a yellowish brown.); January 9, 1860 ("There is an interesting variety in the colors of their bark, passing from bronze at the earth, through ruddy and copper colors to white higher up, with shreds of different color from that beneath peeling off.")

I found the white-pine-top full of staminate blossom buds not yet fully grown or expanded, with a rich red tint like a tree full of fruit, but I could find no pistillate blossom. See June 21, 1860 ("In the white pine it is a dense cluster of twenty or thirty little flowers about the base of this year's shoot."); June 25, 1852 ("I am too late for the white pine flowers. The cones are half an inch long and greenish, and the male flowers effete."); July 1, 1852 ("The path by the wood-side is red with the effete staminiferous flowers of the white pine. ") See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The White Pines

June 8. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 8

This white-pine-top full

of staminate blossom buds

with a rich red tint .

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

Heard my night-warbler on a solitary white pine in the Heywood Clearing by the Peak.

June 19.

June 19, 2020

P. M. – To Flint ’ s Pond.

I see large patches of blue - eyed grass in the meadow across the river from my window.

The pine woods at Thrush Alley emit that hot dry scent, reminding me even of days when I used to go a-blackberrying.

The air is full of the hum of invisible insects, and I hear a locust. Perhaps this sound indicates the time to put on a thin coat.

But the wood thrush sings as usual far in the wood.

A blue jay and a tanager come dashing into the pine under which I stand. The first flies directly away, screaming with suspicion or disgust, but the latter, more innocent, remains.

The cuckoo is heard, too, in the depths of the wood.

Heard my night-warbler on a solitary white pine in the Heywood Clearing by the Peak. Discovered it at last, looking like a small piece of black bark curving partly over the limb. No fork to its tail. It appeared black beneath; was very shy, not bigger than a yellowbird, and very slender.

In the middle of the path to Wharf Rock at Flint's Pond, the nest of a Wilson's thrush, five or six inches high, between the green stems of three or four golden rods, made of dried grass or fibres of bark, with dry oak leaves attached loosely, making the whole nine or ten inches wide, to deceive the eye. Two blue eggs. Like an accidental heap. Who taught it to do thus?

Lobelia Dortmanna, a day or two at most.

No grass balls yet.

That fine-rooted green plant on bottom sends up stems with black heads three or four inches. Do they become white?

Every one who has waded about the shores of a pond must have been surprised to find how much warmer the water was close to the shore, where only three or four inches deep, than a little further out.

I think I saw a young crow now fully grown.

Returned by Smith’s Hill and the Saw Mill Brook.

Got quite a parcel of strawberries on the hill.

The hellebore leaves by the brook are already half turned yellow. Plucked one blue early blueberry.

The strain of the bobolink now begins to sound a little rare. It never again fills the air as the first week after its arrival.

At this season we apprehend no long storm, only showers with or without thunder.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 19, 1853

Heard my night-warbler. Discovered it at last. See June 19, 1858 ("I do not hear the night-warbler so often as a few weeks ago. Birds generally do not sing so tumultuously.")  See also  May 17, 1858 ("Just after hearing my night-warbler I see two birds on a tree. ...[One perhaps golden-crowned thrush. ]”); May 19, 1858 (“Heard the night-warbler begin his strain just like an oven-bird! I have noticed that when it drops down into the woods it darts suddenly one side to a perch when low."); May 28, 1854 ("The night-warbler, after his strain, drops down almost perpendicularly into a tree-top and is lost.”). and  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Oven-bird . Note Thoreau;s night-warbler  is likely the oven-bird making its flight call. According to Emerson the night warbler is "a bird he had never identified, had been in search of twelve years, which always, when he saw it, was in the act of diving down into a tree or bush.” 

In the middle of the path to Wharf Rock at Flint's Pond, the nest of a Wilson's thrush. See June 19, 1858 (“Boys have found this forenoon at Flint’s Pond one or more veery-nests on the ground. ”) and note to June 23, 1858 ("That rather low wood along the path which runs parallel with the shore of Flint's Pond, behind the rock, is evidently a favorite place for veery-nests. I have seen three there.")

