And now the lark must look out for the mowers.

July 11. 

July11,  2016

P. M. — To Corner Spring and Cliffs. 

Haying is fairly begun, and for some days I have heard the sound of the mowing-machine, and now the lark must look out for the mowers. 

The flowering fern, which is so much larger in the copses, though much is brown and effete, is still perhaps in prime. 

Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum ripe. Their dark blue with a bloom is a color that surprises me. 

The cymbidium is really a splendid flower, with its spike two or three inches long,  of commonly three or five large, irregular, concave, star-shaped purple flowers, amid the cool green meadow-grass. It has an agreeable fragrance withal. 

I see more berries than usual of the Rubus triflorus in the open meadow near the southeast corner of the Hubbard meadow blueberry swamp. Call it, perhaps, Cymbidium Meadow. They are dark shining red and, when ripe, of a very agreeable flavor and somewhat of the raspberry's spirit. 

Petty morel not yet, by the bars this side Corner Spring; nor is the helianthus there budded yet.

Apocynum cannabinum, with its small white flowers and narrow sepals half as long as whole corolla, apparently two or three days. 

The trumpet-weed is already as high as my head, with a rich glaucous bloom on its stem. 

Indeed, looking off into the vales from Fair Haven Hill, where a thin blue haze now rests almost universally, I see that the earth itself is invested with a glaucous bloom at this season like some fruits and rapidly growing stems. 

Thermometer at 93° + this afternoon. 

Am surprised to find the water of Corner Spring spoiled for the present, however much I clear it out, by the numbers of dead and dying frogs in it (Rana palustris). There is a mortality among which has made them hop to this spring to die. 

There is an abundance of corydalis on the top of the Cliffs, but most of it is generally out of bloom, i. e. excepting a twig or two, and it is partly withered, not so fresh as that in our garden; but some in the shade is quite green and fresh and abundantly blooming still.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 11, 1857

And now the lark must look out for the mowers. See July 11, 1854 ("I hear Conant's cradle cronching the rye behind the fringe of bushes in the Indian field. Reaping begun."); July 29, 1853 ("About these times some hundreds of men with freshly sharpened scythes make an irruption into my garden when in its rankest condition, and clip my herbs all as close as they can,") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Haymaking and June 30,1851 ("The lark sings a note which belongs to a New England summer evening. "); July 16, 1851 ("The lark sings in the meadow; the very essence of the afternoon is in his strain. This is a New England sound"); July 18, 1852 ("The larks and blackbirds and kingbirds are heard in the meadows."); July 26, 1853 ("Lark, too seen now, four or five together, sing as of yore"); July 26, 1856 ("I see young larks fly pretty well before me.")

Rubus triflorus in the open meadow near the southeast corner of the Hubbard meadow blueberry swamp. See note to July 6, 1857 ("Rubus triflorus well ripe.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Raspberry

Apocynum cannabinum, with its small white flowers and narrow sepals. See note to September 2, 1856 ("Some years ago I sought for Indian hemp (Apocynum cannabinum) hereabouts in vain, and concluded that it did not grow here. A month or two ago I read again, as many times before, that its blossoms were very small, scarcely a third as large as those of the common species, and for some unaccountable reason this distinction kept recurring to me, and I regarded the size of the flowers I saw, though I did not believe that it grew here; and in a day or two my eyes fell on it, aye, in three different places, and different varieties of it.")

Thermometer at 93° + this afternoon. See July 2, 1855 ("At 2 P. M. — Thermometer north side of house ... 93°") 

Dead and dying frogs in Corner Spring (Rana palustris). See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  The   Pickerel frog  (Rana palustris or Lithobates palustris)

July 11. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 11

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