That interesting small blue butterfly is apparently just out

April 30. 

 P. M. — Sail to Holden Swamp.

April 30, 2019

The warmest afternoon yet. Sat in sun without fire this forenoon. The wind has at length been easterly without rain following. 

Fishes, especially pickerel, lie up in greater numbers, though Haynes thinks the water is still too cold for them. See a bream. 

A small willow some ten rods north of stone bridge, east side, bloomed yesterday. Salix alba leafing, or stipules a quarter of an inch wide; probably began a day or two. 

Luzula campestris is almost out at Clamshell. Its now low purplish and silky-haired leaves are the blooming of moist ground and early meadow-edges. 

See two or three strawberry flowers at Clamshell.

The 27th and to-day are weather for a half-thick single coat. This old name is still useful. 

There is scarcely a puff of wind till I get to Clamshell; then it rises and comes from the northwest instead of northeast and blows quite hard and fresher. 

See a stake-driver. 

Land at Holden Wood. 

That interesting small blue butterfly (size of small red) is apparently just out, fluttering over the warm dry oak leaves within the wood in the sun. Channing also first sees them to-day. The moment it rests and closes its wings, it looks merely whitish-slate, and you think at first that the deeper blue was produced by the motion of its wings, but the fact is you now see only their undersides which thus [sic] whitish spotted with black, with a dark waved line next the edge. 

This first off-coat warmth just preceding the advent of the swamp warblers (parti-colored, red start, etc.) brings them out. I come here to listen for warblers, but hear or see only the black and white creeper and the chickadee. 

Did I not hear a tree sparrow this forenoon? 

The Viburnum nudum around the edge of the swamp, on the northern edge of the warm bays in sunny and sheltered places, has just expanded, say two days, the two diverging leafets being an inch long nearly, — pretty yellowish-brown leafets in the sun, the most noticeable leafiness here now, just spotting and enlivening the dead, dark, bare twigs, under the red blossoms of the maples. 

It is a day for many small fuzzy gnats and other small insects. Insects swarm about the expanding buds. 

The viburnum buds are so large and long, like a spear-head, that they are conspicuous the moment their two leafets diverge and they are lit up by the sun. They unfold their wings like insects and arriving warblers. These, too, mark the season well. You see them a few rods off in the sun, through the stems of the alders and maples. 

That small curled grass in tufts in dry pastures and hills, spoken of about a month ago, is not early sedge. 

I notice under the southern edge of the Holden Wood, on the Arrowhead Field, a great many little birches in the grass, apparently seedlings of last year, and I take up a hundred and ten from three to six or seven inches high. They are already leafed, the little rugose leafets more than half an inch wide, or larger than any wild shrubs or trees, while the larger white birches have not started. I could take up a thousand in two or three hours. I set ten in our yard. 

Channing saw ducks — he thinks female sheldrakes ! — in Walden to-day. 

Julius Smith says he saw a little hawk kill a robin yesterday.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 30, 1859

Sat in sun without fire this forenoon. See April 30, 1852 ("To-night for the first time I sit without a fire.")

That interesting small blue butterfly fluttering over the warm dry oak leaves within the wood in the sun. See note to April 19, 1860 ("See the small blue butterfly hovering over the dry leaves") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The  Blue Butterfly in Spring

This makes the fifth kind of frog or toad spawn that I have detected this year..

May 9. 

P. M. – To Holden and to Ledum Swamp. 

See two Rana halecina. They have the green halo, but are plain brown between the spots on the back and not vivid light-green like the one of May 4th. 

See in Ludwigia palustris ditch on Hubbard’s land evidently toad-spawn already hatched, or flatted out. I distinguish the long strings, now straighter than usual and floating thin on the surface. It is less obvious than frog-spawn, and might easily be overlooked on a slimy surface. I can distinguish the little pollywog while yet in the ova by their being quite small and very black. 

This makes the fifth kind of frog or toad spawn that I have detected this year.

See, in the Holden Swamp wood, the bird of May 3d. It has sly and inquisitive ways, holding down its head and looking at me at some distance off. It has a distinct white line along the bill and about the eyes, and no yellow there, as is said of the white-eyed vireo, and I am now inclined to think it the solitary vireo (?), whose song is not described, and which is considered rare. I should say it had a blue-slate head, and, I note, a distinct yellowish vent, which none of the vireos are allowed to have!! The sides of the body are distinctly yellow, but there is none at all on the throat or breast. 

Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum, – how long? — by owl nest tree. 

Sylvia Americana

The parti-colored warbler is very common and musical there, — my tweezer-bird, – making the screep screep screep note. It is an almost incessant singer and a very handsomely marked bird. It frequents the spruce trees, at regular intervals pausing as it flits, hops, and creeps about from limb to limb or up the main stem, and holding up its head, utters its humble notes, like ah twze twze twze, or ah twze twze twze twze.

I notice very large clams, apparently the Unio complanatus (vide two specimens in drawer), or common, in West Meadow Brook near the road, one more than four and a half inches long. I have before seen them very large in brooks. 

A dandelion perfectly gone to seed, a complete globe, a system in itself. 

My Rana palustris spawn, laid in house May 5th, in the sun this afternoon swells and rises to the surface in the jar, so that the uppermost ova project slightly above it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 9, 1858

The fifth kind of frog or toad spawn. See note to May 6, 1858 (Frogs of Massachusetts)

The parti-colored warbler — my tweezer-bird. See May 18, 1856 ("A Sylvia Americana, — parti-colored warbler, — in the Holden Wood, sings a, tshrea tshrea tshrea, tshre’ tshritty tshrit’." and note to May 13, 1856 ("The tweezer-bird or Sylvia Americana. . . . the parti-colored warbler, and was that switter switter switter switter swit also by it?.”) See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Parti-Colored (Parula) Warbler (Sylvia Americana)

The bird of May 3d. . . . I am now inclined to think it the solitary vireo. See May 3, 1858.("See and hear a new bird to me. At first it was silent, and I took it for the common pewee, but, bringing my glass to bear on it, found it to be pure white throat and beneath, yellow on sides of body or wings, greenish-yellow back and shoulders, a white or whitish ring about eyes, and a light mark along side of head,
two white bars on wings, apparently black bill and dark or perhaps slate-colored (?) wings and above tail. It surprised me by singing in a novel and powerful and rich strain.")

The heavy shadows that began in June take their departure, November being at hand.

October 18. 

October 18 2017

P. M. — To Conantum. 

Clear and pleasant afternoon, but cooler than before.

At the brook beyond Hubbard's Grove, I stand to watch the water-bugs (Gyrinus). The shallow water appears now more than usually clear there, as the weather is cooler, and the shadows of these bugs on the bottom, half a dozen times as big as themselves, are very distinct and interesting, with a narrow and well-defined halo about them. But why are they composed, as it were, of two circles run together, the foremost largest? Is it owing to the manner in which the light falls on their backs, in two spots? You think that the insect must be amused with this pretty shadow. I also see plainly the shadows of ripples they make, which are scarcely perceptible on the surface. 

Many alders and birches just bare. 

I should say that the autumnal change and brightness of foliage began fairly with the red maples (not to speak of a very few premature trees in water) September 25th, and ends this year, say generally October 22d, or maybe two or three days earlier. 

The fall of the leaf, in like way, began fairly with the fall of the red maple leaves, October 13th, and ended at least as early as when the pitch pines had generally fallen, November 5th (the larches are about a week later). The red maples are now fairly bare, though you may occasionally see one full of leaves. 

So gradually the leaves fall, after all,—though individuals will be completely stripped in one short windy rain-storm, - that you scarcely miss them out of the landscape; but the earth grows more bare, and the fields more hoary, and the heavy shadows that began in June take their departure, November being at hand. 

I go along the sunny west side of the Holden wood. 

Snakes lie out now on sunny banks, amid the dry leaves, now as in spring. They are chiefly striped ones. They crawl off a little into the bushes, and rest there half-concealed till I am gone. 

The bass and the black ash are completely bare; how long? 

Red cedar is fallen and falling. 

Looking across to the sprout-land beneath the Cliffs, I see that the pale brown of withered oak leaves begins to be conspicuous, amid the red, in sprout-lands. 

In Lee's Wood, white pine leaves are now fairly fallen (not pitch pine yet), — a pleasant, soft, but slippery carpet to walk on. They sometimes spread leafy twigs on floors. Would not these be better? Where the pines stand far apart on grassy pasture hillsides, these tawny patches under each tree contrast singularly with the green around. I see them under one such tree completely and evenly covering and concealing the grass, and more than an inch deep, as they lie lightly. These leaves, like other, broader ones, pass through various hues (or shades) from green to brown, — first yellow, giving the tree that parti-colored look, then pale brown when they fall, then reddish brown after lying on the ground, and then darker and darker brown when decaying. 