I think I saw a young crow now fully grown. See.July 7, 1860 ("I see a flock of some twenty-five crows. Probably the young are just grown."); July 10, 1854 ("Crows are more noisy, probably anxious about young.")

The strain of the bobolink now begins to sound a little rare. See June 9, 1855 ("I think I have hardly heard a bobolink for a week or ten days.");June 15, 1852 ("The note of the bobolink begins to sound somewhat rare.") and note to July 7, 1859 ("The note of the bobolink has begun to sound rare?") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Bobolink

I have come with a spy-glass to look at the hawks

June 9.

4. 30 A. M.— To Nawshawtuct by boat.

A prevalent fog, though not quite so thick as the last described.

It is a little more local, for it is so thin southwest of this hill that I can see the earth through it, but as thick as before northeast. Yet here and there deep valleys are excavated in it, as painters imagine the Red Sea for the passage of Pharaoh's host, wherein trees and houses appear as it were at the bottom of the sea.

What is peculiar about it is that it is the tops of the trees which you see first and most distinctly, before you see their trunks or where they stand on earth.

Far in the northeast there is, as before, apparently a tremendous surf breaking on a distant shoal. It is either a real shoal, i. e. a hill over which the fog breaks, or the effect of the sun's rays on it. 

I was amused by the account which Mary, the Irish girl who left us the other day, gave of her experience at-- the milkman's, in the north part of the town. She said that twenty-two lodged in the house the first night, including two pig men, that Mr. —-kept ten men, had six children and a deaf wife, and one of the men had his wife with him, who helped sew, beside taking care of her own child. Also all the cooking and washing for his father and mother, who live in another house and whom he is bound to carry through, is done in his house, and she, Mary, was the only girl they hired; and the workmen were called up at four by an alarm clock which was set a quarter of an hour ahead of the clock down stairs, — and that more than as much ahead of the town clock, — and she was on her feet from that hour till nine at night. Each man had two pairs of overalls in the wash, and the cans to be scalded were countless. Having got through washing the breakfast dishes by a quarter before twelve, Sunday noon, by — ' s time, she left, no more to return. He had told her that the work was easy, that girls had lived with him to recover their health, and then went away to be married. He is regarded as one of the most enterprising and thrifty farmers in the county, and takes the premiums of the Agricultural Society. He probably exacts too much of his hands.

June 9, 2023

The steam of the engine streaming far behind is regularly divided, as if it were the vertebræ of a serpent, probably by the strokes of the piston.

The reddish seeds or glumes of grasses cover my boots now in the dewy or foggy morning.

The diervilla out apparently yesterday.

The first white lily bud.

White clover is abundant and very sweet on the common, filling the air, but not yet elsewhere as last year.


8 A. M. – To Orchis Swamp; Well Meadow.

Hear a goldfinch; this the second or third only that I have heard.

Whiteweed now whitens the fields.

There are many star flowers. I remember the anemone, especially the rue anemone, which is not yet all gone, lasting longer than the true one above all the trientalis, and of late the yellow Bethlehem-star, and perhaps others.

I have come with a spy-glass to look at the hawks. They have detected me and are already screaming over my head more than half a mile from the nest.

I find no difficulty in looking at the young hawk (there appears to be one only, standing on the edge of the nest), resting the glass in the crotch of a young oak. I can see every wink and the color of its iris.

It watches me more steadily than I it, now looking straight down at me with both eyes and outstretched neck, now turning its head and looking with one eye.

How its eye and its whole head express anger! Its anger is more in its eye than in its beak.

It is quite hoary over the eye and on the chin.

The mother meanwhile is incessantly circling about and above its charge and me, farther or nearer, sometimes withdrawing a quarter of a mile, but occasionally coming to alight for a moment almost within gunshot, on the top of a tall white pine; but I hardly bring my glass fairly to bear on her, and get sight of her angry eye through the pine-needles, before she circles away again.

