The oven-bird's nest in Laurel Glen is near the edge of an open pine wood

July 3. 

July 3, 2013

Elder is now in its prime.

Buttercups are almost gone.

Clover is blackened.

The umbelled pyrola, apparently yesterday, as well as the P. rotundifolia and the P. elliptica, or shin-leaf.

The P. secunda, or one-sided pyrola, is already out of bloom.

The oven-bird's nest in Laurel Glen is near the edge of an open pine wood, under a fallen pine twig and a heap of dry oak leaves. Within these, on the ground, is the nest, with a dome-like top and an arched entrance of the whole height and width on one side. Lined within with dry pine-needles.

Mountain laurel lingers in the woods still.

The chestnut behind my old house site is fully out, and apparently has been partly so for several days.

There are no flowers on bass trees commonly this year.

Smooth sumach just opening and already resounding with bees.

The water-target appears to be in its prime, its flowers rising above the water. Remarkable for the thick jelly on its leaves and stem.

A smaller potamogeton is in flower there, — the small globose white flower. Why is it so often already torn up by the roots?

Poke a day or two in favorable places.

Dogsbane and Jersey tea are among the prevailing flowers now.

The Utricularia vulgaris now yellows low muddy water, as near the Lincoln bound by Walden.

The Vaccinium vacillans a day or two ripe.

Black huckleberries. 

Tansy on the causeway.

The Canada thistle.

The pinweeds have a reddish look, as if in flower. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 3, 1853

The oven-bird's nest in Laurel Glen is near the edge of an open pine wood. See June 7, 1853 ("The oven-bird runs from her covered nest, so close to the ground under the lowest twigs and leaves, even the loose leaves on the ground, like a mouse, that I can not get a fair view of her. "); June 10, 1855 ("Oven-bird’s nest with four eggs two thirds hatched, under dry leaves, composed of pine-needles and dry leaves and a hair or two for lining, about six feet south west of a white oak") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Oven-bird

There are no flowers on bass trees commonly this year.  See June 3, 1857 (“The bass at the Island will not bloom this year. (?)”);  See also  June 21, 1853 (There are no flowers nor flower-buds on the bass this year, though it was so full last year."");June 30, 1852 ("The bass tree is budded"); July 4, 1853 ("The bass appears now — or a few trees — to have bloomed here and there prematurely.");  July 9, 1857 (“I see no flowers on the bass trees by this river this year, nor at Conantum.”)  and  A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Basswood

Dogsbane and Jersey tea are among the prevailing flowers now. See June 29, 1853 ("Jersey tea, just beginning.") and note to June 27, 1853 ("The dogsbane is one of the more interesting little flowers")