I see many robins on barberry bushes, probably after berries. 

The red oaks I see to-day are full of leaves, — a brownish yellow (with more or less green, but no red or scarlet). 

I find an abundance of those small, densely clustered grapes, – not the smallest quite, – still quite fresh and full on green stems, and leaves crisp but not all fallen; so much later than other grapes, which were further advanced October 4th when it was too late to get many. These are not yet ripe and may fairly be called frost grapes. Half-way up Blackberry Steep, above the rock. 

The huckleberries on Conantum appear to have been softened and spoilt by the recent rain, for they are quite thick still on many bushes. Their leaves have fallen. 

So many leaves have now fallen in the woods that a squirrel cannot run after a nut without being heard. 

As I was returning over Hubbard's stump fence pasture, I heard some of the common black field crickets [Acheta abbreviata] (three quarters of an inch long), two or three rods before me, make, as I thought, a peculiar shrilling, like a clear and sharp twittering of birds, that I looked up for some time to see a flock of small birds going over, but they did not arrive. These fellows were, one or two, at the mouth of their burrows, and as I stood over one I saw how he produced the sound, by very slightly lifting his wing-cases (if that is the name of them), and shuffling them (transversely of course) over each other about an eighth of an inch, perhaps three or four times, and then stopping. Thus they stand at the mouths of their burrows, in the warm pastures, near the close of the year, shuffling their wing-cases over each other (the males only), and produce this sharp but pleasant creaking sound, – helping to fetch the year about. 

Thus the sounds of human industry and activity — the roar of cannon, blasting of rocks, whistling of locomotives, rattling of carts, tinkering of artisans, and voices of men - may sound to some distant ear like an earth-song and the creaking of crickets. 

The crickets keep about the mouths of their burrows as if apprehending cold. 

The fringed gentian closes every night and opens every morning in my pitcher.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 18, 1857

Kalmia swamp is all alive with warblers

May 18. 

MAY 18, 2016

Ed. Emerson says he saw at Medford yesterday many ground-birds’ nests and eggs under apple trees. R. W. E.’s black currant (which the wild Ribes floridum is said to be much like), maybe a day. R. W. E. says that Agassiz tells him he has had turtles six or seven years, which grew so little, compared with others of the same size killed at first, that he thinks they may live four or five hundred years.

P. M. — To Kalmia Swamp. 

Go across fields from R. W. E.’s to my boat at Cardinal Shore. 

In A. Wheeler’s stubble-field west of Deep Cut, a female (?) goldfinch on an oak, without any obvious black, is mewing incessantly, the note ending rather musically. When I get over the fence, a flock of twenty or more, male and female, rise from amid the stubble, and, alighting on the oaks, sing pleasantly all together, in a lively manner. 

Going along the Spring Path, hear an oft-repeated tchip tchar, tchip tchar, etc., or tchip tcharry (this is a common note with birds) from a large bird on a tree top, a sort of flaxen olive. Made me think of a female rose-breasted grosbeak, though we thought the beak more slender. 

On the surface of the water amid the maples, on the Holden Wood shore where I landed, I noticed some of the most splendid iridescence or opalescence from some oily matter, where the water was smooth amid the maples, that I ever saw. It was where some sucker or other fish, perchance, had decayed. 

The colors are intense blue and crimson, with dull golden. The whole at first covering seven or eight inches, but broken by the ripples I have made into polygonal figures like the fragments of a most wonderfully painted mirror. These fragments, drift and turn about, apparently, as stifily on the surface as if they were as thick and strong as glass. 

The colors are in many places sharply defined in fine lines, making unaccountable figures, as if they were produced by a sudden crystallization. How much color or expression can reside in so thin a substance! 

With such accompaniments does a sucker die and mix his juices with the river. This beauty like the rainbow and sunset sky marks the spot where his body has mingled with the elements. 

A somewhat similar beauty reappears painted on the clam’s shell. Even a dead sucker suggests a beauty and so a glory of its own. I leaned over the edge of my boat and admired it as much as ever I did a rainbow or sunset sky. The colors were not faint, but strong and fiery, if not angry. 