Thus for an hour that I lay there, screaming every minute or oftener with open bill. Now and then pursued by a kingbird or a blackbird, who appear merely to annoy it by dashing down at its back.

Meanwhile the male is soaring, apparently quite undisturbed, at a great height above, evidently not hunting, but amusing or recreating himself in the thinner and cooler air, as if pleased with his own circles, like a geometer, and enjoying the sublime scene.

I doubt if he has his eye fixed on any prey, or the earth. He probably descends to hunt.



Got two or three handfuls of strawberries on Fair Haven. They are already drying up.

The huckleberry bedbug-smelling bug is on them.It is natural that the first fruit which the earth bears should emit and be as it were an embodiment of that vernal fragrance with which the air has teemed.

Strawberries are its manna, found ere long where that fragrance has filled the air. Little natural beds or patches on the sides of dry hills, where the fruit sometimes reddens the ground. But it soon dries up, unless there is a great deal of rain.

Well, are not the juices of early fruit distilled from the air? 

Prunella out.

The meadows are now yellow with the golden senecio, a more orange yellow, mingled with the light glossy yellow of the buttercup.

The green fruit of the sweet-fern now.

The Juniperus repens appears, though now dry and effete, to have blossomed recently.

The tall white Erigeron annuus ( ? ), for this is the only one described as white tinged with purple, just out.

The bullfrogs are in full blast to-night.

I do not hear a toad from my window; only the crickets beside. The toads I have but rarely heard of late. So there is an evening for the toads and another for the bullfrogs.



H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 9, 1853

June 9, 2013

The steam of the engine streaming far behind is regularly divided, as if it were the vertebræ of a serpent.  See December 25, 1851 ("If there is not something mystical in your explanation, something unexplainable to the understanding, some elements of mystery, it is quite insufficient.  . . Just as inadequate to a pure mechanic would be a poet's account of a steam-engine.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Steam of the Engine

I have come with a spy-glass to look at the hawks. See June 8, 1853 ("At length I detect the nest about eighty feet from the ground, in a very large white pine by the edge of the swamp. It is about three feet in diameter, of dry sticks, and a young hawk, apparently as big as its mother, stands on the edge of the nest looking down at me")

So there is an evening for the toads and another for the bullfrogs.  See June 13, 1851 ("The different frogs mark the seasons pretty well,- the peeping hyla, the dreaming frog, and the bullfrog."); See also  June 1, 1853 ("The birds have now all come and no longer fly in flocks. The hylodes are no longer heard. The bullfrogs begin to trump.”); June 11, 1853 ("Another fog this morning. The mosquitoes first troubled me a little last night. On the river at dusk I hear the toads still, with the bullfrogs.");  June 15, 1860 ("A new season begun. The bullfrogs now commonly trump at night, and the mosquitoes are now really troublesome. For some time I have not heard toads by day, and the hylodes appear to have done.")

The meadows are now yellow with the golden senecio, a more orange yellow, mingled with the light glossy yellow of the buttercup. See May 23, 1853 ("I am surprised by the dark orange-yellow of the senecio. At first we had the lighter, paler spring yellows of willows, dandelion, cinquefoil, then the darker and deeper yellow of the buttercup; and then this broad distinction between the buttercup and the senecio, as the seasons revolve toward July."); June 6, 1858 ("Golden senecio is not uncommon now") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Golden Senecio

A song sparrow's nest in a little spruce

June 13. 

Louring all day. 

P. M. – To Ledum Swamp. 

Lambkill, maybe one day. 

Strawberries. 

In the great apple tree front of the Miles house I hear young pigeon woodpeckers. 

The ledum is apparently past prime. 

The Kalmia glauca and the Andromeda Polifolia are done, the kalmia just done. 

The ledum has grown three or four inches (as well as the andromeda). It has a rather agreeable fragrance, between turpentine and strawberries. It is rather strong and penetrating, and some times reminds me of the peculiar scent of a bee. The young leaves, bruised and touched to the nose, even make it smart.

