A Book of the Seasons: August 20 (darkening shadows, the song of crickets, blue vervain, goldenrod, St. John's-wort and blackberries, birdsong ends, preface to autumn)

  The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

 August 20.

The flowers of the 

blue vervain have now reached the 

summit of their spikes. 

August 20, 1851

I cannot account

for this peculiar smoothness

of the dimpled stream.

August 20, 1853

Study botany --

the precision of it terms 

words and its system.

August 20, 1851

If you do not know

the names of things the knowledge 

of them is lost too.

Carl Linneaus 1751

August 20, 2017

This day, too, has that autumnal character. August 20, 1853

It is still cool weather with a northwest wind. This weather is a preface to autumn. August 20, 1858 

There is more shadow in the landscape than a week ago, methinks, and the creak of the cricket sounds cool and steady.  August 20, 1858

The song of the crickets fails not in its season, night or day. August 20, 1851

In the morning the crickets snore, in the afternoon they chirp, at midnight they dream. August 20, 1841

I am struck by the clearness and stillness of the air, the brightness of the landscape, the reflection of light from the washed earth, the darkness and heaviness of the shade, and the smoothness of the dimpled stream as I look now up the river at the white maples and bushes. August 20, 1853

Single trees half a mile off . . . stand out distinctly a dark mass, — almost black. August 20, 1854

If they are between you and the sun, the trees are more black than green. August 20, 1853 

The grass and foliage and landscape generally are of a more thought-inspiring color, suggest what some perchance would call a pleasing melancholy.  August 20, 1858

The golden robin is now a rare bird to see. August 20, 1851

5.15 a. m. — To Hill. I hear a gold robin, also faint song of common robin. Wood pewee (fresh); red-wing blackbird with fragmentary trill; bobolinks (the males apparently darker and by themselves); kingbirds; nuthatch heard; yellow-throated vireo, heard and saw, on hickories (have I lately mistaken this for red-eye ?); goldfinch; slate- colored hawk (with white rump and black wing-tips.) August 20, 1854

The yellow-throated vireo is very restless, darting about.  August 20, 1854

A traveller who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed. August 20, 1851

But I cannot account for this peculiar smoothness of the dimpled stream August 20, 1853.

How copious and precise the botanical language to describe the leaves, as well as the other parts of a plant! Botany is worth studying if only for the precision of its terms, — to learn the value of words and of system.  August 21, 1851

On the pitch pine plain, at first the pines are far apart, with a wiry grass between, and goldenrod and hardhack and St. John's-wort and blackberry vines. August 20, 1851.

Here are the small, lively-tasting blackberries, so small they are not commonly eaten. August 20, 1851. 

I find raspberries still. August 20, 1852. 

The hillside at Clintonia Swamp is in some parts quite shingled with the rattlesnake-plantain (Goodyera pubescens) leaves overlapping one another. The flower is now apparently in its prime. August 20, 1856/ 

The Goodyera repens grows behind the spring where I used to sit, amid the dead pine leaves. August 20, 1857

In the dry ditch, near Abel Minott's house that was, I see cardinal-flowers, with their red artillery, reminding me of soldiers, — red men, war, and bloodshed. Some are four and a half feet high. August 20, 1851

The Rhexia Virginica is a showy flower at present. August 20, 1851

The purple gerardia is very beautiful now in green grass, and the rhexia also, both difficult to get home. August 20, 1852

The flowers of the blue vervain have now nearly reached the summit of their spikes. August 20, 1851

Bidens, either connata or cernua, by Moore's potato- field. August 20, 1852

The pewees sit still on their perch a long time, returning to the same twig after darting at an insect . . . It often utters a continous pe-e-e. August 20, 1854 

When the red-eye ceases generally, then I think is a crisis, — the woodland quire is dissolved. That, if I remember, was about a fortnight ago. The concert is over. August 20, 1854 

*****

August 20, 2017

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau:

St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

Blackberries

  the Raspberry 

The Rattlesnake-Plantain

 the Blue Vervain

Purple Gerardia (Gerardia purpurea)

The Bidens Beckii 

The Red-eyed Vireo

The Golden Robin

The Eastern Wood Pewee

the Cricket in August

August 20, 2017

July 19, 1851 ("I hear a cricket, too, under the blackberry vines, singing as in the fall. Yesterday it was spring, and to-morrow it will be autumn. Where is the summer then?")
August 1, 1856 ("I was surprised to see dense beds of rhexia in full bloom there. . . It is about the richest color to be seen now . . .these bright beds of rhexia turn their faces to the heavens, seen only by the bitterns and other meadow birds that fly over")
August 4, 1851 ("I hear the note of a cricket, and am penetrated with the sense of autumn..")
August 4, 1852 (“I hear the cricket. He seems to chirp from a new depth toward autumn, new lieferungs of the fall.”)
August 4. 1854 ("A still, cloudy day with from time to time a gentle August rain. Rain and mist contract our horizon and we notice near and small objects. Purple gerardia, by brook")

August 5, 1858 ("I cannot sufficiently admire the rhexia, one of the highest-colored purple flowers, but difficult to bring home in its perfection, with its fugacious petals.")

