A Book of the Seasons: May 31 (Gowing's Swamp, Andromeda Polifolia, Azalea nudiflora, yellowbird nests, the spray frog and tree toad)

May 31.

Pedestrium solatium in apricis locis. – nodosa. May 31, 1851

(“The solace of walkers in sunny places. – troublesome.”)

We cross the river

Melvin and I and his dog

to the azalea.

May 31, 1853

A swamp tends to have 

an interior spot once bound

to creation's womb.

May 31, 1857

The voice of the toad

first heard a month ago sounds

differently now.

May 31, 1858

A yellowbird’s nest 

of grayish milkweed fibre,

one egg, in alder. 

May 31, 1858

Black flies or millers

  over river with long feelers

flying in swarms.

May 31, 1859

May 31, 2019

I am going in search of the Azalea nudiflora. May 31, 1853

He told me he found it about ten years ago, and he went to it every year. . , and he thought it "the handsomest flower that grows." May 31, 1853

I told him he had better tell me where it was; I was a botanist and ought to know. May 31, 1853

Cold weather. May 31, 1854

A cold southeast wind. May 31, 1854

Another windy, washing day, but warm. May 31, 1855

It has been very cold for two or three days, and to-night a frost is feared. The telegraph says it snowed in Bangor to-day. May 31, 1856

There was a slight sea-turn, the wind coming cool and easterly this morning. May 31, 1858

The hickory leaves are blackened by blowing in the cold wind. May 31, 1856

There were severe frosts on the nights of the 28th and 29th, and now I see the hickories turned quite black, , , , Also many ferns are withered and black, May 31, 1858

Rained hard during the night. May 31, 1860

Have noticed within a week, from time to time, the water-line on the bushes along the shore — the water going down — unusually distinct, for while the exposed parts have leaved out, the lower are quite bare and black. May 31, 1856

At 6 P. M. the river has risen to half an inch below summer level, having been three to four inches below summer level yesterday morning. May 31, 1860

Small black flies or millers over river, with long feelers, flying low in swarms now. May 31, 1859

In evening hear distinctly a tree-toad. May 31, 1855

Hear the sprayey note of toads now more than ever, after the rain. May 31, 1860

Does not the voice of the toad along the river sound differently now from what it did a month ago? I think it is much less sonorous and ringing, a more croaking and inquisitive or qui vive sound. Is it not less prolonged also? May 31, 1858

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. May 31, 1857

That central meadow and pool in Gowing's Swamp is its very navel, omphalos, where the umbilical cord was cut that bound it to creation's womb. Methinks every swamp tends to have or suggests such an interior tender spot. May 31, 1857

There grow the white spruce and the larch.. May 31, 1857

Rhodora now in its prime. May 31, 1857

Andromeda Polifolia, much past its prime. May 31, 1857

I detect no hairy huckleberry. May 31, 1857

The Vaccinium Oxycoccus is almost in bloom! and has grown three inches; is much in advance of the common. May 31, 1857

The Pinus resinosa not yet out; will be apparently with the rigida. The sterile flower-buds are dark-purple, while those of the rigida there are light-green. May 31, 1857

I see in open land a hollow circle of Lycopodium dendroideum, ten feet in diameter. This too, then, like the flowering fern, grows or spreads in circles. May 31, 1857

Also the cinnamon fern grows in circles. May 31, 1857

Hemlock and creeping juniper, where had not bloomed the 22d, are now entirely out of bloom on the hill. How short their flower lasts! May 31, 1856

Ranunculus Purshii, probably earlier in some places, but water high. May 31, 1856

Nuphar advena first noticed; may have been out some time in some places, but just out in river. May 31, 1856

That little cerastium on the rock at the Island, noticed the 22d, which probably opened about that time, is now out of bloom. May 31, 1856

The red oak is so forward, compared with the rest, that it is more difficult to get a sprig in flower small enough (its leaves) to press. May 31, 1856

Blue-eyed grass, apparently in pretty good season. May 31, 1854

Choke-cherry, a day or two. May 31, 1858

Cornus florida, not yet for two or three days. May 31, 1858

I saw on the 29th white Viola pedata, and to-day a white V. cucullata. May 31, 1858

Clintonia. May 31, 1856

Pink, common wild, maybe two or three days. May 31, 1856

See an ants' nest, just begun, which covers the grass with sand for more than ten feet in one direction and seven in the other and is thickly pierced with holes. May 31, 1857

