Locust days.

August 16.

Down river in boat with George Bradford. These are locust days.  I hear them on the elms in the street, but cannot tell where they are.  Loud is their song, drowning many others, but men appear not to distinguish it, though it pervades their ears as the dust their eyes.

Galeopsis tetrahit, common hemp-nettle, in roadside by Keyes's. How long? Flower like hedge-nettle.

Apios tuberosa, ground-nut, a day or two.  

 

The river is exceedingly fair this afternoon, and there are few handsomer reaches than that by the leaning oak, the deep place, where the willows make a perfect shore. 

At sunset, the glow being confined to the north, it tinges the rails on the causeway lake-color, but behind they are a dead dark blue.

I must look for the rudbeckia which Bradford says he found yesterday behind Joe Clark's.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 16, 1852

I must look for the rudbeckia which Bradford says he found . . . See August 18, 1852 ("Rudbeckia laciniata, sunflower-like tall cone-flower, behind Joe Clark's.") See also August 11, 1856 ("Mr. Bradford . . .gives me a sprig of Cassia Marilandica,wild senna, found by Minot Pratt just below Leighton's by the road side.") and August 12, 1856 ("Bradford speaks of the dog's-tooth violet as a plant which disappears early.”).



August 16. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  August 16

 

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