August 6, 1851 ("How often it happens that the traveller's principal distinction is that he is one who knows less about a country than a native! ")

August 6, 1852 ("How different the feeble twittering of the birds here at sunrise from the full quire of the spring! Only the wood thrush, a huckleberry-bird or two, or chickadee, the scream of a flicker or a jay, or the caw of a crow, and commonly only an alarmed note of a robin")

August 6, 1855 ("Hear the autumnal crickets.")
August 6, 1858 (“The note of the wood pewee is now more prominent, while birds generally are silent.”)
August 6, 1852 ("Blue vervain is now very attractive to me, and then there is that interesting progressive history in its rising ring of blossoms. It has a story.")
August 6, 1854 (“. . .this anticipation of the fall, — coolness and cloud, and the crickets steadily chirping in mid-afternoon.”)
August 9, 1856 ("The notes of the wood pewee and warbling vireo are more prominent of late, and of the goldfinch twittering over.”)
August 12, 1858 ("The note of the wood pewee is a prominent and common one now. You see old and young together.")
August 12, 1856 ("Gerardia purpurea, two or three days")
August 14, 1853 (" The pea-wai still, and sometimes the golden robin.")
August 15, 1852 ("This is an autumnal sight, that small flock of grown birds in the afternoon sky.")

August 15, 1853 ("Cooler and beautifully clear at last after all these rains, and the crickets chirp with a still more autumnal sound")

August 16, 1858 ("At sunset I hear a low short warble from a golden robin, and the notes of the wood pewee.")

August 17, 1852 ("The creak of the crickets sounds louder.")

August 17, 1852("The woods are very still. I hear only a faint peep or twitter from one bird, then the never-failing wood thrush, it being about sunrise, and after, on the Cliff, the phoebe note of a chickadee, a night-warbler, a creeper (?), and a pewee (?), and, later still, the huckleberry-bird and red-eye, but all few and faint")
August 18, 1858 (“It was not the usual spring note of this [pewee] but a simple, clear pe-e-eet, rising steadily with one impulse to the end.”)
August 19, 1853 ("After more rain, with wind in the night, it is now clearing up cool. There is a broad, clear crescent of blue in the west, slowly increasing, and an agreeable autumnal coolness")
August 19, 1858 ("Here is a cool, clear, and elastic air. You may say it is the first day of autumn.")
August 19, 1851 ("The cricket's is a note which does not attract you to itself. It is not easy to find one.")
August 19, 1858 ("You notice the louder and clearer ring of crickets")

August 21, 1851("Bigelow, speaking of the spikes of the blue vervain (Verbena hastata), says, “The flowering commences at their base and is long in reaching their summit.” . . . It is very pleasant to measure the progress of the season by this and similar clocks. So you get, not the absolute time, but the true time of the season.")

August 21, 1851 ("The purple gerardia now.")

August 21, 1852 ("The sound of the crickets gradually prevails more and more. I hear the year falling asleep.")

August 21, 1852 ("There are as few or fewer birds heard than flowers seen ")

August 21, 1853 ("Methinks I have not heard a robin sing morning or evening of late, but the peawai still, and occasionally a short note from the gold robin.")

August 22, 1853 ("I hear but few notes of birds these days")

August 22, 1853 ("Hear a peawai whose note is more like singing — as if it were still incubating — than any other.")
August 22, 1853 ("Some of the warble of the golden robin.")

August 22, 1853 ("A hurried anxious note from a robin. Heard perhaps half a dozen afterward. They flit now, accompanied by their young.")