I see, running along on the flat side of a railroad rail on the causeway, a wild mouse with an exceedingly long tail. Perhaps it would be called the long-tailed meadow mouse. May 31, 1858

At 5 P.M., go to see a gray squirrel's nest in the oak at the Island point. It is about fifteen feet from the ground, – the entrance, — where a limb has been broken off, and the tree is hollow above and below. One young one darted past downward under my face, with the speed of a bird. May 31, 1858

I find a chewink's nest with four eggs (fresh) on the side-hill at Jarvis’s wood-lot, twenty feet below wood-chuck’s hole at canoe birch. The nest is first of withered leaves, then stubble, thickly lined with withered grass and partly sheltered by dead leaves, shoved [?] up a huckleberry bush. May 31, 1858

See a yellowbird building a nest on a white oak on the Island. She goes to a fern for the wool. May 31, 1855

A yellowbird’s nest of that grayish milkweed fibre, one egg, in alder by wall west of Indian burying(?)-ground. May 31, 1858

A ground-bird’s nest (melodia or graminea.), with six of those oblong narrow gray eggs speckled with much brown at end. May 31, 1856

See a greater telltale. . . at the water's edge. It keeps nodding its head with an awkward jerk, and wades in the water to the middle of its yellow legs; goes off with a loud and sharp phe phe phe phe. May 31,

As I return in the dusk, many nighthawks, with their great spotted wings, are circling low over the river, as the swallows were when I went out. May 31, 1856

Some incidents in my life have seemed far more allegorical than actual; they were so significant that they plainly served no other use.May 31, 1853

That a rare and beautiful flower which we never saw, perhaps never heard of, for which therefore there was no place in our thoughts may be found in our immediate neighborhood, is very suggestive. May 31, 1853

We went on down the brook, - Melvin and I and his dog, - and crossed the river in his boat, and he conducted me to where the Azalea nudiflora grew, May 31, 1853

Azalea nudiflora, -purple azalea, pinxter-flower,... It is a conspicuously beautiful flowering shrub, with the sweet fragrance of the common swamp-pink, but the flowers are larger and, in this case, a fine lively rosy pink,...With a broader, somewhat downy pale-green leaf.. May 31, 1853

The boundaries of the actual are no more fixed and rigid than the elasticity of our imaginations. May 31, 1853

*****

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,

Insect Hatches in Spring (millers, perla, shad-flies or ephemera)

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Ring of Toads

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Tree-toad

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau The Summer Yellowbird

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Birds of May

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau. The Hickory

*****

In evening hear distinctly a tree-toad. See; May 23, 1857 ("I hear one regular bullfrog trump, and as I approach the edge of the Holden Swamp, the tree-toads.");  May 27, 1852 ("Methinks the tree-toad croaks more this wet weather."); May 28, 1853 (" What is peculiar now, beginning yesterday, after rains, is the sudden heat, and the more general sound of insects by day, and the loud ringing croak of common toads and tree-toads at evening and in the night."); June 9, 1854 ("The veery rings, and the tree-toad. ")

Hear the sprayey note of toads now more than ever, after the rain. not the voice of the toad along the river sound differently now from what it did a month ago? See May 13, 1860 ("It is so warm that I hear the peculiar sprayey note of the toad generally at night."); May 16, 1853 ("Nature’appears to have passed a crisis. . . . The sprayey dream of the toad has a new sound."); May 19, 1854 ("I hear the sprayey-note frog now at sunset.");May 25, 1851 (“I hear the dreaming of the frogs); May 25, 1859 ("Hear within a day or two what I call the sprayey note of the toad, different and later than its early ring."); June 12, 1855 (“I hear the toad, which I have called “spray frog” falsely, still. . . .A peculiarly rich, sprayey dreamer, now at 2 P. M.! . . . This rich, sprayey note possesses all the shore. It diffuses itself far and wide over the water and enters into every crevice of the noon, and you cannot tell whence it proceeds”)

A yellowbird building a nest on a white oak on the Island. She goes to a fern for the wool. A yellowbird’s nest of that grayish milkweed fibre. See  January 19, 1856 ("Knocked down the bottom of that summer yellow bird’s nest made on the oak at the Island last summer. It is chiefly of fern wool and also, apparently, some sheep’s wool (?), with a fine green moss (apparently that which grows on button-bushes) inmixed, and some milkweed fibre, and all very firmly agglutinated together.") See also June 5, 1859 ("A yellowbird's nest; four eggs, developed."); June 7, 1855 ("A yellowbird’s nest on a willow bough against a twig, ten feet high, four eggs"); June 9, 1856 ("A yellowbird’s nest in a poplar on Hubbard’s Bridge causeway; four fresh eggs; ten feet high, three rods beyond fence."); June 9, 1855 ("A yellowbird’s nest eight feet from ground in crotch of a very slender maple.“) 

