A very interesting purple with its fine waving top, mixed with blue-eyed grass.

July 3. 

P. M. — To Hubbard's Grove.

You see in rich moist mowing the yet slender, recurving unexpanded panicles or heads of the red-top (?), mixed with the upright, rigid herd's-grass. Much of it is out in dry places. 

Glyceria fluitans is very abundant in Depot Field Brook. 

Hypericum ellipticum out. 

I noticed the other day, I think the 30th, a large patch of Agrostis scabra in E. Hosmer's meadow, — the firmer ridges, — a very interesting purple with its fine waving top, mixed with blue-eyed grass.

July 3, 2019
partridge berry

The Mitchella repens, so abundant now in the north west part of Hubbard's Grove, emits a strong astringent cherry-like scent as I walk over it, now that it is so abundantly in bloom, which is agreeable to me, — spotting the ground with its downy-looking white flowers. 

Eleocharis obtusa and acicularis are now apparently in prime at water's edge by Hubbard's Grove bridge path. 

Also Juncus bufonius is very abundant in path there, fresh quite, though some shows seed. Juncus tenuis, though quite fresh, is also as much gone to seed.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 3, 1859

The yet slender, recurving unexpanded panicles or heads of the red-top. See July 6, 1851 ("The red-topped grass is in its prime, tingeing the fields with red.");  July 13, 1860 ("First we had the June grass reddish-brown, and the sorrel red, of June; now the red-top red of July.)

Hypericum ellipticum out. See July 26, 1856 ("Arranged the hypericums in bottles this morning and watched their opening. . . . The pod of the ellipticum, when cut, smells like a bee.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

A large patch of Agrostis scabra a very interesting purple with its fine waving top, mixed with blue-eyed grass. See July 11, 1860 (" I am interested now by patches of Agrostis scabra. Drooping and waving in the wind a rod or two over amid the red-top and herd's-grass of A.Wheeler's meadow, this grass gives a pale purple sheen to those parts, the most purple impression of any grass.")

Mixed with blue-eyed grass. See June 15, 1851 ("The blue-eyed grass, well named, looks up to heaven."); July 6, 1851("Blue-eyed grass is now rarely seen. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, blue-eyed grass

The Mitchella repens, so abundant now in the north west part of Hubbard's Grove, emits a strong astringent cherry-like scent. See  July 2, 1859 ("Mitchella repens is abundantly out").  See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Partridge-berry (Mitchella Repens)

Wth its white flowers

so abundantly in bloom

Mitchella repens

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, 

interesting purplemixed with blue-eyed grass

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 © 2009-2025

A cold north-by-west wind, which must have come over much snow and ice, brings the shore lark.

March 24. 

P. M. — To Fair Haven Pond, east side. 

March 24, 2018

The pond not yet open. A cold north-by-west wind, which must have come over much snow and ice. 

The chip of the ground-bird [That is, song sparrow.] resembles that of a robin, i.e., its expression is the same, only fainter, and reminds me that the robin's peep, which sounds like a note of distress, is also a chip, or call-note to its kind. 

Returning about 5 P. M. across the Depot Field, I scare up from the ground a flock of about twenty birds, which fly low, making a short circuit to another part of the field. At first they remind me of bay-wings, except that they are in a flock, show no white in tail, are, I see, a little larger, and utter a faint sveet sveet merely, a sort of sibilant chip. 

Starting them again, I see that they have black tails, very conspicuous when they pass near. They fly in a flock somewhat like snow buntings, occasionally one surging upward a few feet in pursuit of another, and they alight about where they first were. It [is] almost impossible to discover them on the ground, they squat so flat and so much resemble it, running amid the stubble. But at length I stand within two rods of one and get a good view of its markings with my glass. 

They are the Alauda alpestris, or shore lark [Did I not see them on Nantucket?], quite a sizable and handsome bird; delicate pale-lemon-yellow line above the [eye], with a dark line through the eye; the yellow again on the sides of the neck and on the throat, with a black crescent below the throat; with a buff ash breast and reddish-brown tinges; beneath, white; above, rusty-brown behind, and darker, ash or slate, with purplish-brown reflections, forward; legs, black; and bill, blue-black. Common to the Old and New Worlds.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 24, 1858

A cold north-by-west wind, which must have come over much snow and ice. See March 24, 1855 (“The northwesterly comes from a snow—clad country still, and cannot but be chilling. ”)

The robin's peep, which sounds like a note of distress, is also a chip, or call-note to its kind. See March 8, 1855("I hear the hasty, shuffling, as if frightened, note of a robin from a dense birch wood.”); March 18, 1858 (“The robin does not come singing, but utters a somewhat anxious or inquisitive peep at first.”); April 2, 1852 (“The robin now peeps with scared note in the heavy overcast air, among the apple trees”). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, the anxious peep of the early robin

March 24. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 24

A cold northwest wind

 comes over much snow and ice –

 pond not yet open.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A cold northwest wind

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-580324

The stub ends of corn-stalks rise above the snow.