It is the young and expanding ledum leaves which are so fragrant. There is a yellow fungus common on its leaves, and a black one on the andromeda. 

The Vaccinium Oxycoccus grows here and is abundantly out; some days certainly. 

I hear and see the parti-colored warbler, blue yellow-backed, here on the spruce trees. It probably breeds here. 

Also, within three feet of the edge of the pond-hole, where I can hardly stand in india-rubber shoes without the water flowing over them, a large ant-hill swarming with ants, – though not on the surface because of the mizzling rain. 

One of the prevailing front-rank plants here, standing in the sphagnum and water, is the elodea. 

I see a song sparrow's nest here in a little spruce just by the mouth of the ditch. It rests on the thick branches fifteen inches from the ground, firmly made of coarse sedge without, lined with finer, and then a little hair, small within, — a very thick, firm, and portable nest, an inverted cone; — four eggs. They build them in a peculiar manner in these sphagnous swamps, elevated apparently on account of water and of different materials. Some of the eggs have quite a blue ground. 

Go to Conantum end. 

The Rubus frondosus will not bloom apparently for a day or two, though the villosus is apparently in prime there. 

I hear the peculiar notes of young bluebirds that have flown. 

Arenaria lateriflora, how long? 

The Scheuchzeria palustris, now in flower and going to seed, grows at Ledum Pool, as at Gowing's Swamp. 

See now in meadows, for the most part going to seed, Carex scoparia, with its string of oval beads; and C. lupulina, with its inflated perigynia; also what I take to be C. stipata, with a dense, coarse, somewhat sharp triangular mass of spikelets; also C. stellulata, with a string of little star-like burs. The delicate, pendulous, slender-peduncled C. debilis.

Catbirds hatched.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 13, 1858

Lambkill, maybe one day. See June 9, 1855 ("Lambkill out."); June 10, 1855 ("The Kalmia glauca is done before the lambkill is begun here"); June 13, 1854 ("How beautiful the solid cylinders of the lamb-kill now just before sunset, — small ten-sided, rosy-crimson basins, about two inches above the recurved, drooping dry capsules of last year");


In the great apple tree front of the Miles house I hear young pigeon woodpeckers. See May 17, 1858 ("Measured the large apple tree in front of the Charles Miles house. It is nine feet and ten inches in circumference ");  June 13, 1855 ("C. finds a pigeon woodpecker’s nest in an apple tree, five of those pearly eggs, about six feet from the ground."); June 10, 1856 ("In a hollow apple tree, hole eighteen inches deep, young pigeon woodpeckers, large and well feathered. . . .")

A song sparrow's nest here in a little spruce just by the mouth of the ditch. See  April 30, 1858 ("I find a Fringilla melodia nest with five eggs. Part, at least, must have been laid before the snow of the 27th, but it is perfectly sheltered under the shelving turf and grass on the brink of a ditch."); June 14, 1855 ("A song sparrow’s nest in ditch bank under Clamshell, of coarse grass lined with fine, and five eggs nearly hatched and a peculiar dark end to them."); July 12, 1857 ("A song sparrow's nest in a small clump of alder, two feet from ground! Three or four eggs.")

See Carex now in meadows. See June 11, 1855 ("Carex cephalophora (?) on Heywood’s Peak. That fine, dry, wiry wild grass in hollows in woods and sprout-lands, never mown, is apparently the C. Pennsylvanica, or early sedge. ")

I hear the peculiar notes of young bluebirds that have flown. See. June 13, 1852 (" I hear the feeble plaintive note of young bluebirds, just trying their wings or getting used to them")

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

A time to see the osprey.

April 28. 

Blustering northwest wind and wintry aspect. 

April 28, 2018

A. M. — Down river to look at willows. 

The common S. cordata apparently not yet within two days at least. This salix is not always conspicuously double-scaled, nor is the scale carried up on the catkin. It is not always even on that of the S. Torreyana. 