He thought it "the handsomest flower that grows." .... Azalea nudiflora,-- purple azalea, pinxter-flower . See May 17, 1854 ("Azalea nudiflora in woods begins to leaf now.");May 29, 1855 ("Azalea nudiflora in garden"); June 2, 1855 ("The Azalea nudiflora now in its prime.”); May 25, 1856 ("Azalea nudiflora in garden"); June 2, 1856 ("To Azalea nudiflora, which is in prime.");; May 26, 1857 ("Pink azalea in garden"); May 24, 1858 ("The pink azalea, too, not yet out at home, is generally out[ in New York)”); May 19, 1859 (“Our Azalea nudiflora flowers.”); May 27, 1859 (“Azalea nudiflora blooms generally.”); May 26, 1860 ("Our pink azalea”)

Millers over river, with long feelers, flying low. See June 6, 1855 (“There are now those large swarms of black-winged millers a half-inch long, with two long streamers ahead, fluttering three to six inches over the water”)

That central meadow and pool in Gowing's Swamp . See August 23, 1854 ("There is in the middle an open pool, twenty or thirty feet in diameter,. . .an abrupt edge next the water, this on a dense bed of quaking sphagnum, in which I sink eighteen inches in water, upheld by its matted roots, where I fear to break through. On this the spatulate sundew abounds."); August 30, 1856 ("Consider how remote and novel that swamp. Beneath it is a quaking bed of sphagnum, and in it grow Andromeda Polifolia, Kalmia glauca, menyanthes (or buck -bean), Gaylussacia dumosa, Vaccinium Oxycoccus, — plants which scarcely a citizen of Concord ever sees.")

Andromeda Polifolia, much past its prime. See May 24, 1855 ("Andromeda Polifolia now in prime."); May 24, 1854 ("Surprised to find the Andromeda Polifolia in bloom and apparently past its prime. . .A timid botanist would never pluck it."); February 17, 1854 ("In the open part of Gowing's Swamp I find the Andromeda Polifolia. Neither here nor in Beck Stow's does it grow very near the shore."). Note HDT first discovered Andromeda Polifolia on July 14, 1853 at Beck Stow’s Swamp (“Saw something blue, or glaucous, in Beck Stow's Swamp to-day; approached and discovered the Andromeda Polifolia, in the midst of the swamp at the north end, not long since out of bloom. This is another instance of a common experience. When I am shown from abroad, or hear of, or in any [way] become interested in, some plant or other thing, I am pretty sure to find it soon. “) On February 17, 1854 he first records finding it at Gowing’s Swamp.. See Vascular Flora of Concord, Massachusetts

 May 31.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, May 31

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

The telegraph says it snowed in Bangor to-day.

May 31

May 31, 2016

P. M. — To Clintonia Swamp (Hubbard’s) Grove. 

A ground-bird’s nest (melodia or graminea.), with six of those oblong narrow gray eggs speckled with much brown at end. When I looked again half an hour after, one egg was hatched. The bird would steal out through the grass when I came within a rod, and then, after running a rod or two, take to wing. 

Tied a string about a low pyrus a rod or so to right of entrance to Hubbard’s Pyrus Swamp and two feet west of a pitch pine stump, and pressed a twig of it.

Clintonia. 

Nuphar advena first noticed; may have been out some time in some places, but just out in river. 

Pink, common wild, maybe two or three days.

Sundown—To Hill and Island. 

Have noticed within a week, from time to time, the water-line on the bushes along the shore — the water going down — unusually distinct, for while the exposed parts have leaved out, the lower are quite bare and black. 

Hemlock and creeping juniper, where had not bloomed the 22d, are now entirely out of bloom on the hill. How short their flower lasts! 

Ranunculus Purshii, probably earlier in some places, but water high. 

That little cerastium on the rock at the Island, noticed the 22d, which probably opened about  that time, is now out of bloom. It is about three inches high and has long pods, more than twice the length of the calyx, which turn upward. I have seen no petals. It seems to be the C. nutans (?), from size, erectness, and form of pods and leaves. It has viscid hairs or with glands at end. 