November 30.

Sunday. P. M.— To Cliffs via Hubbard's Grove. 

Several inches of snow, but a rather soft and mild air still. Now see the empty chalices of the blue-curls and the rich brown-fruited pinweed above the crust. 

(The very cat was full of spirits this morning, rushing about and frisking on the snow-crust, which bore her alone. When I came home from New Jersey the other day, was struck with the sudden growth and stateliness of our cat Min, — his cheeks puffed out like a regular grimalkin. I suspect it is a new coat of fur against the winter chiefly. The cat is a third bigger than a month ago, like a patriarch wrapped in furs; and a mouse a day, I hear, is nothing to him now.) 

This as I go through the Depot Field, where the stub ends of corn-stalks rise above the snow. I find half a dozen russets, touched and discolored within by frost, still hanging on Wheeler's tree by the wall. 

I see the fine, thin, yellowish stipule of the pine leaves now, on the snow by Hubbard's Grove and where some creature has eaten the resinous terminal pitch pine buds. 

In Hubbard's bank wall field, beyond the brook, see the tracks of many sparrows that have run from weed to weed, as if a chain had dropped there. 

Not an apple is left in the orchard on Fair Haven Hill; not a track there of walker. 

Now all plants are withered and blanched, except perhaps some Vaccinium vacillans red leaves which sprang up in the burning last spring. 

Here and there a squirrel or a rabbit has hastily crossed the path. 

Minott told me on Friday of an oldish man and woman who had brought to a muster here once a great leg of bacon boiled, to turn a penny with. The skin, as thick as sole-leather, was flayed and turned back, displaying the tempting flesh. A tall, raw-boned, omnivorous heron of a Yankee came along and bargained with the woman, who was awaiting a customer, for as much of that as he could eat. He ate and ate and ate, making a surprising hole, greatly to the amusement of the lookers-on, till the woman in her despair, unfaithful to her engagement, appealed to the police to drive him off. 

Sophia, describing the first slight whitening of snow a few weeks ago, said that when she awoke she noticed a certain bluish-white reflection on the wall and, looking out, saw the ground whitened with snow. 

My first sight of snow this year I got as I was surveying about the 5th of November in a great wooded gully making up from the Raritan River, in Perth Amboy, N. J. It was a few fine flakes in the chilly air, which very few who were out noticed at all.

That country was remarkable for its gullies, commonly well wooded, with a stream at the bottom. One was called Souman's [?] Gully, the only good name for any feature of the landscape thereabouts, yet the inhabitants objected especially to this word "gully." 

That is a great place for oysters, and the inhabitants of Amboy are said to be very generally 'well off in con sequence. All are allowed to gather oysters on the flats at low tide, and at such times I saw thirty or forty wading about with baskets and picking them up, the indigenous ones. Off the mouth of the Raritan, I saw about seventy-five boats one morning busily taking up the oysters which they had laid down, — their usual morning's work. 

I used to get my clothes covered with beggar-ticks in the fields there, and burs, small and large. 

Minot Pratt tells me that he watched the fringed gentian this year, and it lasted till the first week in November.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 30, 1856

Now see the empty chalices of the blue-curls and the rich brown-fruited pinweed above the crust. See November 18, 1855 ("Now first mark the stubble and numerous withered weeds rising above the snow. They have suddenly acquired a new character. “)

Depot Field, where the stub ends of corn-stalks rise above the snow. See November 18, 1855 ("Now first mark the stubble and numerous withered weeds rising above the snow. They have suddenly acquired a new character. “)

Minot Pratt tells me the fringed gentian lasted till the first week in November. See November 4, 1853 (“To Hubbard's Close. I find no traces of the fringed gentian here, so that in low meadows I suspect it does not last very late. “); October 27, 1855 (“There are many fringed gentians, now considerably frost-bitten, in what was E. Hosmer’s meadow between his dam and the road.”); October 19, 1852 (“It is too remarkable a flower not to be sought out and admired each year, however rare . . .”) See also A Book of the Seasons, the Fringed Gentian.