I see the fish hawk again . . . As it flies low, directly over my head, I see that its body is white beneath, and the white on the forward side of the wings beneath, if extended across the breast, would form a regular crescent. Its wings do not form a regular curve in front, but an abrupt angle. They are loose and broad at tips. This bird goes fishing slowly down one side of the river and up again on the other, forty to sixty feet high, continually poising itself almost or quite stationary, with its head to the northwest wind and looking down, flapping its wings enough to keep its place, some times stationary for about a minute. It is not shy. This boisterous weather is the time to see it. 

I see the myrtle-bird in the same sunny place, south of the Island woods, as formerly. Thus are the earliest seen each spring in some warm and calm place by the waterside, when it is cool and blustering elsewhere. 

The barn swallows and a martin are already skimming low over that small area of smooth water within a few feet of me, never leaving that spot, and I do not observe them thus playing elsewhere. Incessantly stooping back and forth there. 

P. M. — To Ledum Swamp. 

At Clamshell Ditch, one Equisetum sylvaticum will apparently open to-morrow. 

Strawberries are abundantly out there; how long?

Some Salix tristis, bank near baeomyces. Did I not put it too early in last year's list of willows? Probably earlier elsewhere? 

The snow was generally gone about 10 A.M., except in circular patches in the shadow of the still leafless trees.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 28, 1858

This boisterous weather is the time to see it. See April 28, 1860 ("Sitting on Mt. Misery, I see a very large bird of the hawk family, blackish with a partly white head but no white tail, - probably a fish hawk; sail quite near, looking very large. "); April 14, 1852 (“The streams break up; the ice goes to the sea. Then sails the fish hawk overhead, looking for his prey.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Osprey (Fish Hawk)

Thus are the earliest seen each spring in some warm and calm place by the waterside, when it is cool and blustering elsewhere. See April 28, 1855 ("In a cold and windy day like this you can find more birds than in a serene one, because they are collected under the wooded hillsides in the sun.”)

At Clamshell Ditch, one Equisetum sylvaticum will apparently open to-morrow. Strawberries are abundantly out. See May 6, 1856 (“Equisetum sylvaticum a day or two on the ditch bank there.”); May 10, 1857 (“This side Clamshell, strawberries and cinquefoil are abundant. Equisetum sylvaticum.”)

Circular patches

of snow in the shadow of

the still leafless trees.

It is so much the more desirable at this season to breathe the raspberry air of Maine.

August 3. Monday. 

This was the midst of the raspberry season. We found them abundant on every carry on the East Branch and below, and children were carrying them from all sides into Bangor. I observed that they were the prominent dish on the tables, once a low scarlet mountain, garnishing the head of the table in a dish two feet across. 

Earlier the strawberries are equally abundant, and we even found a few still deep in the grass. Neither of these abound about Boston, and we saw that they were due to the peculiar air of this higher latitude. 

Though for six weeks before leaving home we had been scarcely able to lie under more than a single sheet, we experienced no hot weather in Maine. The air was uniformly fresh and bracing like that of a mountain to us, and, though the inhabitants like to make it out that it is as warm there as in Massachusetts, we were not to be cheated. It is so much the more desirable at this season to breathe the raspberry air of Maine. 

It was P. who commonly reminded us that it was dinner-time on this excursion, sometimes by turning the prow to the shore. He once made an indirect but lengthy apology, by saying that we might think it strange, but one who worked hard all day was very particular to have his dinner in good season.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 3, 1857