August 22, 1859 ("The circles of the blue vervain flowers, now risen near to the top, show how far advanced the season is.")
August 23, 1851 ("The Verbena hastata at the pond has reached the top of its spike, a little in advance of what I noticed yesterday; only one or two flowers are adhering.")
August 24, 1858 ("The Bidens Beckii has only begun a few days, it being rather high water.")
August 26, 1856 ("More wind and quite cold this morning, but very bright and sparkling, autumn-like air, reminding of frosts to be apprehended")
August 27, 1856 (""Goodyera pubescens, rattlesnake-plantain, is apparently a little past its prime. It is very abundant on Clintonia Swamp hillside, quite erect, with its white spike eight to ten inches high on the sloping hillside, . . .Is it not the prettiest leaf that paves the forest floor? )
August 27, 1856 ("The cardinals in this ditch make a splendid show now, though they would have been much fresher and finer a week ago. . . . They look like slender plumes of soldiers advancing in a dense troop, . . .the most splendid show of cardinal flowers I ever saw")
August 29, 1858 ("I hear this morning one eat it potter from a golden robin. They are now rarely seen.")

August 29, 1858 ("With the knowledge of the name comes a distincter recognition and knowledge of the thing. . . . My knowledge now becomes communicable and grows by communication. I can now learn what others know about the same thing.")

August 29, 1859 ("The first fall rain is a memorable occasion, when the river is raised and cooled, and the first crop of sere and yellow leaves falls. The air is cleared; the dog-days are over; sun-sparkles are seen on water; crickets sound more distinct; saw-grass reveals its spikes in the shorn fields; sparrows and bobolinks fly in flocks more and more. Farmers feel encouraged about their late potatoes and corn. Mill-wheels that have rested for want of water begin to revolve again. Meadow-haying is over. ")

August 30, 1854 ("The clearness of the air makes it delicious to gaze in any direction.")
August 30, 1856 ("Bidens connata abundant at Moore's Swamp, how long?")
August 31, 1853 ("Bidens cernua well out, the flowering one.")
August 31, 1858 ("I see to-day one golden robin")
September 6, 1858 ("Also hear apparently a yellow-throated vireo")

September 11, 1852 ("How much fresher some flowers look in rainy weather! When I thought they were about done, they appear to revive, and moreover their beauty is enhanced, as if by the contrast of the louring atmosphere with their bright colors. Such are the purple gerardia and the Bidens cernua.")

September 12, 1859 ("The four kinds of bidens (frondosa, connata, cernua, and chrysanthemoides) abound now")

September 21, 1856 ("I have within a week found in Concord two of the new plants I found up-country. Such is the advantage of going abroad, — to enable to detect your own plants. I detected them first abroad, because there I was looking for the strange.")

August 20, 2015

If you make the least correct 

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

 August 19  <<<<<      August 20   >>>>>   August 21

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 20

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 © 2009-2022

tinyurl.com/HDT20August

Coral-root by Brister's Spring

August 20 

August 20, 2018

That large galium still abundant and in blossom, filling crevices. 

The Corallorhiza multiflora, coral-root (not odontorhiza, I think, for it has twenty-four flowers, and its germ is not roundish oval, and its lip is three-lobed), by Brister's Spring. Found by R. W. E., August 12; also Goodyera pubescens found at same date. 

The purple gerardia is very beautiful now in green grass, and the rhexia also, both difficult to get home. 

I find raspberries still. 

An aster with a smooth leaf narrowed below, somewhat like A. amplexicaulis (or patens (Gray) ?). Is it var. phlogifolius? 

Is that smooth, handsome-stemmed goldenrod in Brown's Sleepy Hollow meadow Solidago serotina? 

Bidens, either connata or cernua, by Moore's potato- field.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 20, 1852


The Corallorhiza multiflora, coral-root (not odontorhiza) found by R. W. E., August 12. See August 13, 1852 ("I hear that the Corallorhiza odontorhiza, coral-root, is out.). See also August 29, 1857 ("Nearby, north [of Indian Rock, west of the swamp], is a rocky ridge, on the east slope of which the Corallorhiza multiflora is very abundant.") and  note to August 13, 1857 ("Corallorhiza multiflora . . . how long") [spotted coral-root (Corallorhiza maculate) -- a saprophytic orchid]


Goodyera pubescens found at same date. See August 20, 1857 ("The Goodyera repens grows behind the spring where I used to sit, amid the dead pine leaves") and note to August 27, 1856 (“Goodyera pubescens, rattlesnake-plantain, is apparently a little past its prime. It is very abundant on Clintonia Swamp hillside. . .”)


The purple gerardia is very beautiful now in green grass, and the rhexia also, both difficult to get home. See August 20, 1851("The Rhexia Virginica is a showy flower at present.") See also note to August 5, 1858 ("I cannot sufficiently admire the rhexia, one of the highest-colored purple flowers, but difficult to bring home in its perfection, with its fugacious petals.")