Found a young turtle about two inches long of a flat roundish form, with scales as rough as usual, but a dull reddish or yellowish spot in middle of each scale, and edges beneath were also a pinkish red. Can it be a young yellow-spot? 

I have not noticed a tree sparrow since December! 

A Sylvia Americana, — parti-colored warbler, — in the Holden Wood, sings a, tshrea tshrea tshrea, tshre’ tshritty tshrit’. 

One low Kalmia glauca, before any rhodora there— abouts. Several kalmias, no doubt, to-morrow. 

The rhodora there maybe to-morrow. Elsewhere I find it (on Hubbard’s meadow) to-day. 

The swamp is all alive with warblers about the hoary expanding buds of oaks, maples, etc., and amid the pine and spruce. They swarm like gnats now. They fill the air with their little tshree tshree sprayey notes. 

I see close by, hopping close up to the main stem of young white pines, what you would call a Maryland yellow-throat, but less chubby, yellow throat, beneath, and vent, and dark under tail, black side; but hear no note. 

Also another clear pure white beneath, and vent, and side—head; black above, finely marked with yellow; yellow bars on wings; and golden crown; black bill and legs; with a clear, sweet warble like take tche tche, tchut tch utter we. Can this be a chestnut-sided warbler, and I not see the chestnut? Hopping amid oak twigs?

I think I hear a yellow-throated vireo. Hear a tree-toad. 

Sail back on Hubbard’s redstart path, and there see a mud turtle draw in his head, . . .

E. Emerson finds half a dozen yellow violets. A hair bird’s nest building. I hear whip-poor-wills about R. W. E.’s.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 18, 1856

The rhodora there maybe to-morrow . . . See May 18, 1855 ("Rhodora; probably some yesterday.").


The swamp is all alive with warblers . . . They fill the air with their little tshree tshree sprayey notes. See April 19, 1854 ("Within a few days the warblers have begun to come. They are of every hue. Nature made them to show her colors with. There are as many as there are colors and shades. "); May 7, 1852 ("For now, before the leaves, they begin to people the trees in this warm weather. The first wave of summer from the south."); May 15, 1860 ("Deciduous woods now swarm with migrating warblers, especially about swamps.”);  May 23, 1857 ("about the edges of the swamps in the woods, these birds are flitting about in the tree-tops like gnats, catching the insects about the expanding leaf-buds");May 28, 1855 ("I have seen within three or four days two or three new warblers “)

Twinflower

June 1.

A very windy day, the third, drowning the notes of birds, scattering the remaining apple blossoms. 

Rye, to my surprise, three or four feet high and glaucous. 

Cloudy and rain, threatening withal. 

Surveying at Holden wood-lot, I notice the Equisetum hyemale, its black-scaled flowerets now in many cases separated so as to show the green between, but not yet in open rings or whorls like the limosum.

Twinflower
(Linnaea borealis)

I find the Linnaea borealis growing near the end of the ridge in this lot toward the meadow, near a large white pine stump recently cut. 

C. has found the arethusa out at Hubbard’s Close; say two or three days at a venture, there being considerable.






H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 1, 1855

I find the Linnaea borealis [twinflower] See June 4, 1855 ("The Linnæa borealis has grown an inch."); June 7, 1854 ("Linnæa abundantly out"); June 10, 1856 ("I find some linnaea well out and  note to June 9, 1851 ("Gathered the Linnæa borealis.")  See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Linnaea borealis (Twinflower) and  Nature and Culture in the Northern Forest, 19; On the Trail of Twinflower

Arethusa at Hubbard's Close. See May 30, 1854 ("I am surprised to find arethusas abundantly out in Hubbard's Close, maybe two or three days ... This high-colored plant shoots up suddenly, all flower, in meadows where it is wet walking. A superb flower.”); May 29, 1856 ("Arethusa bulbosa at Hubbard’s Close apparently a day or two.”).

June 1. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, June 1

Third windy day

scattering  apple blossoms

and drowning bird song.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Twinflower

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

The gray squirrels, partridges, hawks, and owls, all together.

May 7

5 A.M. — To Island. 

Finger-cold and windy.

A crow’s nest near the top of a pitch pine about twenty feet high, just completed, betrayed by the birds’ cawing and alarm. As on the 5th, one came and sat on a bare oak within forty feet, cawed, reconnoitred; and then both flew off to a distance, while I discovered and climbed to the nest within a dozen rods. One comes near to spy you first. 

