A picture through the arch of the stone bridge.

May 22. 

After two or three days more of rainy weather, it is fair and warm at last. Thermometer seventy-odd degrees above zero. 

When the May storm is over, then the summer is fairly begun. 

9 a. m. — I go up the Assabet in boat to stone bridge.

Is it not summer when we do not go seeking sunny and sheltered places, but also love the wind and shade? 

As I stand on the sand-bank below the Assabet stone bridge and look up through the arch, the river makes a pretty picture. 

It is perfectly smooth above the bridge and appears two or three feet higher (it is probably half as much) than below and rushes to its fall very regularly, the bridge partially damming the stream: the smoothness extends part way under the bridge in the middle, the turbulent water rushing down each side.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 22, 1857

When the May storm is over, then the summer is fairly begun. See May 22, 1858 ("Something like this annually occurs. After this May storm the sun bursts forth . . . and we seem to have taken a long stride into summer.") Also  May 17, 1853 ("Does not summer begin after the May storm?”); May 11, 1854 (" I suspect that summer weather may be always ushered in in a similar manner, — thunder-shower, rainbow, smooth water, and warm night.").

Is it not summer when we do not go seeking sunny and sheltered places, but also love the wind and shade?  See April 26, 1857 ("By and by we shall seek the shadiest and coolest place. “); May 10, 1857 ("But now at last I do not go seeking the warm, sunny, and sheltered coves; the strong wind is enlivening and agreeable.”) Compare May 22, 1854 (“I rest in the orchard, doubtful whether to sit in shade or sun.”)

A light and graceful tree leaning over the Assabet

dog-tooth violet
May 21, 2017

May 21. 

Rains still, more or less, all day. But it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good; this weather is good for cuttings and transplanted trees. 

P. M. — To Hill. 

Sassafras (fertile) will apparently bloom to-morrow. These, too, — the young trees, — have been killed the past winter, like the fever-bush. 

There is, leaning over the Assabet at the Grape Bower, an amelanchier variety Botryapium about five inches in diameter and some twenty-eight feet long, a light and graceful tree. The leaves of this are, as usual, nearly smooth and quite brown, of a delicate tint (purplish?). 

At the spring just beyond, is another amelanchier, and other small ones are not uncommon, differing from the last, not in the form of its petals and leaves, but the latter are green, or very slightly streaked with purplish. It seems to be a common variety of the variety Botryapium and quite downy, though not so downy as those of the oblongifolia. The bark of these trees is much like that of a maple. 

I find checkerberries still fresh and abundant. Last year was a remarkable one for them. They lurk under the low leaves, scarcely to be detected, often, as you are standing up, almost below the level of the ground, dark-scarlet berries, some of them half an inch in diameter, broad pear-shaped, of a pale or hoary pink color beneath. The peduncle curves downward between two leaves. There they lurk under the glossy, dark-green, brown-spotted leaves, close to the ground. They make a very handsome nosegay.

I saw yesterday a parrot exceedingly frightened in its cage at a window. It rushed to the bars and struggled to get out. A piece of board had been thrown from the window above to the ground, which probably the parrot's instinct had mistaken for a hawk. Their eyes are very open to danger from above. 

The staminate buds of the black spruce are quite a bright red.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 21, 1857

It seems to be a common variety of the variety Botryapium and quite downy, though not so downy as those of the oblongifolia. See  May 9, 1852 ("The first shad-bush, Juneberry, or service-berry (Amclanchier canadensis), in blossom.").May 12, 1855 ("I now begin to distinguish where at a distance the Amelanchier Botryapium, with its white against the russet, is waving in the wind."); May 13, 1855 ("Saw an amelanchier with downy leaf (apparently oblongifolia) on the southeast edge of Yellow Birch Swamp, about eighteen feet high and five or six inches in diameter, —a clump of them about as big as an apple tree).

