A Book of the Seasons: August 26 (fall rain, signs of frost, flocking birds, berries, goldfinch on thistles, the fall dandelion, the voice of dying summer)

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 26

Each humblest plant or

weed stands there to express some

thought or mood of ours.

August 26, 1858

All bushes resound.

I wade up to my ears in the

alder locust song.

August 26, 1860

I am surprised by

sun-sparkles on the river,

not seen for some time.

August 26, 1859

August 26, 2015

More wind and quite cold this morning, but very bright and sparkling, autumn-like air, reminding of frosts to be apprehended,
August 26, 1856 

Some medeola is quite withered. Perhaps they are somewhat frost-bitten. August 26, 1859 

We begin to apprehend frosts before the melons are ripe!
August 26, 1856

I hear of a great many fires around us, far and near, both meadows and woods; in Maine and New York also. There may be some smoke in this haze, but I doubt it. August 26, 1854

The first fall rain is a memorable occasion . . . The air is cleared; the dog- days are over . . . sparrows and bobolinks fly in flocks more and more. August 26, 1859

A blue heron sails away from a pine at Holden Swamp shore and alights on the meadow above. Again he flies, and alights on the hard Conantum side, where at length I detect him standing far away stake-like (his body concealed), eying me and depending on his stronger vision. August 26, 1856 

As I stand there, a young male goldfinch darts away with a twitter from a spear thistle top close to my side, and, alighting near, makes frequent returns as near to me and the thistle as it dares pass, not yet knowing man well enough to fear him. August 26, 1856

I saw a cherry-bird peck from the middle of its upright (vertical) web on a bush one of those large (I think yellow-marked) spiders within a rod of me.  August 26, 1859

The flooded meadow, where the grasshoppers cling to the grass so thickly, is alive with swallows skimming just over the surface amid the grass-tops and apparently snapping up insects there. August 26, 1856

The wind roars amid the pines like the surf. You can hardly hear the crickets for the din. . . Such a blowing, stirring, bustling day, - what does it mean ? 

August 26, 1851

The fall cricket — or is it alder locust? — sings the praises of the day. August 26, 1856

It is clearer weather, and the creak of the crickets is more distinct, just as the air is clearer . . .The creak of the mole cricket has a very afternoon sound. August 26, 1859

The shrilling of the alder locust is the solder that welds these autumn days together. Methinks the burden of their song is the countless harvests of the year, - berries, grain, and other fruits. August 26, 1860

A new plant, apparently Lycopodium inundatum, Hubbard's meadow-side. August 26, 1859

Each humblest plant, or weed, as we call it, stands there to express some thought or mood of ours. August 26, 1858

Two interesting tall purplish grasses appear to be the prevailing ones now in dry and sterile neglected fields and hillsides, — Andropogon furcatus, forked beard grass, and apparently Andropogon scoparius, purple wool grass.  . . .  They also by their rich purple reflections or tinges seem to express the ripeness of the year. August 26, 1858

These desmodiums are so fine and inobvious that it is difficult to detect them. I go through a grove in vain, but when I get away, find my coat covered with their pods. They found me, though I did not them. August 26, 1856

The desmodium flowers are pure purple, rose-purple in the morning when quite fresh, excepting the two green spots. The D. rotundifolium also has the two green (or in its case greenish) spots on its very large flower. . . . The round-leafed desmodium has sometimes seven pods and large flowers still fresh. August 26, 1856 .

The Solidago arguta is apparently in its prime. August 26, 1858

Aster macrophyllus, now in its prime. It grows large and rank, two feet high. On one I count seventeen central flowers withered, one hundred and thirty in bloom, and half as many buds. August 26, 1856

The liatris is about (or nearly) in prime. August 26, 1858

I thread my way through the blueberry swamp in front of Martial Miles's. [Ledum Swamp] The high blueberries far above my head in the shade of the swamp retain their freshness and coolness a long time. Little blue sacks full of swampy nectar and ambrosia commingled. August 26, 1860

And now a far greater show of choke-berries is here, rich to see. August 26, 1860

Also Viburnum nudum fruit has begun. August 26, 1859

Potato vines have taken a veil of wormwood. August 26, 1859

I gather a bundle of pennyroyal; it grows largest and rankest high and close under these rocks, amid the loose stones. I tie my bundle with the purple bark of the poke-weed. August 26, 1856 . 