The red oak is so forward, compared with the rest, that it is more difficult to get a sprig in flower small enough (its leaves) to press. 

As I return in the dusk, many nighthawks, with their great spotted wings, are circling low over the river, as the swallows were when I went out. They skim within a rod of me. After dusk these greater swallows come forth, and circle and play about over the water like those lesser ones, or perhaps making a larger circuit, also uttering a louder note. It would not be safe for such great birds to fly so near and familiarly by day. 

It has been very cold for two or three days, and to-night a frost is feared. The telegraph says it snowed in Bangor to-day. 

The hickory leaves are blackened by blowing in the cold wind.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 31, 1856

A ground-bird’s nest (melodia or graminea.), with six of those oblong narrow gray eggs speckled with much brown at end. See May 27, 1856 ("Fringilla melodia’s nest in midst of swamp, with four eggs . . . with very dark blotches"); May 18, 1855 ("a bay-wing sparrow’s nest, four eggs (young half hatched) -- some black-spotted, others not”); June 4, 1857 (“I scare up a bay-wing. She runs several rods close to the ground through the thin grass, and then lurks behind tussocks, etc. The nest has four eggs, dull pinkish-white with brown spots; nest low in ground, of stubble lined with white horse hair. ”).See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bay-Wing [Vesper] Sparrow

Clintonia. See June 2, 1853 ("Clintonia borealis, a day or two. This is perhaps the most interesting and neatest of what I may call the liliaceous (?) plants we have. Its beauty at present consists chiefly in its commonly three very handsome, rich, clear dark-green leaves . . . arching over from a centre at the ground, sometimes very symmetrically disposed in a triangular fashion; and from their midst rises the scape [ a ] foot high, with one or more umbels of“green bell - shaped flowers,” yellowish- green, nodding or bent downward")

The telegraph says it snowed in Bangor to-day. See November 13, 1851 ("The cattle-train came down last night from Vermont with snow nearly a foot thick upon it. It is as if, in the fall of the year, a swift traveller should come out of the north with snow upon his coat.")  

The hickory leaves are blackened by blowing in the cold wind. See May 31, 1858 ("There were severe frosts on the nights of the 28th and 29th, and now I see the hickories turned quite black")

May 31. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, May 31

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 Book of the Seasons: May 30 (now is the summer come, moving shadows, waving grass – shelter from the storm; lady's slippers, arethusas and buttercups)

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

May 30.

Strong lights and shades now.

It is a day of shadows,

the leaves have so grown –

and of wind –

A day for shadows

of fast moving clouds over

fields of waving grass.

May 30, 1852

The morning wind blows.

The poem of the world is

uninterrupted.

May 30, 1853

The dog lies with his 

paws hanging over the door-

sill this cool morning.

May 30, 1853

Aster-like flower

a foot high in little squads,

nodding in the wind.

May 30, 1853

The arethusa

shoots up unexpectedly.

It is all color.

May 30, 1854

Perhaps I could write

meditations under a

rock in a shower.

May 30, 1857

The blue sky first seen 

here and there between the clouds 

– the end of a storm.

 May 30, 1857

The turpentine scent

of the ledum in the air

as I walk through it.

May 30, 1858

May 30, 2017

Now is the summer come.

May 30. 2012

The morning wind forever blows; the poem of the world is uninterrupted, but few are the ears that hear it.  May 30, 1853

Strong lights and shades now.  It is a day of shadows, the leaves have so grown, and of wind. May 30, 1852

A day for shadows, even of moving clouds, over fields in which the grass is beginning to wave. May 30, 1852

The peculiarly tender foliage (yellowish) which began to invest the dark evergreens on the 22d lasts a week or more, growing darker. May 30, 1859

As I look off from Fair Haven I perceive that that . . . the pines are a dirty dark brown, almost purple, and are mostly merged and lost in the deciduous trees. May 30, 1853

The apple trees are about out of blossom. It is but a week they last. May 30, 1852

A breezy, washing day. May 30, 1852

Now is the summer come. May 30, 1852

The white maples, especially those shaped like large bushes, on the banks are now full of foliage, showing the white under sides of the leaves in the wind, and the swamp white oak, having similar silvery under sides to its leaves, and both growing abundantly and prevailing here along the river, make or impart a peculiar flashing light to the scenery in windy weather, all bright, flashing, and cheerful. May 30, 1853

The brown panicles of the June-grass now paint some fields with the color of early summer. May 30, 1860