Late winter

February 26

February 26, 2022

Still clear and cold and windy. 

No thawing of the ground during the day. This and the last two or three days have been very blustering and unpleasant, though clear.

I see some cracks in a plowed field, — Depot Field cornfield, — maybe recent ones. I think since this last cold snap, else I had noticed them before. 

Those great cakes of ice which the last freshet floated up on to uplands now lie still further from the edge of the recent ice. You are surprised to see them lying with perpendicular edges a foot thick on bare, grassy upland where there is no other sign of water, sometimes wholly isolated by bare grass there.

When the weather became colder and froze, the new ice only reached part way up these cakes, which lay high and dry. It is therefore pretty good skating on the river itself and on a greater part of the meadows next the river, but it is interrupted by great cakes of ice rising above the general level near the shore.

Directly off Clamshell Hill, within four rods of it, where the water is three or four feet deep, I see where the musquash dived and brought up clams before the last freezing. Their open shells are strewn along close to the edge of the ice, and close together. They lie thickly around the edge of each small circle of thinner black ice in the midst of the white, showing where was open water a day or two ago. This shows that this is still a good place for clams, as it was in Indian days.

Examine with glass some fox-dung from a tussock of grass amid the ice on the meadow. It appears to be composed two thirds of clay, and the rest a slate-colored fur and coarser white hairs, black-tipped, - too coarse for the deer mouse. Is it that of the rabbit? This mingled with small bones. A mass as long as one’s finger.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 26, 1855

Still clear and cold and windy. No thawing . . . very blustering and unpleasant. See February 25, 1855 ("Clear, cold, and windy. "); February 26, 1857 ("Cold and windy."); February 26, 1860 ("Cold and strong northwest wind this and yesterday.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February is Mid-Winter

I see some cracks in a plowed field, — Depot Field cornfield, — maybe recent ones. I think since this last cold snap, else I had noticed them before.  See  February 7, 1855 ("The coldest night for a long, long time. People dreaded to go to bed. The ground cracked in the night as if a powder-mill had blown up"); February 23, 1855 ("I see no cracks in the ground this year yet."); December 23, 1856 (“The cracking of the ground is a phenomenon of the coldest nights”); January 11, 1859 ("It would appear then that the ground cracks on the advent of very severe cold weather.")

Those great cakes of ice which the last freshet floated up. See February 23, 1855 ("I see great cakes of ice, a rod or more in length and one foot thick, lying high and dry on the bare ground in the low fields some ten feet or more beyond the edge of the thinner ice, washed up by the last rise (the 18th).”); February 24, 1855 ("The whole of the broad meadows is a rough, irregular checker-board of great cakes a rod square or more.”); February 28, 1855 ("Far on every side, over what is usually dry land, are scattered a stretching pack of great cakes of ice, often two or more upon each other and partly tilted up, a foot thick and one to two or more rods broad.")

Pretty good skating on the river itself and on a greater part of the meadows. See February 5, 1855 ("The ice for the last week has reached quite up into the village, so that you could get on to it just in the rear of the bank and set sail on skates for any part of the Concord River valley."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Winter of Skating

I see where the musquash dived and brought up clams. See January 3, 1860 ("Melvin thinks that the musquash eat more clams now than ever, and that they leave the shells in heaps under the ice."); February 9, 1851 ("The last half of January was warm and thawy. The swift streams were open, and the muskrats were seen swimming and diving and bringing up clams, leaving their shells on the ice.");  April 1, 1860 ("The river was lowest for March yesterday . . . so low that the mouths of the musquash-burrows in the banks are exposed with the piles of shells before them.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,the Musquash

Examine with glass some fox-dung from a tussock of grass amid the ice on the meadow. See February 1, 1856 ("What gives to the excrements of the fox that clay color often, even at this season? Left on an eminence."); September 23, 1860 ("I see on the top of the Cliffs to-day the dung of a fox, consisting of fur, with part of the jaw and one of the long rodent teeth of a woodchuck in it, and the rest of it huckleberry seeds with some whole berries") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Fox

Pretty good skating  

interrupted by great cakes 

of ice near the shore.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Late winter

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 © 2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-550226