The fall dandelion is as conspicuous and abundant now in Tuttle's meadow as buttercups in the spring. It takes their place. August 26, 1853. 

Open one of my snapping turtle's eggs. August 26, 1854

I am convinced that there must be an irresistible necessity for mud turtles. August 26, 1854 

Methinks I hear the crow of a cock come up from its barn-yard. August 26, 1856

What is a New England landscape this sunny August day? A weather-painted house and barn, with an orchard by its side, in midst of a sandy field surrounded by green woods, with a small blue lake on one side. August 26, 1856

Mill-wheels that have rested for want of water begin to revolve again. August 26, 1859

I see sun-sparkles on the river, such as I have not seen for a long time. At any rate, they surprise me. August 26, 1859

I hear part of a phoebe's strain, as I go over the railroad bridge. It is the voice of dying summer. August 26, 1854

Saw the comet in the west to-night. August 26, 1853

*****

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, at Ledum Swamp 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Blueberries

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Viburnum lentago  (nannyberry)

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Aromatic Herbs

 A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Liatris

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Cucumber Root (medeola)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Autumnal Dandelion

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Thistles

 A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau the Goldfinch

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Blue Heron

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Phoebe

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Bobolink

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cherry-bird (cedar waxwing)

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Young Birds

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Cricket in August

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau  Moods and Seasons of the Mind.

June 15, 1859 (“A regular old-fashioned country house, long and low, one story unpainted, with a broad green field, half orchard, for all yard between it and the road, — a part of the hill side, — and much June-grass before it. This is where the men who save the country are born and bred.”)

July 30, 1860 ("Am glad to press my way through Miles's Swamp. Thickets of choke-berry bushes higher than my head, with many of their lower leaves already red")

August 1, 1856 ("Liatris will apparently open in a day or two.")

August 1, 1855 ("Pennyroyal and alpine enchanter’s-nightshade well out, how long?”)

 August 4. 1854 ("The autumnal dandelion is now more common ")

August 5, 1852 ("How wildly rich and beautiful hang on high there the blueberries which might so easily be poisonous, the cool blue clusters high in air. Choke-berries, fair to the eye but scarcely palatable, hang far above your head, weighing down the bushes. The wild holly berry, perhaps the most beautiful of berries, hanging by slender threads from its more light and open bushes and more delicate leaves. The bushes, eight feet high, are black with choke-berries, and there are no wild animals to eat them.")

August 6, 1855 ("The mole cricket creaks along the shore.")

August 7, 1853 ("Is it not as language that all natural objects affect the poet? He sees a flower or other object, and it is beautiful or affecting to him because it is a symbol of his thought. . .The objects I behold correspond to my mood.”)

August 9, 1856 ("The flowers of A. macrophyllus are white with a very slight bluish tinge, in a coarse flat-topped corymb. Flowers nine to ten eighths of an inch in diameter.")

August 11, 1853 ("Evening draws on while I am gathering bundles of pennyroyal on the further Conantum height. I find it amid the stubble mixed with blue-curls and, as fast as I get my hand full, tie it into a fragrant bundle.”)

August 13, 1852 ("Pennyroyal abundant in bloom. I find it springing from the soil lodged on large rocks in sprout-lands, and gather a little bundle, which scents my pocket for many days.")

August 13, 1856 ("Is there not now a prevalence of aromatic herbs in prime? — The polygala roots, blue-curls, wormwood, pennyroyal, Solidago odora, rough sunflowers, horse-mint, etc., etc. Does not the season require this tonic?")

August 15, 1852 ("That clear ring like an alder locust (is it a cricket ?) for some time past is a sound which belongs to the season.)

August 15, 1854 (" I see large flocks of bobolinks on the Union Turnpike")

August 16. 1858 ("A blue heron, with its great undulating wings, prominent cutwater, and leisurely flight, goes over southwest, cutting off the bend of the river west of our house.")

 August 19, 1856 (“I feel an agreeable surprise as often as I come across a new locality for desmodiums. Rarely find one kind without one or two more species near, their great spreading panicles, yet delicate, open, and airy, occupying the August air. Like raking masts with countless guys slanted far over the neighboring plants”)

August 21, 1859 ("The blue herons must find it easy to get their living now. Are they not more common on our river such [drought] years as this?")