Bidens, either connata or cernua, by Moore's potato- field. See August 30, 1856 ("Bidens connata abundant at Moore's Swamp, how long? ");  September 12, 1851("in Baker's Meadow beyond Pine Hill. . . the Bidens cernua, nodding burr-marigold, with five petals")September 12, 1859 ("The four kinds of bidens (frondosa, connata, cernua, and chrysanthemoides) abound now, [T]he first two are inconspicuous flowers, cheap and ineffectual, commonly without petals, like the erechthites, but the third and fourth are conspicuous and interesting, expressing by their brilliant yellow the ripeness of the low grounds.");   September 15, 1856 ("What I must call Bidens cernua, like a small chrysanthemoides, is bristly hairy, somewhat connate and apparently regularly toothed"); September 19, 1851 ("Large-flowered bidens,or beggar-ticks,or bur-marigold,now abundant by riverside.")

A traveller who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed

August 20

2 p. m. — To Lee's Bridge via Hubbard's Wood, Potter's field, Conantum, returning by Abel Minott's house, Clematis Brook, Baker's pine plain, and railroad.

 I hear a cricket in the Depot Field, walk a rod or two, and find the note proceeds from near a rock. Partly under a rock, between it and the roots of the grass, he lies concealed, — for I pull away the withered grass with my hands, — uttering his night-like creak, with a vibratory motion of his wings, and flattering himself that it is night, because he has shut out the day. He was a black fellow nearly an inch long, with two long, slender feelers. They plainly avoid the light and hide their heads in the grass. At any rate they regard this as the evening of the year. 

They are remarkably secret and unobserved, considering how much noise they make. Every milkman has heard them all his life; it is the sound that fills his ears as he drives along. But what one has ever got off his cart to go in search of one? I see smaller ones moving stealthily about, whose note I do not know. Who ever distinguished their various notes, which fill the crevices in each other's song? It would be a curious ear, indeed, that distinguished the species of the crickets which it heard, and traced even the earth-song home, each part to its particular performer. I am afraid to be so knowing. They are shy as birds, these little bodies. Those nearest me continually cease their song as I walk, so that the singers are always a rod distant, and I cannot easily detect one. It is difficult, moreover, to judge correctly whence the sound proceeds. 

Perhaps this wariness is necessary to save them from insectivorous birds, which would otherwise speedily find out so loud a singer. They are somewhat protected by the universalness of the sound, each one's song being merged and lost in the general concert, as if it were the creaking of earth's axle. They are very numerous in oats and other grain, which conceals them and yet affords a clear passage. I never knew any drought or sickness so to prevail as to quench the song of the crickets; it fails not in its season, night or day.

The Lobelia inflata, Indian-tobacco, meets me at every turn. At first I suspect some new bluish flower in the grass, but stooping see the inflated pods. Tasting one such herb convinces me that there are such things as drugs which may either kill or cure.[A farmer tells me that he knows when his horse has eaten it, be cause it makes him slobber badly.]

The Rhexia Virginica is a showy flower at present. 

How copious and precise the botanical language to describe the leaves, as well as the other parts of a plant! Botany is worth studying if only for the precision of its terms, — to learn the value of words and of system. It is wonderful how much pains has been taken to describe a flower's leaf, compared for instance with the care that is taken in describing a psychological fact. 

Suppose as much ingenuity (perhaps it would be needless) in making a language to express the sentiments! We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf in the field, or at least to distinguish it from each other, but not to describe a human character. With equally wonderful indistinctness and confusion we describe men. The precision and copiousness of botanical language applied to the description of moral qualities! 

The neottia, or ladies'-tresses, behind Garfield's house. 

The golden robin is now a rare bird to see. 

Here are the small, lively-tasting blackberries, so small they are not commonly eaten. 

The grasshoppers seem no drier than the grass.

In Lee's field are two kinds of plantain. Is the common one found there? 

The willow reach by Lee's Bridge has been stripped for powder. None escapes. This morning, hearing a cart, I looked out and saw George Dugan going by with a horse-load of his willow toward Acton powder-mills, which I had seen in piles by the turnpike. Every traveller has just as particular an errand which I might like wise chance to be privy to. 

Now that I am at the extremity of my walk, I see a threatening cloud blowing up from the south, which however, methinks, will not compel me to make haste. 

Apios tuberosa, or Glycine Apios, ground-nut. 

The prenanthes now takes the place of the lactucas, which are gone to seed. 

In the dry ditch, near Abel Minott's house that was, I see cardinal-flowers, with their red artillery, reminding me of soldiers, — red men, war, and bloodshed. Some are four and a half feet high. Thy sins shall be as scarlet. Is it my sins that I see ? It shows how far a little color can go; for the flower is not large, yet it makes itself seen from afar, and so answers the purpose for which it was colored completely. It is remarkable for its intensely brilliant scarlet color. You are slow to concede to it a high rank among flowers, but ever and anon, as you turn your eyes away, it dazzles you and you pluck it. 