See The Maine Woods ("We started early before breakfast, the Indian being considerably better, and soon glided by Lincoln, and after another long and handsome lake-like reach, we stopped to breakfast on the west shore, two or three miles below this town. . . The small river emptying in at Lincoln is the Matanuncook. . .. So we paddled and floated along, looking into the mouths of rivers. . . .At Piscataquis Falls, just above the river of that name, we walked over the wooden railroad on the eastern shore, about one and a half miles long, while the Indian glided down the rapids. . . .We were not obliged to get out of the canoe after this on account of falls or rapids, nor, indeed, was it quite necessary here. We took less notice of the scenery to-day, because we were in quite a settled country. the river became broad and sluggish, and we saw a blue heron winging its way slowly down the stream before us. . . .The Olamon River comes in from the east in Greenbush a few miles below the Passadumkeag. . . .The Sunkhaze, another short dead stream, comes in from the east two miles above Oldtown.. . .Opposite the Sunkhaze is the main boom of the Penobscot, where the logs from far up the river are collected and assorted. . . . We landed opposite his door at about four in the afternoon, having come some forty miles this day. . . P. wanted to sell us his canoe. Said it would last seven or eight years, or, with care, perhaps ten; but we were not ready to buy it . . . This was the last that I saw of Joe Polis. We took the last train, and reached Bangor that night.")

I drink at every cooler spring in my walk these afternoons / the earliest bobolinks of the season.

July 12.

P. M. — To Equiseium hyemale.

Those little minnows, a third or half inch long or more, which I catch when bathing, hovering over open sandy spaces, as here at Clamshell, appear to be little shiners. When left dry on my hand, they can toss themselves three or four inches with a spring of their tails, and so often get into the water again. Small as they are, it is rather difficult to catch them, they dodge your hands so fast.

I drink at every cooler spring in my walk these afternoons and love to eye the bottom there, with its pebbly caddis-cases, or its white worms, or perchance a luxurious frog cooling himself next my nose. 

Sometimes the farmer, foreseeing haying, has been prudent enough to sink a tub in one, which secures a clear deep space. 

It would be worth the while, methinks, to make a map of the town with all the good springs on it, indicating whether they were cool, perennial, copious, pleasantly located, etc. The farmer is wont to celebrate the virtues of some one on his own farm above all others. Some cool rills in the meadows should be remembered also, for some such in deep, cold, grassy meadows are as cold as springs. I have sometimes drank warm or foul water, not knowing such cold streams were at hand. By many a spring I know where to look for the dipper or glass which some mower has left.

When a spring has been allowed to fill up, to be muddied by cattle, or, being exposed to the sun by cutting down the trees and bushes, to dry up, it affects me sadly, like an institution going to decay. Sometimes I see, on one side the tub, — the tub overhung with various wild plants and flowers, its edge almost completely concealed even from the searching eye, — the white sand freshly cast up where the spring is bubbling in. 

Often I sit patiently by the spring I have cleaned out and deepened with my hands, and see the foul water rapidly dissipated like a curling vapor and giving place to the cool and clear. 

Sometimes I can look a yard or more into a crevice under a rock, toward the sources of a spring in a hillside, and see it come cool and copious with incessant murmuring down to the light. There are few more refreshing sights in hot weather. 

I find many strawberries deep in the grass of the meadow near this Hosmer Spring; then proceed on my way with reddened and fragrant fingers, till it gets washed off at new springs. 

It is always pleasant to go over the bare brow of Lupine Hill and see the river and meadows thence. 

It is exceedingly sultry this afternoon, and few men are abroad. The cows stand up to their bellies in the river, lashing their sides with their tails from time to time. 

A strong and wholesome fragrance now from the vegetation as I go by overgrown paths through the swamp west of Nut Meadow. 

Equisetum hyemale has been out a good while; is mostly effete, but some open yet. Some have several flower-spikes on the sides near the top, but most one at top, of the last year's plant. This year's shoots a foot high, more or less. 

All the Pyrola secunda I can find is out of bloom. 

The Chimaphila umbellata flower-buds make a very pretty umbel, of half a dozen small purple balls surmounted by a green calyx. They contrast prettily with the glossy green leaves. 

A song sparrow's nest in a small clump of alder, two feet from ground! Three or four eggs. 