P. M. — To Lee’s Cliff 'via Hubbard’s Bath.

Climbed to two crows’ nests, - or maybe one of them a squirrel’s, - in Hubbard’s Grove. Do they not sometimes use a squirrel’s nest for a foundation? 

A ruby-crested wren is apparently attracted and eyes me. 

It is wrenching and fatiguing, as well as dirty, only dead twigs and stubs, to hold by. You must proceed with great deliberation and see well where you put your hands and your feet.

Scare up two gray squirrels in the Holden wood, which run glibly up the tallest trees on the opposite side to me, and leap across from the extremity of the branches to the next trees, and so on very fast ahead of me. Remembering—aye, aching with— my experience in climbing trees this afternoon and morning, I can not but admire their exploits. To see them travelling with so much swiftness and ease that road over which I climbed a few feet with such painful exertion!

A partridge flies up from within three or four feet of me with a loud whir, and betrays one cream-colored egg in a little hollow amid the leaves.

Climb a hemlock to a very large and complete, probably gray squirrel’s, nest, eighteen inches in diameter, - a foundation of twigs, on which a body of leaves and some bark fibres, lined with the last, and the whole covered with many fresh green hemlock twigs one foot or more long with the leaves on, -which had been gnawed off, - and many strewed the ground beneath, having fallen off. Entrance one side. 

A short distance beyond this and the hawk’s-nest pine, I observe a middling-sized red oak standing a little aslant on the side-hill over the swamp, with a pretty large hole in one side about fifteen feet from the ground, where apparently a limb on which a felled tree lodged had been cut some years before and so broke out a cavity. I think that such a hole was too good a one not to be improved by some inhabitant of the wood. 

I tap on it and put my ear to the trunk, but I hear nothing. Then I conclude to look into it. So I shin up, and when I reach up one hand to the hole to pull myself up by it, the thought passes through my mind perhaps something may take hold my fingers, but nothing does. 

The first limb is nearly opposite to the hole, and, resting on this, I look in, and, to my great surprise, there squats, filling the hole, which was about six inches deep and five to six wide, a salmon-brown bird not so big as a partridge, seemingly asleep within three inches of the top and close to my face. It was a minute or two before I made it out to be an owl.

In the meanwhile, the crows are making a great cawing amid and over the pine-tops beyond the swamp, and at intervals I hear the scream of a hawk, probably the surviving male hen-hawk, whom they were pestering (unless they had discovered the male screech owl), and a part of them came cawing about me. 

May 7, 1855

This is a very fit place for hawks and owls to dwell in, — the thick woods just over a white spruce swamp, in which the glaucous kalmia grows; the gray squirrels, partridges, hawks, and owls, all together. 

Returning by owl’s nest, about one hour before sunset, I climb up and look in again. The owl is gone, but there are four nearly round dirty brownish white eggs, quite warm, on nothing but the bits of rotten wood which made the bottom of the hole. Perhaps she heard me coming, and so left the nest.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 7, 1855

As on the 5th, one came and sat on a bare oak within forty feet, cawed, reconnoitred; and then both flew off. See May 5, 1855 ("Perching on an oak directly over my head within thirty-five feet, caws angrily.  But suddenly, as if having taken a new resolution, it flits away, and is joined by its mate and two more, and they go off silently . . .  as if they had nothing to concern them in the wood.")

A ruby-crested wren is apparently attracted. See May 7, 1854 ("A chubby little bird  Saw its ruby crest aand heard its harsh note. (This was the same I have called golden-crowned . . . Have I seen the two?)"); and note to April 20, 1859 ("My ruby-crowned or crested wren”). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: the ruby-crowned or crested wren.

This is a very fit place for hawks and owls to dwell in . . . the gray squirrels, partridges, hawks, and owls, all together. See May 12, 1855 ("There deep in the woods . . . where the partridge and the red-tailed hawk and the screech owl sit on their nests.”)

