Botonizing the meadows

August 6, 2015

August 6. 

Down river to Tarbell Hill with C. 

Saw a Sternotherus odoratus, caught by the neck and hung in the fork between a twig and main trunk of a black willow, about two feet above water, — apparently a month or two, being nearly dry. Probably in its haste to get down had fallen and was caught. I have noticed the same thing once or twice before. 

Hear the autumnal crickets. 

At Ball’s Hill see five summer ducks, a brood now grown, feeding amid the pads on the opposite side of the river, with a whitish ring, perhaps nearly around neck. A rather shrill squeaking quack when they go off. 

It is remarkable how much more game you will see if you are in the habit of sitting in the fields and woods. As you pass along with a noise it hides itself, but presently comes forth again. 

The Ludwigia spharocarpa out maybe a week. I was obliged to wade to it all the way from the shore, the meadow-grass cutting my feet above and making them smart. You must wear boots here.

The lespedeza with short heads, how long? These great meadows through which I wade have a great abundance of hedge-hyssop now in bloom in the water. Small St. John’s-worts and elodeas, lanceolate loosestrife, arrow heads, small climbing bellflower, also horse-mint on the drier clods. These all over the meadow. 

I see seven or eight nighthawks together; dull-buff breasts, with tails short and black beneath. The mole cricket creaks along the shore. 

Meadow-haying on all hands.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 6, 1855

Hear the autumnal crickets. See August 6, 1854 (“. . .this anticipation of the fall, — coolness and cloud, and the crickets steadily chirping in mid-afternoon.”); August 18, 1856 “I hear the steady (not intermittent) shrilling of apparently the alder cricket, clear, loud, and autumnal, a season sound.”)

Small St. John’s-worts and elodeas, lanceolate loosestrife, arrow heads, small climbing bellflower, also horse-mint . . . all over the meadow. See August 13, 1856 (“Is there not now a prevalence of aromatic herbs in prime? — The polygala roots, blue-curls, wormwood, pennyroyal, Solidago odora, rough sunflowers, horse-mint, etc., etc. Does not the season require this tonic? ”)

August 6. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 6

 

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