I hear the occasional link note from the earliest bobolinks of the season, — a day or two.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 12, 1857

Those little minnows, a third or half inch long or more, which I catch when bathing at Clamshell.   See June 27, 1853 ("Saw a little pickerel with a minnow in his mouth. It was a beautiful little silver-colored minnow, two inches long, with a broad stripe down the middle."); June 28, 1855 ("Shoals of minnows a half-inch long."); July 16, 1856 ("I See many young shiners (?) (they have the longitudinal bar), one to two and a half inches long"); July 17, 1856 ("Bathed at Clamshell. See great schools of minnows, apparently shiners, hovering in the clear shallow next the shore . . . a broad, distinct black band along sides (which methinks marks the shiner) and note to May 3, 1860 ("little fishes one and a half to two inches long, with a very distinct black line along the sides, which I should have called brook minnows")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Luxury of Bathing

I drink at every cooler spring . . . and love to eye the bottom there, with its pebbly caddis-cases . . . See July 17, 1856 "Stooping to drink at the Hosmer Spring, I saw a hundred caddis-cases, of light-colored pebbles, at the bottom, and a dozen or twenty crawled half-way up the side of the tub, apparently on their way out to become perfect insects.")

Some cool rills in the meadows should be remembered also, for some such in deep, cold, grassy meadows are as cold as springs. See August 19, 1852 ("Here [at the Corner Spring] is a little brook of very cold spring-water, rising a few rods distant, sometimes running underground, meandering exceedingly, with a gray sandy and pebbly bottom, flowing through this dense swampy thicket.. . . The water has the coldness it acquired in the bowels of the earth."); October 10, 1860("In August, '55, I levelled for the artificial pond at Sleepy Hollow. They dug gradually for three or four years and completed the pond last year, '59. It is now about a dozen rods long by five or six wide and two or three deep, and is supplied by copious springs in the meadow.")

The Chimaphila umbellata flower-buds make a very pretty umbel, of half a dozen small purple balls surmounted by a green calyx. They contrast prettily with the glossy green leaves. See February 16, 1854 ("It must be the leaves of the Chimaphila umbellate, spotted wintergreen, which Channing left here day before yesterday.Snows again this morning."); February 16, 1855 (“I see where probably rabbits have nibbled of the leaves of the Wintergreen.”); May 21, 1860 ("Wintergreen had started the 18th at least");  July 3, 1852 ("The Chimaphila umbellata, wintergreen, must have been in blossom some time. The back side of its petals, "cream colored tinged with purple," which is turned toward the beholder, while the face is toward the earth, is the handsomest. It is a very pretty little chandelier of a flower, fit to adorn the forest floor.”); July 8, 1857 ("Chimaphila umbellata, apparently a day or two."); July 17, 1857 ("An abundance of chimaphila in bloom. It is a beautiful flower, with its naked umbel of crystalline purplish-white flowers, their disks at an angle with the horizon. On its lower side a ring of purple (or crimson) scales at the base of its concave petals, around the large, green, sticky ovary."); July 24, 1856 ("Chimaphila maculata, three flowers, apparently but few days, while the umbellata is quite done.");  November 16, 1858 (“Methinks the wintergreen, pipsissewa, is our handsomest evergreen, so liquid glossy green and dispersed almost all over the woods.”); December 7, 1853 ("The liquid wet glossy leaves of the Chimaphila (winter or snow-loving) umbellata, with its dry fruit.")

Often I sit patiently by the spring I have cleaned out . . . See July 11, 1857("Am surprised to find the water of Corner Spring spoiled for the present, however much I clear it out, by the numbers of dead and dying frogs in it (Rana palustris). ")

I hear the occasional link note from the earliest bobolinks of the season . . . See July 11, 1856 ('Hear now the link of bobolinks, and see quite a flock of red-wing blackbirds and young. "); July 15, 1854 ("I hear the link link of the bobolink,. . . . Many birds begin to fly in small flocks like grown-up broods."); July 19, 1855 ("Young bobolinks; one of the first autumnalish notes.") July 15, 1856 ("Bobolinks are heard — their link, link — above and amid the tall rue which now whitens the meadows.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Bobolink

July 12. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, July 12

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