I find checkerberries still fresh and abundant. See March 4, 1854 (“The checkerberries are revealed, — somewhat shrivelled many of them.”);  March 10, 1855 ("Those reddening leaves, as the checkerberry, lambkill, etc., etc., which at the beginning of winter were greenish, are now a deeper red, when the snow goes off.”); April 1, 1857 (“Checkerberries very fair and abundant now near Muhlenbergii Brook”); May 15, 1856 (“Checker-berries very abundant on south side of Pine Hill, by pitch pine wood. Now is probably best time to gather them.”); -- see also June 12, 1857 (“Of the woods of the Cape which I walked through . . . are dry pine and oak woods, extensive but quite low, commonly, with an abundance of bear-berry and checkerberry in the more open parts, the latter forming an almost uninterrupted bed for great distances.”);  July 16, 1856 (“Checkerberry, a day or two”); August 25, 1851 (Checkerberry in bloom.”); October 8, 1856 (“Find many checker-berries on Smith's hill beyond the chestnut grove, which appear to be just ripe, a lighter pink color, with two little white checks on the stem side, the marks of what I suppose are the two outer calyx-leaves.”); October 15, 1856 (“An abundance of checkerberries by the hemlock at V. Muhlenbergii Brook. A remarkable year for berries.”); November 16, 1852 ("The partridge-berry leaves checker the ground on the side of moist hillsides in the woods. Are they not properly called checker-berries?");  November 19, 1850 ("Now that the grass is withered and the leaves are withered or fallen, it begins to appear what is evergreen the partridge-berry and checkerberry, and winter-green leaves even, are more conspicuous.”); December 23, 1855 (“At Lee’s Cliff I notice these radical(?) leaves quite fresh: saxifrage, sorrel, polypody, . . . checkerberry, wintergreen, . . .”).

Note: “checkerberry" is another name for American wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens). See Checkerberry cum Wintergreen. and GoBotany.  What HDT calls  “wintergreen” is Chimaphila umbellata, a/k/a pipsissewa, See July 3, 1852 ("The Chimaphila umbellata, wintergreen, must have been in blossom some time.”);  November 16, 1858 (“Methinks the wintergreen, pipsissewa, is our handsomest evergreen, so liquid glossy green and dispersed almost all over the woods.”); May 21, 1860 ("Wintergreen had started the 18th at least")

The staminate buds of the black spruce are quite a bright red. See May 22, 1856 (“The red and cream-colored cone-shaped staminate buds of the black spruce will apparently shed pollen in one to three days? They are nearly half an inch long.”);

Postpone your journey till the May storm is over.

May 20. 

Began to rain the latter part of yesterday, and rains all day against all desire and expectation, raising the river and, in low land, rotting the seed. Gardeners wish that their land had not been planted nor plowed. Postpone your journey till the May storm is over.

Starflower
May 20, 2017

It has been confidently asserted and believed that if the cold in the winter exceeded a certain degree it surely killed the peach blossoms. Last winter we had greater cold than has ever been generally observed here, and yet it is a remarkable spring for peach blossoms; thus once for all disproving that assertion. 

Everything in the shape of a peach tree blossoms this season, even a mutilated shrub on the railroad causeway, sprung from a stone which some passenger cast out. Nevertheless the lowest limbs, which were covered by the drifts, have blossomed much the earliest and fullest, as usual, and this after-blow is quite unexpected. Peach trees are revealed along fences where they were quite unobserved before. 

The expression in Sophocles' (Edipus at Colonos, "White Colonos," said to refer to the silvery soil, reminded me at first of the tracts now whitened by the pyrus blossoms, which may be mistaken for hoary rocks. Vide this description of Colonos. 

Have all the Canada plums that striking pink color at the base of the blossoms at last? 

I find that the corydalis sprig which I brought home five days ago keeps fresh and blossoms remarkably well in water, — its delicate bright flesh-colored or pink flowers and glaucous leaves! 

How suddenly, after all, pines seem to shoot up and fill the pastures! 

I wonder that the farmers do not earlier encourage their growth. To-day, perchance, as I go through some run-out pasture, I observe many young white pines dotting the field, where last year I had noticed only blackberry vines; but I see that many are already destroyed or injured by the cows which have dived into them to scratch their heads or for sport (such is their habit; they break off the leading shoot and bend down the others of different evergreens), or perchance where the farmer has been mowing them down, and I think the owner would rather have a pasture here than a wood-lot. A year or two later, as I pass through the same field, I am surprised to find myself in a flourishing young wood-lot, from which the cows are now carefully fenced out, though there are many open spaces, and I perceive how much further advanced it would have been if the farmer had been more provident and had begun to abet nature a few years earlier. 

