May 12

Commenced paying my Wash by the Doz. Rcd. two pieces today which did not pay for.

EDK, May 12, 1860

May 9

May 6

Drove to Wallace's all day

Went to Franklin Mission church in forenoon with Helena .

Heard H.C Wright at the melodies in the eve.   .10

May 7

Paid 80 cents for cigars for which sold for 1.00

May 8

Wrote to James Emery

May 9

Paid D.D. Bond for board (5.00) five dollars

EDK, May 6-9, 1860

We sit by the shore of Goose Pond counting the noses of frogs.

May 9.

May 9, 2015

River five and three fourths inches below summer level. 

I think I heard a bobolink this forenoon. 

A boy brought me what I take to be a very red Rana sylvatica, caught on the leaves the 6th. 

Have had no fire for more than a fortnight, and no greatcoat since April 19th. 

Fir balsam bloom. 

Sugar maple blossoms are now a tender yellow; in prime, say 11th. 

Thousands of dandelions along the meadow by the Mill Brook, behind R. W. E.’s, in prime, say 10th.

P. M. – To Flint’s Pond. 

It is a still, cloudy, thoughtful day. 

Oven-bird, how long? 

In Ebby Hubbard’s wood, I climb to a hole in a dead white pine, a dozen feet up, and see by the gray fur about the edge of the hole that it probably has been used by the gray squirrel. 

Maryland yellow-throat. 

We sit by the shore of Goose Pond. The tapping of a woodpecker sounds distinct and hollow this still cloudy day, as not before for a long time, and so do the notes of birds, as if heard against a background for a relief, e. g. the cackle of the pigeon woodpecker, the note of the jay, the scratching in the dry leaves of three or four chewinks near us (for they are not shy), about the pond, under the blueberry bushes. The water is smooth. 

After sitting there a little while, I count the noses of twenty frogs within a couple of rods, which have ventured to come to the surface again, — so quietly that I did not see one come up. 

At the fox-hole by Britton’s Hollow there are some three cart-buck-loads of sand cast out. 

That large pine-tree moss that makes beds on the ground, now fruiting, when I brush my hand over its fruit is surprisingly stiff and elastic like wires. 

Yellow lily pads begun to spread out on some pools, but hardly yet on the river; say 10th on river. 

Golden robin. 

The wall by the road at the bars north of Cyrus Smith’s chestnut grove is very firmly bound together by the Rhus Toxicodendron which has overrun it, for twenty feet in length. Would it not be worth the while to encourage its growth for this purpose, if you are not afraid of being poisoned? It runs up by small root-like stems, which cling close and flat to the wall, and which intertwine and seem to take a new start from the top of the wall (as from the ground), where the stems are generally larger than below, so that it is in fact a row of this rhus growing on the top of the wall to some three or four feet above it, and by its rooty stems binding the stones very firmly together. How much better this than sods on a wall! 

Of that early sedge in Everett’s meadow, the top most spikes are already effete; say a week, then. 

I see a second amelanchier with a distinct pink or rosaceous tinge like an apple blossom. 

Elm seed has begun. 

Cattle going up country for ten days past. You must keep your gate shut.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 9, 1860

The tapping of a woodpecker sounds distinct and hollow this still cloudy day. See March 11, 1859 (“But methinks the sound of the woodpecker tapping is as much a spring note as any these mornings; it echoes peculiarly in the air of a spring morning.”); April 27, 1856 ("The tapping of a woodpecker is made a more remarkable and emphatic sound by the hollowness of the trunk, the expanse of water which conducts the sound, and the morning hour at which I commonly hear it.”); April 14, 1856 ("Hear the flicker’s cackle on the old aspen, and his tapping sounds afar over the water. Their tapping resounds thus far, with this peculiar ring and distinctness, because it is a hollow tree they select to play on, as a drum or tambour. It is a hollow sound which rings distinct to a great distance, especially over water."); March 13, 1855 ("I hear the rapid tapping of the woodpecker from over the water."); March 30, 1854 ("At the Island I see and hear this morning the cackle of a pigeon woodpecker at the hollow poplar; had heard him tapping distinctly from my boat's place."); March 15, 1854 ("I hear that peculiar, interesting loud hollow tapping of a woodpecker from over the water.")' March 18, 1853 ("The tapping of the woodpecker about this time.”). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Pigeon Woodpecker (flicker) and See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, woodpeckers tapping

I count noses of twenty frogs. See March 27, 1853 (Half an hour standing perfectly still to hear the frogs croak.)

Maryland yellow-throat. See May 9, 1853 ("New days, then, have come, ushered in by the warbling vireo, yellowbird, Maryland yellow-throat, and small pewee")

Cattle going up country for ten days past. You must keep your gate shut. See April 30, 1860 ("Cattle begin to go up-country, and every weekday, especially Mondays, to this time [sic] May 7th, at least, the greatest droves to-day. Methinks they will find slender picking up there for a while."). See also May 6, 1855 ("Road full of cattle going up country.”); May 7, 1856 ("For a week the road has been full of cattle going up country. "); May 8, 1854 ("I hear the voices of farmers driving their cows past to their up-country pastures now."); May 10, 1852 ("This Monday the streets are full of cattle being driven up-country, — cows and calves and colts.")