A white spruce swamp in which the glaucous kalmia grows. See January 9, 1855 ("Make a splendid discovery this afternoon. Walking through Holden’s white spruce swamp, I see peeping above the snow-crust some slender delicate evergreen shoots ..., the Kalmia glauca var. rosmarinifolia.") [The Kalmia glauca var. rosmarinifolia is known as rosemary-leaf laurel  or alpine bog laurel (Andromeda Polifolia) H. Peter Loewer, Thoreau's Garden: Native Plants for the American Landscape 32-33]

A salmon-brown bird not so big as a partridge, seemingly asleep within three inches of the top and close to my face . . . there are four nearly round dirty brownish white eggs, quite warm, See  May 12, 1855 ("One of the three remaining eggs was hatched, and a little downy white young one, two or three times as long as an egg, lay helpless between the two remaining eggs . . . Wilson says of his red owl (Strix asio), — with which this apparently corresponds, and not with the mottled, though my egg is not "pure white,” – that “the young are at first covered with a whitish down."); The young owls are gone. June 10, 1855 (""); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Screech Owl

May 7. See A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 7

A fit place for owls,

thick woods over white spruce swamp

where bog laurel grows

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Squirrels, partridges, hawks, and owls, all together.

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-550507

The yellow afternoon of the year.

August 12

To Conantum by boat.  To-day there is an uncommonly strong wind, against which I row, yet in shirt-sleeves, trusting to sail back. It is southwest.

August 12, 2913

The Bidens Beckii yellows the side of the river just below the Hubbard Path, but is hardly yet in fullest flower generally. 

I see goldfinches nowadays on the lanceolate thistles, apparently after the seeds. 

It takes all the heat of the year to produce these yellow flowers. It is the 3 o'clock p. m. of the year when they begin to prevail, — when the earth has absorbed most heat, when melons ripen and early apples and peaches.  It is already the yellowing year.

Viburnum nudum berries generally green, but some, higher and more exposed, of a deep, fiery pink on one cheek and light green on the other, and a very few dark purple or without bloom, black already. I put a bunch with only two or three black ones in my hat, the rest pink or green. When I got home more than half were turned black, — and ripe !! A singularly sudden chemical change. They are a very pretty, irregularly elliptical berry, one side longer than the other, and particularly interesting on account of the mixture of light-green, deep-pink, and dark-purple, and also withered berries, in the same cyme. 

The wind is autumnal and at length compels me to put on my coat. 

I bathe at Hubbard's. The water is rather cool, comparatively. 

As I look down-stream from southwest to northeast, I see the red under sides of the white lily pads about half exposed, turned up by the wind to [an] angle of 45 ° or more. These hemispherical red shields are so numerous as to produce a striking effect on the eye, as of an endless array of forces with shields advanced; sometimes four or five rods in width. 

Off Holden Woods a baffling counter wind as usual (when I return), but looking up-stream I see the great undulations extending into the calm from above, where the wind blows steadily. 

There are but few haymakers left in the meadows.

The woodbine on rocks in warm and dry places is now more frequently turned, a few leafets bright-scarlet. 

The now quite common goldenrods fully out are what I have called stricta and also the more strict puberula (?). The arguta and odora are not abundant enough to make an impression. The Solidago nemoralis is not yet generally out. 

The common asters now are the patens, dumosus, Radula, and Diplopappus umbellatus. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 12, 1854

To Conantum by boat. See August 12, 1853 ("To Conantum by boat, berrying, with three ladies.”)\

Strong wind, against which I row, . . . trusting to sail back. See May 28, 1855 ("Yesterday left my boat at the willow opposite this [Conantum] Cliff, the wind northwest. Now it is southeast, and I can sail back.")

The Bidens Beckii yellows the side of the river just below the Hubbard Path, but is hardly yet in fullest flower generally. See August 30,1854 ("The Bidens Beckii made the best show, I think, a week ago, though there may be more of them open now."). See also September 14, 1854 ("The Bidens Beckii is drowned or dried up, and has given place to the great bidens, the flower and ornament of the riversides at present, and now in its glory.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Bidens Beckii

I see goldfinches nowadays. See  August 9, 1856 ("Does the [goldfinch] always utter his twitter when ascending? These are already feeding on the thistle seeds."); August 13, 1854 ("I see where the pasture thistles have apparently been picked to pieces (for their seeds? by the goldfinch?)"); August 14, 1858 ("The Canada thistle down is now begun to fly, and I see the goldfinch upon it."); August 15, 1854 ("On the top of the Hill I see the goldfinch eating the seeds of the Canada thistle. I rarely approach a bed of them or other thistles nowadays but I hear the cool twitter of the goldfinch about it.") See alss A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Goldfinch

The red under sides of the white lily pads. See June 29, 1852 ("This is one of the aspects of the river now."); June 30, 1859 (" this not a fall phenomenon yet."August 24,1854 (" It is not till August, methinks, that they are turned up conspicuously.”)