Scutellaria lateriflora, side-flowering skullcap, here. 

This brook deserves to be called Clematis Brook (though that name is too often applied), for the clematis is very abundant, running over the alders and other bushes on its brink. Where the brook issues from the pond, the nightshade grows profusely, spreading five or six feet each way, with its red berries now ripe. It grows, too, at the upper end of the pond. But if it is the button-bush that grows in the now low water, it should rather be called the Button-Bush Pond. Now the tall rush is in its prime on the shore here, and the clematis abounds by this pond also. 

I came out by the leafy-columned elm under Mt. Misery, where the trees stood up one above another, higher and higher, immeasurably far to my imagination, as on the side of a New Hampshire mountain. . 

On the pitch pine plain, at first the pines are far apart, with a wiry grass between, and goldenrod and hardhack and St. John's-wort and blackberry vines, each tree merely keeping down the grass for a space about itself, meditating to make a forest floor; and here and there younger pines are springing up. Further in, you come to moss-covered patches, dry, deep white moss, or almost bare mould, half covered with pine needles. Thus begins the future forest floor.

 The sites of the shanties that once stood by the railroad in Lincoln when the Irish built it, the still remaining hollow square mounds of earth which formed their embankments, are to me instead of barrows and druidical monuments and other ruins. It is a sufficient antiquity to me since they were built, their material being earth. Now the Canada thistle and the mullein crown their tops. I see the stones which made their simple chimneys still left one upon another at one end, which were sur mounted with barrels to eke them out ; and clean boiled beef bones and old shoes are strewn about. Otherwise it is a clean ruin, and nothing is left but a mound, as in the graveyard. 

Sium lineare, a kind of water-parsnip, whose blossom resembles the Cicuta maculata. The flowers of the blue vervain have now nearly reached the summit of their spikes.

A traveller who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 20, 1851

The song of the crickets fails not in its season, night or day. See August 20. 1858 (" the creak of the cricket sounds cool and steady"); August 18, 1856 (" I hear the steady (not intermittent) shrilling of apparently the alder cricket, clear, loud, and autumnal, a season sound. Hear it, but see it not. It reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time, suggests a pleasing, thoughtful melancholy,")

The Rhexia Virginica is a showy flower at present. See July 18, 1852 ("The petals of the rhexia have a beautiful clear purple with a violet tinge."); and note to August 5, 1858 ("I cannot sufficiently admire the rhexia, one of the highest-colored purple flowers, but difficult to bring home in its perfection, with its fugacious petals.")

Botany is worth studying if only for the precision of its terms, — to learn the value of words and of system. See March 1, 1852 (" I can see that there is a certain advantage in these hard and precise terms, such as the lichenist uses"); January 15, 1853 ("Science suggests the value of mutual intelligence. I have long known this dust, but, as I did not know the name of it, i. e . what others called it, I therefore could not conveniently speak of it.");  August 29, 1858 ("With the knowledge of the name comes a distincter recognition and knowledge of the thing. . . . My knowledge now becomes communicable and grows by communication. I can now learn what others know about the same thing.")

In the dry ditch, near Abel Minott's house that was, I see cardinal-flowers, with their red artillery, reminding me of soldiers. See August 27, 1856 ("The cardinals in this ditch make a splendid show now, though they would have been much fresher and finer a week ago. . . . They look like slender plumes of soldiers advancing in a dense troop, . . .the most splendid show of cardinal flowers I ever saw.")

A traveller who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed. Compare August 6, 1851 ("How often it happens that the traveller's principal distinction is that he is one who knows less about a country than a native! "); April 16, 1852 ("Many a foreigner who has come to this town has worked for years on its banks without discovering which way the river runs"); September 21, 1856 ("I have within a week found in Concord two of the new plants I found up-country. Such is the advantage of going abroad, — to enable to detect your own plants. I detected them first abroad, because there I was looking for the strange.")

Preface to Autumn

August 20. 

Edward Hoar has found in his garden two or three specimens of what appears to be the Veronica Bumbaumii, which blossomed at least a month ago. Yet I should say the pods were turgid, and, though obcordate enough, I do not know in what sense they are “obcordate-triangular.” 

He found a Viburnum dentatum with leaves somewhat narrower than common and wedge shaped at base. He has also the Rudbeckia speciosa, cultivated in a Concord garden. 