The distinct hollow

tapping this still, cloudy day –

the water is smooth.

At Lee's Cliff

May 5

May 5, 2021

Cobwebs on the grass, — half green, half brown, — this morning; certainly not long, perhaps this the first time; and dews.

2 P. M. — 76º. Warm and hazy (and yesterday warm also); my single thick coat too much.

Wind southeast. A fresher and cooler breeze is agreeable now. The wind becomes a breeze at this season.

The yellowish (or common) winged grasshoppers are quite common now, hopping and flying before me.

Viola blanda, how long?

Clams lie up abundantly.

Bluets have spotted the fields for two or three days mingled with the reddish luzula, as in Conant’s field north of Holden Wood toward the brook. They fill the air with a sweet and innocent fragrance at a few rods’ distance.

I have not worn my outside coat since the 19th of April and now it is the 13th of May; nor, I think, had any fire in my chamber. Latterly have sat with the window open, even at evening.

Anemone and Thalictrum anemonoides are apparently in prime about the 10th of May. The former abounds in the thin young wood behind Lee’s Cliff.

Tent caterpillar nest an inch and a half over. Dicksonia fern up six inches in a warm place.

Yellow butterflies. 

Veronica serpyllifolia, say yesterday.

There are some dense beds of houstonia in the yard of the old Conantum house. Some parts of them show of a distinctly bluer shade two rods off. They are most interesting now, before many other flowers are out, the grass high, and they have lost their freshness. I sit down by one dense bed of them to examine it. It is about three feet long and two or more wide. The flowers not only crowd one another, but are in several tiers, one above another, and completely hide the ground, - a mass of white. Counting those in a small place, I find that there are about three thousand flowers in a square foot. They are all turned a little toward the sun, and emit a refreshing odor.

Here is a lumbering humblebee, probing these tiny flowers. It is a rather ludicrous sight. Of course they will not support him, except a little where they are densest; so he bends them down rapidly (hauling them in with his arms, as it were), one after another, thrusting his beak into the tube of each. It takes him but a moment to dispatch one. It is a singular sight, a humblebee clambering over a bed of these delicate flowers. There are various other bees about them.

saxifrage, May 5, 2015

See at Lee’s a pewee (phoebe) building. She has just woven in, or laid on the edge, a fresh sprig of saxifrage in flower. I notice that phobes will build in the same recess in a cliff year after year. It is a constant thing here, though they are often disturbed. 

Think how many pewees must have built under the eaves of this cliff since pewees were created and this cliff itself built ! ! You can possibly find the crumbling relics of how many, if you should look carefully enough !

It takes us many years to find out that Nature repeats herself annually. But how perfectly regular and calculable all her phenomena must appear to a mind that has observed her for a thousand years !

Vernal grass at this cliff (common at Damon’s Spring the 12th). The marginal shield fern is one foot high here.

Amelanchier Botryapium flower in prime.

Have seen no ducks for a week or more.

Knawel some time.

Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum flowers against rocks, not long.

Sun goes down red.

Hear of bear-berry well out the 29th of April at Cliffs, and there probably some days.

The peepers and toads are in full blast at night.


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

Yellow butterflies. See May 5, 1859 ("Near the oak beyond Jarvis land, a yellow butterfly, — how hot! this meteor dancing through the air.")

See at Lee’s a pewee (phoebe) building. She has just woven in, or laid on the edge, a fresh sprig of saxifrage in flower. See April 27, 1852 ("I find to-day for the first time the early saxifrage (Saxifraga vernalis) in blossom, growing high and dry in the narrow seams, where there is no soil for it but a little green moss. Following thus early after the bare rock, it is one of the first flowers, not only in the spring of the year, but in the spring of the world."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Phoebe and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Saxifrage in Spring (Saxifraga vernalis)

It takes us many years to find out that Nature repeats herself annually. See September 24, 1859 ("Young men have not learned the phases of Nature; they do not know what constitutes a year, or that one year is like another."); and April 18, 1852 ("For the first time I perceive this spring that the year is a circle.")

Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum flowers against rocks, not long. See May 10, 1856 ("Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum . . . seems to bloom with or immediately after the bear-berry.")

Sun goes down red. See May 4, 1860 (“The sun sets red, shorn of its beams.”)

The peepers and toads are in full blast at night. See April 6, 1858 ("I hear hylas in full blast 2.30 P. M.");  June 7. 1858 ("I see toads copulating and toad-spawn freshly laid in the Wyman meadow at Walden . . .  Toads are now in full blast along the river. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Spring Peeper; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Ring of Toads

May 5

Paid the washer woman for washing five pieces                                   .07

This was my luck

Other expenses                   .27

                                          .34 

EDK, May 5, 1860

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?

May 3

Wrote to Amsden

EDK, May 3, 1860