It is surprising by what leaps — two or three feet in a season — the pines stretch toward the sky, affording shelter also to various hardwoods which plant themselves in their midst. 

I do not know a white pine in the town which has been set out twenty-five years.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 20, 1857

Postpone your journey till the May storm is over. See May 17, 1853 ("Does not summer begin after the May storm?”); compare May 13, 1852 (" They who do not walk in the woods in the rain never behold them in their freshest, most radiant and blooming beauty.”)

Have all the Canada plums that striking pink color at the base of the blossoms at last? See note to May 10, 1856 (“Mr. Prichard’s Canada plum will open as soon as it is fair weather.”)

White pines. See April 29, 1857 (“I am surprised to see how some blackberry pastures and other fields are filling up with pines, trees which I thought the cows had almost killed two or three years ago; so that what was then a pasture is now a young wood-lot.”); May 18, 1857 ("Many are now setting out pines and other evergreens, transplanting some wildness into the neighborhood of their houses. I do not know of a white pine that has been set out twenty-five years in the town. It is a new fashion.”); May 19, 1854 ("The white pine shoots are now two or three inches long generally, — upright light marks on the body of dark green.”); July 4, 1860 ("The white pine shoot which on the 19th of June had grown sixteen and a quarter inches and on the 27th twenty and three quarters is now twenty-three and an eighth inches long.”)

The season of pollywogs at Moore's Swamp on Bedford Road.

May 19. 

A. M. — Surveying D. Shattuck's wood-lot beyond Peter's. 

See myriads of minute pollywogs, recently hatched, in the water of Moore's Swamp on Bedford road.

Digging again to find a stake in woods, came across a nest or colony of wood ants, yellowish or sand-color, a third of an inch long, with their white grubs, now squirming, still larger, and emitting that same pungent spicy odor, perhaps too pungent to be compared with lemon-peel. 

This is the second time I have found them in this way this spring (vide April 28th). Is not the pungent scent emitted by wasps quite similar? 

I see the ferns all blackened on the hillside next the meadow, by the frost within a night or two. 

That ant scent is not at all sickening, but tonic, and reminds me of a bitter flavor like that of peach-meats.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 19, 1857

See myriads of minute pollywogs, recently hatched, in the water of Moore's Swamp. See May 20, 1856 ("At Moore’s Swamp on Bedford road, myriads of pollywogs half an inch long darken or blacken the shore, chiefly head as yet.");  May 31, 1857 ("In the ditches in Moore's Swamp on the new Bedford road, the myriads of pollywogs, now three quarters of an inch long, crowding close to the edge, make a continuous black edging to the pool a foot wide. I see where thousands have been left high and dry and are now trodden into the sand, yet preserving their forms, spotting it with black."); June 15, 1855 ("To Moore’s Swamp. . . . Many pollywogs an inch long."); June 20, 1854 ("A cloud of minute black pollywogs in a muddy pool.")

This is the second time I have found them in this way this spring. See April 28, 1857 ("Looking for an "old pine stump" mentioned in a deed . . .we turned up. . .a large body of short, chunked, yellowish ants . . . a very strong penetrating scent, yet agreeable and very spicy . . .very strong lemon-peel.")

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

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 wild apple tree in an old cellar-hole.

May 18. 

                                                           MAY 18, 2017

P. M. — To Bateman's Pond via Yellow Birch Swamp with Pratt. 

Pratt says he saw the first rhodora and cultivated pear out yesterday. 

Many are now setting out pines and other evergreens, transplanting some wildness into the neighborhood of their houses. I do not know of a white pine that has been set out twenty-five years in the town. It is a new fashion. 

Judging from the flowering of such of the plants as I notice, this is a backward season. 

There is a very grand and picturesque old yellow birch in the old cellar northwest the yellow birch swamp. Though this stands out in open land, it does not shed its pollen yet, and its catkins are not much more than half elongated, but it is very beautiful as it is, with its dark-yellowish tassels variegated with brown. 

Yet in the swamp westerly the yellow birches are in full bloom, and many catkins strew the ground. They are four or five inches long when in bloom. They begin to shed their pollen at the base of the catkin, as, I think, other birches do. 

In the yellow birch and ash swamp west of big yellow birch, I hear the fine note of cherry-birds, much like that of young partridges, and see them on the ash trees. 

