I see where the crickets are eating the wild strawberries.

June 20. 

 Tuesday. 

June 20, 2014

Motherwort to-morrow. 

Elder. 

A cloud of minute black pollywogs in a muddy pool. I see where the crickets are eating the wild strawberries. 

P. M. - To Shadbush Meadow. 

Heard a new bird –– chut-cheeter-varrer-chutter-wit ––on the low bushes, about the size of Wilson's thrush apparently. Apparently olivaceous (?) above, most so on head, yellow front, dark bill, dark wings with two white bars, all yellow or yellowish breast and beneath. Perhaps never heard it before. 

Cow-wheat, apparently two or three days.

A three-leaved Lysimachia stricta apparently, with reddish flower-buds, not open. 

Shad-berries almost, but scarce. 

There seems to be much variety in the Rosa lucida, some to have stouter hooked prickles than the R. Carolina.  

Upland haying begun, or beginning. 

Common nettle.

H. D Thoreau, Journal, June 20, 1854


Motherwort to-morrow. See June 29, 1852 ("Leonurus Cardiaca, motherwort, a nettle-like plant by the street-side.")

Elder. See June 21, 1852 ("Elder is blossoming; flowers opening now where black berries will be by and by.")

A cloud of minute black pollywogs in a muddy pool..See June 15, 1852 ("This half-stagnant pond-hole, drying up and leaving bare mud, with the pollywogs and turtles making off in it, is agreeable and encouraging to behold, as if it contained the seeds of life, the liquor rather, boiled down. The foulest water will bubble purely.");  See also June 15, 1851 ("The pollywogs in the pond are now fulltailed"); June 15, 1855 ("Many pollywogs an inch long.") and note to May 19, 1857 ("See myriads of minute pollywogs, recently hatched, in the water of Moore's Swamp.")

I see where the crickets are eating the wild strawberries. See June 22, 1851 ("Only in the quiet of evening do I so far recover my senses as to hear the cricket, which in fact has been chirping all day.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cricket in Spring and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: Strawberries

Cow-wheat, apparently two or three days. See June 14, 1859 ("Cow-wheat, how long ?"); June 16, 1856 ("Cow-wheat numerously out."); June 19, 1853 ("Cow-wheat out"); August 6, 1851("After how few steps, how little exertion, the student stands in pine woods above the Solomon's-seal and the cow-wheat, in a place still unaccountably strange and wild to him, and to all civilization!") [Cow-wheat is a native annual hemiparasite (partially parasitic), using specialized root structures to invade the roots of its host and steal nutrients, while also performing photosynthesis. Its hosts may be several species of pine (Pinus) and poplar (Populus) ~ GoBotany].

Shad-berries almost, but scarce. See June 25, 1853. ("An unusual quantity of amelanchier berries, – I think of the two common kinds . . . Both these are now in their prime. These are the first berries after strawberries. . .I  never saw nearly so many before. It is a very agreeable surprise."); June 25, 1854 ("Shad-berry ripe.") 

The Rosa lucida . . . have stouter hooked prickles than the R. Carolina. See June 21, 1852 (" I observe a rose (called by some moss rose), with a bristly reddish stem; another, with a smooth red stem and but a few prickles; another, with many prickles and bristles."); July 24, 1853 ("The late rose, -- R. Carolina, swamp rose,-- I think has larger and longer leaves; at any rate they are duller above (light beneath). and the bushes higher.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Rose
Upland haying begun. See June 21, 1853 ("The farmers have commenced haying. With this the summer culminates.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Haymaking

July 20. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 20

Rosa lucida –

stouter hooked prickles than the

R. Carolina.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Crickets are eating the Wild Strawberries

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 © 2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-540620

A Book of the Seasons: Strawberries

 I would make a chart of our life,

know why just this circle of creatures completes the world.

Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852

June 13, 2024

Many strawberries

this season, in meadows now –

just fairly begun 

 June 18, 1854

June 9. A strawberry half turned on the sand of the causeway side, — the first fruit or berry of the year that I have tasted. June 9, 1854

June 9. Got two or three handfuls of strawberries on Fair Haven . . . Little natural beds or patches on the sides of dry hills, where the fruit sometimes reddens the ground. June 9, 1853

June 10. Ripe strawberries, even in a meadow on sand thrown out of a ditch, hard at first to detect amid the red radical leaves. June 10, 1856

June 13. What a sweetness fills the air now in low grounds or meadows, reminding me of times when I went strawberrying years ago! It is as if all meadows were filled with some sweet mint. June 13, 1852

June 13. Stop to pick strawberries on Fair Haven. June 13, 1854

June 13. Strawberries. June 13, 1858

June 14. As soon as the rain is over I crawl out, straighten my legs, and stumble at once upon a little patch of strawberries within a rod, -- the sward red with them. These we pluck while the last drops are thinly falling. June 14, 1855

June 14. Early strawberries begin to be common. The lower leaves of the plant are red, concealing the fruit. June 14, 1859

June 15. Quite a feast of strawberries on Fair Haven, — the upland strawberry. The largest and sweetest on sand. The first fruit. June 15, 1852

June 15. Strawberries in the meadow now ready for the picker. They lie deep at the roots of the grass in the shade. You spread aside the tall grass, and deep down in little cavities by the roots of the grass you find this rich fruit. June 15, 1853

June 15. How interesting a thin patch of strawberry vines now on a rocky hillside, though the fruit is quite scarce! June 15, 1859

June 17. The season of hope and promise is past; already the season of small fruits has arrived. We are a little saddened, because we begin to see the interval between our hopes and their fulfillment. The prospect of the heavens is taken away, and we are presented only with a few small berries. Before sundown I reach Fair Haven Hill and gather strawberries. I find beds of large and lusty strawberry plants in sprout-lands, but they appear to run to leaves and bear very little fruit, having spent themselves in leaves by the time the dry weather arrives. It is those still earlier and more stinted plants which grow on dry uplands that bear the early fruit, formed before the droughts. But the meadows produce both leaves and fruit. June 17, 1854

June 18. There are many strawberries this season, in meadows now, just fairly begun there. June 18, 1854

June 19. Got quite a parcel of strawberries on the hill. June 19, 1853

June 20. I see where the crickets are eating the wild strawberries. June 20, 1854

July 2. Strawberries in the gardens have passed their prime. July 2, 1851

July 4. Strawberries were abundant by the roadside and in the grass on hillsides everywhere, with the seeds conspicuous, sunk in pits on the surface. July 4, 1858

July 12. I find many strawberries deep in the grass of the meadow near this Hosmer Spring; then proceed on my way with reddened and fragrant fingers, till it gets washed off at new springs. July 12, 1857

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau: Strawberries

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 ©  2009-2024

tinyurl.com/hdt-straw