P. M._—To Annursnack.
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| September 13, 2018 |
I noticed the black willows quite imbrowned on the 10th, and the button-bushes beginning to look yellowish.
A. Hosmer is pleased because from the cupola of his new barn he can see a new round-topped mountain in the northwest. Is curious to know what one it is. Says that if he lived as near Annursnack as Heywood does, he should go up it once a week, but he supposes that Heywood does not go up it more than once a year.
What is that grass still in bloom a foot or more in height in Heywood’s potato-field, some fifty rods west of house leek? It is somewhat like what I have wrongly called Danthonia spicata, but with a longer and a round spike, etc., etc. Vide press.
There is a man there mowing the Panicum Crus-galli, which is exceedingly rank and dense, completely concealing the potatoes, which have never been hoed, it was so wet. He saves this grass and says the cattle like it well.
I notice that the large ant-hills, though they prevent bushes and ferns from growing where they are built, keeping open a space four to seven feet wide in their midst, do not keep out grass, but they are commonly little grassy mounds with bare tops.
Looking from the top of Annursnack, the aspect of the earth generally is still a fresh green, especially the woods, but many dry fields, where apparently the June-grass has withered uncut, are a very pale tawny or lighter still. It is fit that some animals should be nearly of this color. The cougar would hardly be observed stealing across these plains. In one place I still detect the ruddiness of sorrel.
Euphorbia hypericifolia still, and gone to seed, on the top of Annursnack.
From many a barn these days I hear the sound of the flail. For how many generations this sound will continue to be heard here! At least until they discover a new way of separating the chaff from the wheat.
Saw one raking cranberries on the 10th; rather early.
A small dense flock of wild pigeons dashes by over the side of the hill, from west to east, — perhaps from Wetherbee’s to Brooks’s, for I see the latter’s pigeon place. They make a dark slate-gray impression.
Fringed gentian out well, on easternmost edge of the Painted-Cup Meadows, by wall.[Caroline Pratt tells me the 20th that her father found it out full a fortnight before that date!]
Saw a striped snake run into the wall, and just before it disappeared heard a loud sound like a hiss! I think it could hardly have been made by its tail among leaves.
The squirrels know better than to open unsound hazelnuts. At most they only peep into them. I see some on the walls with a little hole gnawed in them, enough to show that they are empty.
Muskmelons and squashes are turning yellow in the ‘ gardens, and ferns in the swamps.
Hear many warbling vireos these mornings.
Many yellow butterflies in road and fields all the country over.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 13, 1858
Fringed gentian out well, on easternmost edge of the Painted-Cup Meadows, by wall. See October 12, 1857 ("To Annursnack. . . .The fringed gentian by the brook opposite is in its prime, and also along the north edge of the Painted-Cup Meadows")
Many yellow butterflies in road and fields all the country over. See September 4, 1856 ("Butterflies in road a day or two. "); September 3, 1854 (“I see some fleets of yellow butterflies in the damp road after the rain, as earlier.”); September 11, 1852 ("I see some yellow butterflies and others occasionally and singly only."); September 17, 1852 ("Still the oxalis blows, and yellow butterflies are on the flowers"); September 19, 1859 (" See many yellow butterflies in the road this very pleasant day after the rain of yesterday. One flutters across between the horse and the wagon safely enough, though it looks as if it would be run down.")
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