Flannery tells me that at about four o’clock this morning he saw white frost on the grass in the low ground near Holbrook’s meadow. Up early enough to see a frost in August! 

P. M. — To Poplar Hill and the Great Fields. 

It is still cool weather with a northwest wind. This weather is a preface to autumn. There is more shadow in the landscape than a week ago, methinks, and the creak of the cricket sounds cool and steady. 

August 20, 2018

The grass and foliage and landscape generally are of a more thought-inspiring color, suggest what some perchance would call a pleasing melancholy. In some meadows, as I look southwesterly, the aftermath looks a bright yellowish-green in patches. 

Both willows and poplars have leaves of a light color, at least beneath, contrasting with most other trees.

Generally there has been no drought this year. Nothing in the landscape suggests it. Yet no doubt these leaves are, compared with themselves six or eight weeks ago, as usual, “horny and dry,” as one remarks by my side. 

You see them digging potatoes, with cart and barrels, in the fields on all hands, before they are fairly ripe, for fear of rot or a fall in the price, and I see the empty barrels coming back from market already. 

Polygonum dumetorum, how long?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 20, 1858

There is more shadow in the landscape than a week ago, methinks, and the creak of the cricket sounds cool and steady. See August 20, 1853 ("I am struck by . . .  the darkness and heaviness of the shade."); August 20, 1851 ("The song of the crickets . . . fails not in its season"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Cricket in August

The grass and foliage and landscape generally are of a more thought-inspiring color suggest what some perchance would call a pleasing melancholy. See August 18, 1856 ("I hear the steady shrilling of . . . the alder cricket, clear, loud, and autumnal, a season sound . . . It reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time, suggests a pleasing, thoughtful melancholy,"); August 18, 1851 ("It plainly makes men sad to think. Hence pensiveness is akin to sadness"); see also August 17, 1851 ("I feel as if this coolness would do me good. If it only makes my life more pensive! Why should pensiveness be akin to sadness? There is a certain fertile sadness which I would not avoid, but rather earnestly seek. It is positively joyful to me.") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Moods and Seasons of the Mind.

In some meadows, as I look southwesterly, the aftermath looks a bright yellowish-green in patches.See July 24, 1852 ("There is a short, fresh green on the shorn fields, the aftermath. When the first crop of grass is off, and the aftermath springs, the year has passed its culmination."); July 24, 1860 ("Many a field where the grass has been cut shows now a fresh and very lit-up light green as you look toward the sun."); July 28, 1852 ("There is a yellowish light now from a low, tufted, yellowish, broad-leaved grass, in fields that have been mown."); August 7, 1852 ("At this season we have gentle rain-storms, making the aftermath green . . . as if it were a second spring."); August 10, 1854 ("As I go along the railroad, I observe the darker green of early-mown fields."); August 17, 1858 ("The aftermath on early mown fields is a very beautiful green. "); August 21, 1851 ("Mowing to some extent improves the landscape to the eye of the walker. The aftermath, so fresh and green, begins now to recall the spring to my mind")

This weather is a preface to autumn. See August 20, 1853 ("This day, too, has that autumnal character")

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

 

More shadow in the 

landscape than a week ago –

preface to autumn.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau. Preface to Autumn

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

I hear a peculiar sound which I mistake for a woodpecker's tapping.

August 20. 

Thursday. 

P. M. – To Hubbard's Close. 

July 31, 2019

The hillside at Clintonia Swamp is in some parts quite shingled with the rattlesnake-plantain (Goodyera pubescens) leaves overlapping one another. The flower is now apparently in its prime. 

As I stand there, I hear a peculiar sound which I mistake for a woodpecker's tapping, but I soon see a cuckoo hopping near suspiciously or inquisitively, at length within twelve feet, from time to time uttering a hard, dry note, very much like a woodpecker tapping a dead dry tree rapidly, its full clear white throat and breast toward me, and slowly lifting its tail from time to time. Though somewhat allied to that throttled note it makes by night, it was quite different from that. 

I go along by the hillside footpath in the woods about Hubbard's Close. The Goodyera repens grows behind the spring where I used to sit, amid the dead pine leaves. Its leaves partly concealed in the grass. It is just done commonly. 

Helianthus, strumosus-like, at the south end of Stow's cold pool; how long?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 20, 1857

The hillside at Clintonia Swamp is in some parts quite shingled with the rattlesnake-plantain . . . See August 27, 1856 (“Goodyera pubescens, rattlesnake-plantain, is apparently a little past its prime. It is very abundant on Clintonia Swamp hillside. . .”)

A hard, dry note, very much like a woodpecker tapping. . .See May 29, 1856 (“A cuckoo’s note, loud and hollow, from a wood-side.”)