Is it not summer now when the creak of the crickets begins to be general? May 30, 1855

The bass leaf is now large and handsome. May 30, 1852

Green lice from birches (?) get on my clothes. May 30, 1855

Chestnut oak not yet in bloom, though the black and scarlet are well out in ordinary places. Its young leaves have a reddish-brown tinge. May 30, 1857

The white oak is not out. May 30, 1857

It is remarkable that many beach and chestnut oak leaves, which so recently expanded, have already attained their full size! How they launch themselves forth to the light! How suddenly Nature spreads her umbrellas! How little delay in expanding leaves! They seem to expand before our eyes, like the wings of moths just fallen from the cocoon. May 30, 1857

The young black oak leafets are dark red or reddish, thick and downy; the scarlet oak also are somewhat reddish, thick and downy, or thin and green and little downy, like red oak, but rather more deeply cut; the red oak broad, thin, green and not downy; the white pink-red. May 30, 1857

A strong west wind and much haze. May 30, 1855

Very pleasant to feel the strong, fresh southerly wind from over the water. There are no clouds in the sky, but a high haziness. May 30, 1853

The common blue flag just out at Ball's Hill. May 30, 1853

Yellow clover abundantly out, though the heads are small yet. Are they quite open? May 30, 1856

The yellow water ranunculus by the Corner causeway. May 30, 1852

Buttercups thickly spot the churchyard. May 30, 1857

Comandra umbellata, apparently a day or two. May 30, 1856

Buttonwood flowers now effete; fertile flowers were not brown on the 24th, but were the 28th; say, then, about the 26th. May 30, 1855

Lepidium virginicum, roadside bank at Minott’s. May 30, 1855

The myrica, bayberry, plucked on the 23d, now first sheds pollen in house, the leaf being but little more expanded on the flowering shoot. May 30, 1855

Silvery potentilla, four or five days at least. May 30, 1855\

Senecio in open meadows, say yesterday. May 30, 1855 -- Senecio in bloom. May 30, 1852

Cinquefoil and houstonia cover the ground, mixed with the grass and contrasting with each other. May 30, 1852

The stems of meadow saxifrage are white now. May 30, 1860

Sorrel begins to redden fields. May 30, 1859

Violets everywhere spot the meadows, some more purple, some more lilac. ... Distinguished the Viola palmata in Hubbard's meadow, near the sidesaddle-flowers, which last are just beginning to blossom. May 30, 1852

The last are quite showy flowers when the wind turns them so as to show their under sides. May 30, 1852

The Viola palmata, which is later, and therefore, methinks, fresher than most, is now quite prevalent, one of the most common, in fact, in low ground and a very handsome purple, with more red than usual in its violet. May 30, 1853

The lupine, which I saw almost in blossom a week ago at Plymouth, I hear is in blossom here. May 30, 1852

How many such lupine banks there are! — whose blue you detect many rods off. May 30, 1853

There I found, methinks, minute Specularia perfoliata, with small crenate clasping leaves alternate at some distance apart, on upright stems about three inches high, but apparently fruiting in the bud. May 30, 1853

Also the Silene antirrhina very abundant there. May 30, 1853

White cohosh in bloom May 30, 1852

The cistus out, probably yesterday, a simple and delicate flower, its stamens all swept to one side. It upholds a delicate saffron-golden (?) basin about nine inches from the ground. May 30, 1853

Smilacina stellata. May 30, 1852

The flowers of the sassafras have not such a fragrance as I perceived last year. May 30, 1852

Ladies’ slipper, apparently, May 30, 1855 

The lady’s-slipper in pitch pine wood-side near J. Hosmer’s Desert, probably about the 27th. May 30, 1856

Hear of lady's-slipper seen the 23d; how long? May 30, 1858

The Erigeron bellidifolius is a tender-looking, pale-purple, aster-like flower a foot high in little squads, nodding in the wind on the bare slopes of hill pastures. May 30, 1853

The bulbous arethusa, the most splendid, rich, and high-colored flower thus far, methinks, all flower and color, almost without leaves, and looking much larger than it is, and more conspicuous on account of its intense color. A flower of mark. It appeared two or three times as large as reality when it flashed upon me from the meadow. May 30, 1852

I am surprised to find arethusas abundantly out in Hubbard's Close. . .It is so leafless that it shoots up unexpectedly. It is all color, a little hook of purple flame projecting from the meadow into the air. . . . This high-colored plant shoots up suddenly, all flower, in meadows where it is wet walking. A superb flower. May 30, 1854