It is the 3 o'clock p. m. of the year . . . when the earth has absorbed most heat, when melons ripen . . .It is already the yellowing year. See July 26, 1853 ("This the afternoon of the year."); August 10, 1853 ("That month, surely, is distinguished when melons ripen. July could not do it."); August 19, 1853 ("The day is an epitome of the year."); August 23, 1853 "I am again struck by the perfect correspondence of a day – say an August day – and the year. I think that a perfect parallel may be drawn between the seasons of the day and of the year.”); Walden, "Spring" ("The night is the winter, the morning and evening are the spring and fall, and the noon is the summer.")

Viburnum nudum berries generally green. See August 10, 1853 ("What a moist, fertile heat now! I see naked viburnum berries beginning to turn. Their whiteness faintly blushing."); August 15, 1852 ("Some naked viburnum berries are quite dark purple amid the red, while other bunches are wholly green yet."); August 24, 1851 ("Is that the naked viburnum, so common, with its white, red, then purple berries, in Hubbard's meadow?"); August 24, 1852 ("The Viburnum nudum shows now rich, variegated clusters amid its handsome, firm leaves, bright rosy-cheeked ones mingled with dark-purple.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Viburnum

The wind is autumnal and at length compels me to put on my coat. See August 6, 1854 ("The sun is quite hot to-day, but the wind is cool and I question if my thin coat will be sufficient. Methinks that after this date there is commonly a vein of coolness in the wind. ")

I bathe at Hubbard's. The water is rather cool, comparatively. See August 14, 1854 ("Though yesterday was quite a hot day, I find by bathing that the river grows steadily cooler, "): September 2, 1854 ("Bathe at Hubbard’s. The water is surprisingly cold on account of the cool weather and rain, but especially since the rain of yesterday morning. It is a very important and remarkable autumnal change. It will not be warm again probably"); September 12, 1854 ("I find it colder again than on the 2d, so that I stay in but a moment."); September 27, 1856 ("Bathed at Hubbard's Bath, but found the water very cold. Bathing about over”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Luxury of Bathing

Off Holden Woods a baffling counter wind as usual. See August 6, 1854 ("The wind is very unsteady and flirts our sail about to this side and that.")

There are but few haymakers left in the meadows. See August 17, 1851 ("The hayer's work is done, but I hear no boasting, no firing of guns nor ringing of bells. He celebrates it by going about the work he had postponed "till after haying"") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Haymaking

The woodbine on rocks in warm and dry places is now more frequently turned, a few leafets bright-scarlet. See July 28, 1852 ("I observed some leaves of woodbine . . . turned a beautiful bright red, perhaps from heat and drought"): August 11, 1852 ("Woodbine is reddening in some places, and ivy too."); September 9, 1858 ("Woodbine scarlet, like a brilliant scarf on high, wrapped around the stem of a green tree."); September 12, 1851 ("What we call woodbine is the Vitis hederacea, or common creeper, or American ivy.")

The now quite common goldenrods fully out are what I have called stricta and also the more strict puberula. See August 21, 1856 ("the prevailing solidagos now are, lst, stricta (the upland and also meadow one which I seem to have called puberula), 2d, the three-ribbed, of apparently several varieties, which I have called arguta or gigantea"); September 11, 1857 (Solidago puberula apparently in prime, with the S. stricta, . . . my old S. stricta (early form) must be S. arguta var. juncea. It is now done."); September 15, 1856 ("Early Solidago stricta (that is, arguta) done.")

The common asters now are the patens, dumosus, Radula See August 12, 1856 ("The Aster patens is very handsome by the side of Moore's Swamp on the bank, — large flowers, more or less purplish or violet, each commonly (four or five) at the end of a long peduncle, three to six inches long, at right angles with the stem, giving it an open look.”); See also August 21, 1856 ("The commonest asters now are, 1st, the Radula; 2d, dumosus; 3d, patens") and July 26, 1853 ("I mark again, about this time when the first asters open . . . This the afternoon of the year.")

August 12. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 12.

The Bidens Beckii

yellows the side of the river –

the yellowing year.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The yellow afternoon of the year.

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

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