Helianthus, strumosus-like, at the south end of Stow's cold pool. . . See note to August 12, 1856 ("Am surprised to see still a third species or variety of helianthus . . . At edge of the last clearing south of spring. I cannot identify it. . . .In some respects it is most like H. strumosus, but not downy beneath.”)

I sit with open window

August 20

Rain all night and to-day, making it a little chilly. Though I sit with open window, I should think it uncomfortably cool with it closed. Some must have a little fire.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 20, 1856

See August 20, 1858 ("It is still cool weather with a northwest wind. This weather is a preface to autumn"); August 27, 1860 ("The nights have been cooler of late, but the heat of the sun by day has been more local and palpable."); August 29, 1854 ("It is so cool that we are inclined to stand round the kitchen fire a little while these mornings, though we sit and sleep with open windows still.“); August 29, 1859(" It is so cool a morning that for the first time I move into the entry to sit in the sun."); August 29, 1854 ("I enjoy the warmth of the sun now that the air is cool.") Compare November 8, 1855 ("I can sit with my window open and no fire.”); October 31, 1854 ("Sat with open window for a week.”); February 18, 1857 ("I sit all this day and evening without a fire, and some even have windows open.”)

A Book of the Seasons: August 20

August 20.
I cannot account
for this peculiar smoothness
of the dimpled stream.
August 20, 1853

If they are between
you and the sun, the trees are
more black than green.
August 20, 1853



Trees seen up the stream
look absolutely black now
in the clear bright light.
August 20, 1853

Single trees half mile

off stand out distinctly a

dark mass, almost black.

August 20, 1854

When the red-eye ceases

the woodland quire is dissolved.

The concert is over.

August 20, 1854

August 20, 2017

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 © 2009-2015

The cricket-like note of this little frog ushers in the evening.

August 20

August 20, 1854

Sunday. I hear no trilling of birds early. 5.15 a. m. — To Hill. I hear a gold robin, also faint song of common robin. Wood pewee (fresh); red-wing blackbird with fragmentary trill; bobolinks (the males apparently darker and by themselves); kingbirds; nuthatch heard; yellow-throated vireo, heard and saw, on hickories (have I lately mistaken this for red-eye ?); goldfinch; slate- colored hawk (with white rump and black wing-tips). 

The grape leaves even at this hour, after a dewy night, are still many of them curled upward, showing their light under-sides, and feel somewhat crisped by the drought. This, I think, is one with that permanent standing up of the leaves of many trees at this season. Prinos berries have begun to redden. 

When the red-eye ceases generally, then I think is a crisis, — the woodland quire is dissolved. That, if I remember, was about a fortnight ago. The concert is over. The pewees sit still on their perch a long time, returning to the same twig after darting at an insect. The yellow-throated vireo is very restless, darting about. I hear a sound as of green pignuts falling from time to time, and see and hear the chickaree thereabouts!

1 P. M. — Up Assabet by boat to Bath. A warm but breezy day, wind west by south. Water clear and sunny. I see much of my fresh-water sponge just above the Island, attached to the bottom, rocks, or branches under water. In form it reminds me of some cladonia lichens, for it has many branches like a lichen, being a green, porous, spongy substance, with long, slender, pointed fingers or horns, pointed upward or outward, the thickest about half an inch in diameter, and emits a peculiar, penetrating, strong, rank scent like some chemicals. The whole mass per haps eight or ten inches in diameter. When raised to the surface it slowly sinks again. 

The bottom of the south branch is in many places almost covered with the short cut leaves of the sium, — as I call it. On the sandy bottom in midstream (mussel shoals), a dozen rods above the Rock, I notice a small (?) green clam which must be the same with or similar to that which Perkins showed me in Newburyport. It has bright-green rays from the eye (?) on a light-green ground. Found in pure sand. Saw three. The rays show through to the inside. It is handsomer without than the common. 

Some chickadees on the pitch pines over water near the Hemlocks look longer than usual, hanging back downward. 

See a strange bird about size of cedar-bird also on the pitch pine, perhaps greenish-olive above, whitish or ashy beneath, with a yellow vent and a dark line on side-head. 

Saw a wood pewee which had darted after an insect over the water in this position in the air: It often utters a continuous pe-e-e. 

The Polygonum amphibium at Assabet Rock, apparently several days, rising two or more feet above water. In many places I notice oaks stripped by caterpillars nowadays. Saw yesterday one of those great light-green grubs with spots. 

I see to-day many — more than a half-dozen — large wood tortoises on the bottom of the river, — some apparently eight to nine inches long in shell, some with their heads out. Are they particularly attracted to the water at this season? They lie quite still on the bottom.