I see what I take to be an uncommonly large Uvularia sessilifolia flower, but, looking again, am surprised to find it the Uvularia perfoliata, which I have not found hereabouts before. It is a taller and much more erect plant than the other, with a larger flower, methinks. May 30, 1857

High blueberry flowers are quite conspicuous. May 30, 1852

The fruit of the amelanchier is as big as small peas. I have not noticed any other berry so large yet. May 30, 1852

I see now green high blueberries, and gooseberries in Hubbard's Close, as well as shad-bush berries and strawberries. May 30, 1854

The sumach (glabra) is well under weigh now. May 30, 1852

The narrow- leaved cotton-grass. May 30, 1852

The Equisetum sylvaticum, or wood horse-tail in the meadows. May 30, 1852

The tall pipe-grass (Equisetum uliginosum) . May 30, 1852

Yellow lilies are abundant. May 30, 1852

The Drosera rotundifolia now glistens with its dew at midday, a beautiful object closely examined. May 30, 1852

The Juncus filiformis not out yet, though some panicles are grown nearly half an inch. . . . Perhaps will bloom in a week. May 30, 1860

The Salix tristis generally shows its down now along dry wood-paths. May 30, 1860

No American mountain-ash out. May 30, 1859

Cornus Canadensis out, how long? May 30, 1855

Poison-dogwood has grown three or four inches at ends of last year’s shoots, which are three to six feet from ground. May 30, 1855

Setophaga magnolia May 30, 1855

E. Emerson's Calla palustris out the 27th. May 30, 1859

Eleocharis palustris, R. W. E.'s meadow, not long. May 30, 1859

Hear of linnaea out, the 28th. May 30, 1859

The anemones appear to be nearly gone. May 30, 1852

I saw the Nuphar advena above water and yellow in Shrewsbury the 23d. May 30, 1858

The scheuchzeria is at height or past. May 30, 1859

Ledum, one flower out, . . . It is decidedly leafing also . . . I perceive the turpentine scent of the ledum in the air as I walk through it. May 30, 1858

Blue-stemmed goldenrod is already a foot high. May 30, 1857

I see the geranium and two-leaved Solomon's-seal out, the last abundant. May 30, 1857

The geranium is a delicate flower and be longs especially to shady places under trees and shrubs, — better if about springs, — in by-nooks, so modest. May 30, 1852

The early gnaphaliums are gone to seed, having run up seven or ten inches. May 30, 1852

The field plantain, which I saw in Plymouth a week ago, abundant there. May 30, 1852

The red pyrus by the path, not yet, but probably the same elsewhere.

I do not yet observe a difference between the two kinds of Pyrus arbutifolia, if, indeed, I have compared the two, i. e. my early black and later red-fruited, which last holds on all winter. May 30, 1852

Edward Emerson shows me the nest which he and another discovered. . . .The hawk rises when we approach and circles about over the wood, uttering a note singularly like the common one of the flicker. May 30, 1858

On the wall, at the brook behind Cyrus Hosmer’s barn, I start a nighthawk within a rod or two. It alights again on his barn-yard board fence, sitting diagonally. I see the white spot on the edge of its wings as it sits. It flies thence and alights on the ground in his corn-field, sitting flat, but there was no nest under it. This was unusual. Had it not a nest nearby? May 30, 1860

Was it not a whip-poor-will I scared up at the base of a bush in the woods to-day, that went off with a clumsy flight? May 30, 1857

There are young robins in nests. May 30, 1852

A bird's nest in grass, with coffee-colored eggs. May 30, 1852

To what sparrow belong the coffee-colored eggs in Hubbard's field by the brook? May 30, 1852

See bird’s nest on an apple by roadside, seven feet high; one egg. May 30, 1855

Cherry-bird on a cherry; also pecking at the apple blossoms. 1855

Wild cherry on the low shrubs, but not yet the trees, a rummy scent. May 30, 1852

Young bush like black cherries a day or two, on Cliffs and in such favorable places. May 30, 1853

Hear the evergreen forest note, and see probably the bird, — black throat, greenish-yellow or yellowish-green head and back, light-slate (?) wings with two white bars. Is it not the black-throated green warbler? May 30, 1855

I think that there are many chestnut-sided warblers this season. They are pretty tame. One sits within six feet of me, though not still. He is much painted up. May 30, 1857