Viola Muhlenbergii abundantly out, how long? 

The fever-bush in this swamp is very generally killed, at least the upper part, so that it has not blossomed. This is especially the case in the swamp; on higher ground, though exposed, it is in better condition. It appears to have been killed in the spring, for you see the unexpanded flower-buds quite conspicuous. 

Pratt shows me the fringed gentian stems by a swamp northeast of Bateman's Pond, but we find no traces of a new plant, and I think it must be annual there. 

The violet wood-sorrel is apparently later than the Oxalis stricta, not now so forward, lower, and darker green, only a few of the leaves showing that purplish mark. 

Hear the pepe, how long? 

In woods close behind Easterbrook's place, whence it probably strayed, several Canada plums now in bloom, showing the pink. Interesting to see a wild apple tree in the old cellar there, though with a forward caterpillar's nest on it. Call it Malus cellaris, that grows in an old cellar-hole.

Pedicularis, some time. 

The blossom-buds of the Cornus florida have been killed when an eighth of an inch in diameter, and are black within and fall on the least touch or jar; all over the town. There is a large tree on the further side the ravine near Bateman's Pond and another by some beeches on the rocky hillside a quarter of a mile northeast. 

In the swampy meadow north of this Pratt says he finds the calla. 

The Rubus triflorus is well out there on the hummocks. 

The white ash is not yet out in most favorable places.

The red huckleberry looks more forward — blossom-buds more swollen — than those of common there.

Some high blueberry. 

Pratt has found perfectly white Viola pedata behind Easterbrook place, and cultivated them, but now lost them. 

Says he saw two "black" snakes intertwined (copulating ?) yesterday.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 18, 1857

Pratt says he saw the first rhodora out yesterday. See  May 18, 1853 ("The rhodora is one of the very latest leafing shrubs, for its leaf-buds are but just expanding, making scarcely any show yet, but quite leafless amid the blossoms");  May 18, 1855 ("Rhodora; probably some yesterday.") May 18, 1856 ("The rhodora there [Kalmia Swamp] maybe to-morrow. Elsewhere I find it (on Hubbard’s meadow) to-day. ") See also May 14, 1859 ('Rhodora out, says C.")

Viola Muhlenbergii abundantly out, how long? See May 22, 1856 ("Viola Muhlenbergii . . . abundantly out; how long? A small pale-blue flower growing in dense bunches,”)

The yellow birches are in full bloom, and many catkins strew the ground. They are four or five inches long when in bloom. See May 17, 1857 ("The yellow birch catkins . . .hanging straight down at a height from the ground on the end of the pendulous branches, amid the just expanding leaf-buds. ") ; May 5, 1859 (“ You see a great tree all hung with long yellow or golden tassels at the end of its slender, drooping spray, in clusters at intervals of a few inches or a foot. These are all dangling and incessantly waving in the wind, — a great display of lively blossoms (lively both by their color and motion) without a particle of leaf”); See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  the Yellow Birch 

Pratt says he finds the calla. See June 7, 1857 (“Pratt has got the Calla palustris, in prime. . .from the bog near Bateman's Pond”); June 9, 1857 (“The calla is generally past prime and going to seed. I had said to Pratt, "It will be worth the while to look for other rare plants in Calla Swamp, for I have observed that where one rare plant grows there will commonly be others." ”); July 2, 1957 (" Calla palustris . . . at the south end of Gowing's Swamp. Having found this in one place, I now find it in another.”); September 4, 1857 (To Baeman’s Pond . . .Arum berries ripe.”)

Pratt has found perfectly white Viola pedata . . . but now lost them. See May 18, 1854 ("The V. pedata beginning to be abundant. "). May 20, 1852 ("the V. pedata is smooth and pale-blue, delicately tinged with purple reflections").

Judging from the flowering of such of the plants as I notice, this is a backward season. The white ash is not yet out in most favorable places. See May 18, 1853 ("White ash fully in bloom.")

A wild apple tree

grows in an old cellar-hole –

Malus cellaris.

The canoe, yellow, and black birches in bloom.

black birch catkins
May 9, 2015

May 17. 

P. M. — Round Walden.

Gold-thread is abundantly out at Trillium Woods. 