Off Dodge's Brook, saw a fish lying on its side on the surface, with its head downward, slowly steering toward the shore with an undulating motion of the tail. Found it to be a large sucker which had apparently been struck by a kingfisher, fish hawk, or heron and got away. (The mill is not a-going to-day, Sunday.) It had been seized near the tail, which for three inches was completely flayed and much torn, lacerated, a part of the caudal fin being carried off. It had also received a severe thrust midway its body, which had furrowed its side and turned down a large strip of skin. It was breathing its last when I caught it. It was evidently too powerful for the bird which had struck it.

I brought it home and weighed and measured it. It weighed two pounds and two ounces and was nineteen and a quarter inches long. Above, it was a sort of blue black or slate-color, darkest on the head, with blotches of the same extending down its sides, which were of a reddish golden, passing into white beneath. There were a few small red spots on the sides, just behind the gills. It had what I should call a gibbous head, but no horns; a line of fine mucous pores above and below eye; eyes at least one and a half inches apart; great corrugated ears on the lower lip; fins all dark like the back; nostrils double; opercula not golden; irides golden; scales on lateral line sixty-five (about), those near tail gone with skin. Fin rays, as I counted: pectoral, seventeen; ventral, ten; anal, nine; dorsal, thirteen; caudal, some wanting. 

Looking down on it, it was very broad at base of head, tapering thence gradually to tail. It had a double bladder, nearly six inches long by one inch at widest part. I think it must have been a kingfisher, it was so much lacerated at the tail. 

Now, at 4 p. m., hear a croaking frog near the water's edge, sounding like the faint quacking of a duck with more of the r in it, — something like crack grack grack, rapidly repeated. Though I knew that I must be within three feet of it, as I looked from the boat upon the shore, I could see nothing, but several times I interrupted him and caused him to jump. It is surprising how perfectly they are concealed by their color, even when croaking under one's eyes. 

It was Rana palustris, though I did not see it when it croaked. I after heard them further off, just before sunset, along the edge of the river, and saw that I had often mistaken their note for that of a cricket. So similar are these two earth-sounds. The cricket-like note of this little frog in the meadow ushers in the evening. 

A man tells me to-day that he once saw some black snake's eggs on the surface of a tussock in a meadow just hatching, some hatched. The old one immediately appeared and swallowed all the young. 

Assabet quite low. Those beds of dirty green ostrich-feather potamogetons are much exposed and dry at top. 

I perceive quite a number of furrows of clams in the sand, all leading from the side toward the middle of the river, with the clams at that end. Can they be going down now? They have not moved opposite Hubbard Bath, where they are in middle as well as by shore. Their position in the furrows is on their sharp edges, with what I will call their two eyes forward. 

We had a very little drizzling rain on the 4th, and I think that was the last drop. 

There is so thick a bluish haze these dog-days that single trees half a mile off, seen against it as a light colored background, stand out distinctly a dark mass, — almost black, — as seen against the more distinct blue woods. So, also, when there is less haze, the distinct wooded ridges are revealed one behind another in the horizon.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 20, 1854

When the red-eye ceases generally, then I think is a crisis, — the woodland quire is dissolved. See May 27, 1854 ("The red-eye is an indefatigable singer.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red-eyed Vireo

I had often mistaken their note for that of a cricket. See August 22, 1854 ("There are now hopping all over this meadow small Rana palustris, and also some more beautifully spotted halecina or shad frogs."); September 4, 1854 ("Steadily the cricket-like Rana palustris alongshore.") See also September 20, 1855 ("Try to trace by the sound a mole cricket, -- thinking it a frog, — advancing from two sides and looking where our courses intersected, but in vain"); September 27, 1855 "(Yesterday I traced the note of what I have falsely thought the Rana palustris, or cricket frog, to its true source . . . a mole cricket.”) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Pickerel frog (Rana palustris or Lithobates palustris)

Single trees half a mile off ... stand out distinctly a dark mass, — almost black. See August 20, 1853 ("If they are between you and the sun, the trees are more black than green.”), August 20, 1858 ("This weather is a preface to autumn. There is more shadow in the landscape than a week ago, methinks, and the creak of the cricket sounds cool and steady. ") See also Augusr 23, 1853 ("Observing the blackness of the foliage, especially between me and the light, I am reminded that . . . the night of the year sets in.")

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

When the red-eye ceases

the woodland quire is dissolved. 

The concert is over.

The cricket-like note 

of this little frog ushers 

in the evening. 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The cricket-like note of this little frog

"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-540820