Hear a familiar warbler not recognized for some years, in the thick copse in Dennis’s Swamp, south of railroad; considerably yellowbird-like (the note).May 30, 1855

When I entered the interior meadow of Gowing's Swamp I heard a slight snort, and found that I had suddenly come upon a woodchuck amid the sphagnum, lambkill, Kalmia glauca, andromeda, cranberry, etc., there. It was only seven feet off, and, being surprised, would not run. . . .He may have thought that no one but he came to Gowing's Swamp these afternoons. May 30, 1859

Andromeda Polifolia by the ditch well out, how long? May 30, 1858

The dwarf andromeda is about out of bloom. Its new shoots from the side of the old stem are an inch or more long. May 30, 1852

On the meadows are large yellow-green patches of ferns beginning to prevail. May 30, 1853

In this dark, cellar-like maple swamp are scattered at pretty regular intervals tufts of green ferns, Osmunda cinnamomea, above the dead brown leaves, broad, tapering fronds, curving over on every side from a compact centre, now three or four feet high. May 30, 1854

The branches or branchlets of the maidenhair fern are so disposed as to form two thirds of a cup around the stem. May 30, 1852

What kind of blackberry did I find in blossom in Hubbard's Swamp? May 30, 1852

High blackberry out. May 30, 1853

A succession of moderate thunder and lightning storms from the west, two or three, an hour apart. May 30, 1860

I took refuge from the thunder-shower this afternoon by running for a high pile of wood . . . making a little shed, under which I stood dry. May 30, 1860

Perhaps I could write meditations under a rock in a shower. May 30, 1857

Birds appear to be but little incommoded by the rain. Yet they do not often sing in it. May 30, 1857

When first I had sheltered myself under the rock, I began at once to look out on the pond with new eyes . . . Ordinarily we make haste away from all opportunities to be where we have instinctively endeavored to get. May 30, 1857

When the storm was over where I was, and only a few thin drops were falling around me, I plainly saw the rear of the rain withdrawing over the Lincoln woods south of the pond, and, above all, heard the grand rushing sound made by the rain falling on the freshly green forest. May 30, 1857

In the midst of the shower, though it was not raining very hard, a black and white creeper came and inspected the limbs of a tree before my rock, in his usual zigzag, prying way, head downward often, and when it thundered loudest, heeded it not. May 30, 1857

See a small black snake run along securely through thin bushes (alders and willows) three or four feet from the ground, passing intervals of two feet easily,—very readily and gracefully, —ascending or descending. May 30, 1855

Wood frogs skipping over the dead leaves, whose color they resemble. May 30, 1854

Saw some devil’s-needles (the first) about the 25th. May 30, 1860

Passed a cow that had just dropped her calf in the meadow. May 30, 1852

The white maple keys falling and covering the river. May 30, 1853

The river is my own highway, the only wild and unfenced part of the world hereabouts. May 30, 1852

The blue sky is never more celestial to our eyes than when it is first seen here and there between the clouds at the end of a storm . . . There was a slight rainbow on my way home. May 30, 1857

As I stand by the riverside some time after sundown, I see a light white mist rising here and there in wisps from the meadow, far and near . . . there is some warm breath of the meadow turned into cloud. May 30, 1858

*****

Now is the summer come. . . . A day for shadows, even of moving clouds, over fields in which the grass is beginning to wave. See May 27, 1853 ("A new season has commenced - summer - leafy June.”); May 27, 1855 ("The fields now begin to wear the aspect of June, their grass just beginning to wave;. . .”); May 26, 1854 (At sight of this deep and dense field all vibrating with motion and light, winter recedes many degrees in my memory. . . . The season of grass, now everywhere green and luxuriant.”); May 19, 1860 ("The grass, especially the meadow-grasses, are seen to wave distinctly, and the shadows of the bright fair-weather cumuli are sweeping over them.")

Buttercups thickly spot the churchyard. See May 27, 1853 ("The buttercups in the church-yard and on some hillsides are now looking more glossy and bright than ever after the rain.”); June 2, 1852 (“Buttercups now spot the churchyard.”)

Arethusa  abundantly out at Hubbard's Close. .See May 29, 1856 ("Arethusa bulbosa at Hubbard’s Close apparently a day or two.”).; June 1, 1855(“Arethusa out at Hubbard’s Close; say two or three days at a venture, there being considerable.“)

The lady’s-slipper .  See May 27, 1852 ("Ladies'-slippers out. They perfume the air.”); May 26, 1857 (“A lady's-slipper. At Cliffs, no doubt, before. ”); May 20, 1852 ("A lady's-slipper well budded”); May19, 1860 (“At the Ministerial Swamp I see a white lady's-slipper almost out, fully grown, with red ones.”); May 18, 1851 ("Lady's-slipper almost fully blossomed”).

