I saw bluets whitening the fields,

May 7.

May 7, 2020
Saxifrage
See .May 5, 1860 ("She has just woven in, or laid on the edge, a fresh sprig of saxifrage in flower. . . . Think how many pewees must have built under the eaves of this cliff since pewees were created and this cliff itself built!!”)

River one eighth of an inch lower than yesterday. 

Chimney swallow. 

Catbird sings. 

Hear the white throat sparrow’s peabody note in gardens. 

Canada plum in full bloom, or say in prime. Also common plum in full bloom? 

It is very hazy, as yesterday, and I smell smoke. 

P. M. – To Assabet stone bridge. 

Find in the road beyond the Wheeler cottages a little round, evidently last year’s, painted turtle. Has no yellow spots, but already little red spots on the edges of the sides. The sternum a sort of orange or pinkish red. 

This warm weather, I see many new beetles and other insects. 

Ribes florida by bridge (flower). 

Cultivated cherry flowered yesterday at least, not yet ours. 

Myrtle-bird. 

Met old Mr. Conant with his eye and half the side of his face black and blue, looking very badly. He said he had been jerked down on to the barn-floor by a calf some three weeks old which he was trying to lead. The strength of calves is remarkable. I saw one who had some difficulty in pulling along a calf not a week old. With their four feet they have a good hold on the earth. The last one was sucking a cow that had sore teats, and every time it bunted, the cow kicked energetically, raking the calf’s head and legs, but he stood close against the cow’s belly and never budged in spite of all her kicks, though a man would have jumped out of the way. Who taught the calf to bunt? 

I saw bluets whitening the fields yesterday a quarter of a mile off. They are to the sere brown grass what the shad-bush is now to the brown and bare sprout lands or young woods. 

When planting potatoes the other day, I found small ones that had been left in the ground, perfectly sound!

H. D. Thoreau. Journal, May 7, 1860

Hear the white throat sparrow’s peabody note in gardens. See May 7, 1854 ("A white-throated sparrow still (in woods)."). See also and compare  April 19,1855 ("Hear the tull-lull of the white-throated sparrow in street”); May 3, 1859 (" Hear the te-e-e of a white-throat sparrow. "); May 4, 1855 ("See more white-throated sparrows than any other bird to-day in various parts of our walk, generally feeding in numbers on the ground in open dry fields and meadows next to woods, then flitting through the woods. Hear only that sharp, lisping chip from them."); May 6, 1859 ("Hear the tea-lee of the white-throat sparrow."). Note also  June 21, 1858 ("What I call the myrtle-bird’s is the white-throat sparrow’s note") and see May 5, 1857 ('Hear the tull-lull of a myrtle-bird (very commonly heard for three or four days after");  May 6, 1858 ("I heard a myrtle-bird's tull-lull yesterday, and that somebody else heard it four or five days ago.")

Canada plum in full bloom. Also common plum in full bloom? See May 5, 1855 ("Canada plum and cultivated cherry and Missouri currant look as if they would bloom to-morrow.”);  May 10, 1855 ("Canada plum opens petals to-day and leafs. Domestic plum only leafs.”).

It is very hazy, as yesterday, and I smell smoke. See May 7, 1856 ("To-day and yesterday the sunlight is peculiarly yellow, on account of the smoky haze. I notice its peculiar yellowness, almost orange, even when, coming through a knot-hole in a dark room, it falls on the opposite wall. ")
Find in the road a little round painted turtle. Has no yellow spots, but already little red spots on the edges of the sides. The sternum a sort of orange or pinkish red. See June 15, 1854 ("A young painted tortoise on the surface of the water, as big as a quarter of a dollar, with a reddish or orange sternum . . . was red beneath."). See also  May 7, 1858 ("The male yellow spotted and also wood turtle have very distinctly depressed sternums, but not so the male Emys picta that I have noticed.").

I saw bluets whitening the fields yesterday a quarter of a mile off. See May 21, 1855 ("Bluets whiten the fields, and violets are now perhaps in prime.")

What the shad-bush is now. See May 7, 1853 ("The delicate cherry-like leaf, transparent red, of the shad-bush is now interesting, especially in the sun. ) See also May 6, 1860 ("The Amelanchier Botryapium in flower now spots the brown sprout-land hillside on the southeast side, across the pond, very interestingly. . . .They are the more interesting for coming thus between the fall of the oak leaves and the expanding of other shrubs and trees. Some of the larger, near at hand, are very light and elegant masses of white bloom. The white-fingered flower of the sprout-lands."). May 15, 1858("The shad-bush in bloom is now conspicuous, its white flags on all sides. Is it not the most massy and conspicuous of any wild plant now in bloom?")