The yellow birch catkins, now fully out or a little past prime, are very handsome now, numerous clusters of rich golden catkins hanging straight down at a height from the ground on the end of the pendulous branches, amid the just expanding leaf-buds. It is like some great chandelier hung high over the underwood.

So, too, with the canoe birch. Such black as I see is not quite so forward yet. 

The canoe, yellow, and black birches are among the handsomest trees when in bloom. The bunches of numerous rich golden catkins, hanging straight down on all sides and trembling in the breeze, contrast agreeably with the graceful attitude of the tree, commonly more or less inclined, the leaves not being enough expanded to conceal them in the least. They should be seen against evergreens on a hillside, — something so light and airy, so graceful. What nymphs are they? 

What was that peculiar spawn on a submerged alder stem seen the 13th? It looked like a fresh light-colored fungus, flattish and circular, a third of an inch over, and waving in the water, but, taken out, hung down longer. In the midst of this jelly were minute eggs. 

I just notice the fertile sweet-fern bloom on tall plants, where the sterile catkins are falling off above it. Most plants have none. 

Two cocoons of apparently the Attacus Promethea on a small black birch, the silk wound round the leaf stalk.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 17, 1857

The yellow birch catkins . . .hanging straight down at a height from the ground on the end of the pendulous branches, amid the just expanding leaf-buds.  See May 18, 1857 ("The yellow birches are in full bloom, and many catkins strew the ground. They are four or five inches long when in bloom. They begin to shed their pollen at the base of the catkin, as, I think, other birches do. "); May 5, 1859 (“ You see a great tree all hung with long yellow or golden tassels at the end of its slender, drooping spray, in clusters at intervals of a few inches or a foot. These are all dangling and incessantly waving in the wind, — a great display of lively blossoms (lively both by their color and motion) without a particle of leaf”); Compare  May 13, 1852 (“The white birch with its golden tassels three inches long, hanging directly down, amid the just expanding yellowish-green leaves, their perpendicularity contrasting with the direction of the branches. Geometry mixed with nature.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau the Yellow Birch 

They should be seen against evergreens on a hillside, — something so light and airy, so graceful. See May 17, 1852 (“ dark pines in the distance in the sunshine, contrasting with the light fresh green of the deciduous trees.”); also May 17, 1852 (“The birch leaves are so small that you see the landscape through the tree, and they are like silvery and green spangles in the sun, fluttering about the tree.”); May 17, 1854 (“the wooded shore is all lit up with the tender, bright green of birches fluttering in the wind and shining in the light”)

Two cocoons of apparently the Attacus Promethea on a small black birch, the silk wound round the leaf stalk. See January 19, 1854 ("The A. Promethea is the only moth whose cocoon has a fastening wound round the petiole of the leaf, and round the shoot, the leaf partly folded round it");;  February 19, 1854 (“the light ash-colored cocoons of the A. Promethea, with the withered and faded leaves wrapped around them so artfully and admirably secured by fine silk wound round the leaf-stalk and the twig they are taken at a little distance for a few curled and withered leaves left on.”) ; June 2, 1855 (“that cocoon of the Attacus cecropia”)

Swallows flying low.

May 16. 

P. M. — To Hill for pines. 

The meadows are now mostly bare, the grass showing itself above the water that is left, and an unusual number of swallows are flying low over it. 

A yellow lily out, and, on the hill, a red cedar, maybe a day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 16, 1857

[A]n unusual number of swallows are flying low over it. See  April 29, 1854 (" The barn swallows are very numerous, flying low over the water in the rain.”);  April 30, 1855 ("circling about and flying . . .about six inches above the water, — it was cloudy and almost raining”); April 30, 1856 ("I was surprised by the great number of swallows—white-bellied and barn swallows and perhaps republican — flying round and round, or skimming very low over the meadow. . .There were a thousand or more of swallows, and I think that they had recently arrived together on their migration.");  May 11, 1856 ("There are many swallows circling low over the river behind Monroe’s, — bank swallows, barn, republican, chimney, and white-bellied. These are all circling together a foot or two over the water, passing within ten or twelve feet of me in my boat.");  May 20, 1858 (“Hundreds of swallows are now skimming close over the river, at its broadest part, where it is shallow and runs the swiftest, just below the Island”); July 21, 1860 ("Now, after the rain, the sun coming forth brightly, the swallows in numbers are skimming low over the river just below the junction.”)