Perhaps I could write meditations under a rock in a shower. See August 13, 1853 (“Could I not write meditations under a bridge at midsummer?”)

The blue sky is never more celestial to our eyes than when it is first seen here and there between the clouds at the end of a storm. See January 7, 1851 ("The life, the joy, that is in blue sky after a storm!")

I began at once to look out on the pond with new eyes, as from my house. I was at Lee's Cliff as I had never been there before . . .See June 13, 1854 ("When I have stayed out thus late many miles from home, and have heard a cricket beginning to chirp louder near me in the grass I have felt that I was not far from home after all, -- began to be weaned from my village home."); May 23, 1853 ("[A] certain lateeness ... releases me from the obligation to return in any particular season. I have passed the Rubicon of staying out. ...I will wander further from what I have called my home - to the home which is forever inviting me. In such an hour the freedom of the woods is offered me")

I took refuge from the thunder-shower this afternoon by running for a high pile of wood.  / This Cliff thus became my house. I inhabited it. . . I think that such a projection as this, or a cave, is the only effectual protection that nature affords us against the storm. See also  August 9, 1851 ("I meet the rain at the edge of the wood, and take refuge under the thickest leaves, where not a drop reaches me, and, at the end of half an hour, the renewed singing of the birds alone advertises me that the rain has ceased, and it is only the dripping from the leaves which I hear in the woods."); June 14, 1855 (“It suddenly begins to rain with great violence, and we in haste draw up our boat on the Clamshell shore, upset it, and get under, sitting on the paddles, . . .  It is very pleasant to lie there half an hour close to the edge of the water and see and hear the great drops patter on the river, each making a great bubble”); July 22, 1858 ("Took refuge from a shower under our boat at Clamshell; staid an hour at least. A thunderbolt fell close by."); August 17, 1858 (“Being overtaken by a shower, we took refuge in the basement of Sam Barrett’s sawmill, where we spent an hour, and at length came home with a rainbow over arching the road before us.”); October 17, 1859 ("The rain drives me from my berrying and we take shelter under a tree. It is worth the while to sit under the lee of an apple tree trunk in the rain, if only to study the bark and its inhabitants. ")

May 30.

May 30, 2012
A day for shadows, for fast moving clouds over fields of waving grass.

If you make the least correct 

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

May 29< <<<<<. May 30.    >>>>> May 31

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  May 30

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 © 2009-2022

The Lady’s-slipper in pitch pine wood-side.

May 30. 
P. M. — To Linnaea Wood-lot. 

The lady’s-slipper in pitch pine wood-side near J. Hosmer’s Desert, probably about the 27th. 

That desert, small as it now is (for it is partly reclaimed by using pine boughs as a salve), is scored with circles (like that of Provincetown) made by the dry Polygonum articulatum blown about. It is but a lesser Sahara, and I cannot see it without being reminded that, in some parts of the globe, sand prevails like an ocean. 

What are those black masses of fibrous roots mixed with smaller dark-gray, cone-like tubers, on the sand?

Return 'via Clamshell. Yellow clover abundantly out, though the heads are small yet. Are they quite open? 

Comandra umbellata, apparently a day or two. 

Frank Harding caught five good-sized chivin this cold and windy day from the new stone bridge. The biggest one was quite red or coppery; the others but slightly, except the head. Is it a peculiarity of age?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 30, 1856

The lady’s-slipper in pitch pine wood-side . . . See May 30, 1858 ("Hear of lady's-slipper seen the 23d; how long?"); May 30, 1855 ("Ladies’ slipper, apparently”); May 27, 1852 ("Ladies'-slippers out. They perfume the air.”); May 26, 1857 (“A lady's-slipper. At Cliffs, no doubt, before. ”); May 20, 1852 ("A lady's-slipper well budded”); May19, 1860 (“At the Ministerial Swamp I see a white lady's-slipper almost out, fully grown, with red ones.”); May 18, 1851 ("Lady's-slipper almost fully blossomed”).

Polygonum articulate:   Coastal jointed knotweed - found on sand dunes, pine barrens, or disturbed areas with sandy soils. GoBotany

May 30 See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 30

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