August 22, 1856 ("The creak of the mole cricket is heard along the shore.") 

August 23, 1857 ("The mole cricket nowadays.")

August 24, 1854 (“See a blue heron standing on the meadow at Fair Haven Pond. At a distance before you, only the two waving lines appear, and you would not suspect the long neck and legs.”)

 August 24, 1852("Autumnal dandelions are more common now.")  \

August 25, 1854 ("Between me and Nawshawtuct is a very blue haze like smoke. Indeed many refer all this to smoke")

August 25, 1856 ("Some have seven or eight grasshoppers, clinging to their masts, one close and directly above an other, like shipwrecked sailors, now the third or fourth day exposed.”)

August 25, 1854 ("Also the choke-berries are very abundant [at Shadbush Meadow], but mostly dried black.")

August 28, 1854 ("I think that haze was not smoke;")

August 28, 1856 ("The bushes are weighed down with choke-berries, which no creature appears to gather. This crop is as abundant as the huckleberries have been. They have a sweet and pleasant taste enough, but leave a mass of dry pulp in the mouth.")

August 28, 1860 (" The Lycopodium inundatum common by Harrington's mud-hole, Ministerial Swamp.')

August 30, 1851 ("This plant acts not an obscure, but essential, part in the revolution of the seasons. May I perform my part as well!")

August 31, 1854 ("Wormwood pollen yellows my clothes commonly")

August 31, 1859("These weeds require cultivated ground, and now that the potatoes are cared for, Nature is preparing a crop of chenopodium and Roman wormwood for the birds.")

September 1, 1859 ("The autumnal dandelion is a prevailing flower now")

September 2, 1854("The autumnal dandelion is conspicuous on the shore.")

September 10, 1854 ("Heard my last phoebe August 26th")

September 11, 1855 ("Loudly the mole cricket creaks by mid-afternoon.")

September 13, 1856 (" Surprised at the profusion of autumnal dandelions in their prime . . . A cool, spring-suggesting yellow. They reserve their force till this season.")

September 26, 1859 ("("The liatris is, perhaps, a little past prime. It is a very rich purple in favorable lights and makes a great show where it grows.")

September 27, 1856 ("The creak of the mole cricket sounds late along the shore.")

September 28, 1858 ("Liatris done, apparently some time.")

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 25 .<<<<<      August 26. >>>>>   August 27

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 26

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

I see sun-sparkles on the river, such as I have not seen for a long time

August 26. 

The dust is laid, the streets washed, the leaves — the first ripe crop — fallen, owing to yesterday's copious rain. It is clearer weather, and the creak of the crickets is more distinct, just as the air is clearer. 

The trees look greener and fresher, not only because their leaves are washed and erected, but because they have for the most part shed their yellow and sere leaves. 

The front-rank polygonum is now perhaps in its prime. Where it forms an island in the river it is surmounted in the middle or highest part by the P. hydropiperoides. 

P. M. — To Fair Haven Hill. 

Elder-berries have fairly begun to be ripe, as also the Cornus sericea berries, and the dull-reddish leaves of the last begin to be conspicuous. 

The creak of the mole cricket has a very afternoon sound.

 Potato vines are generally browning and rank. Roman wormwood prevails over them; also erechthites, in new and boggy ground, and butterweed. These lusty natives prevail in spite of the weeding hoe, and take possession of the field at last. Potato vines have taken a veil of wormwood. 

The barn-yard grass and various panics (sanguinale, capillare, and bottle-grass) now come forward with a rush and take possession of the cultivated fields, partly abandoned for the present by the farmer and gardener. 

How singular that the Polygonum aviculare should grow so commonly and densely about back doors where the earth is trodden, bordering on paths ! Hence properly called door-grass. I am not aware that it prevails in any other places. 

The pontederia leaves are already slightly imbrowned, though the flowers are still abundant. 

The river is a little cooled by yesterday's rain, and considerable heart-leaf (the leaves mainly) is washed up. 

I begin to think of a thicker coat and appreciate the warmth of the sun. I see sun-sparkles on the river, such as I have not seen for a long time. At any rate, they surprise me. There may be cool veins in the air now, any day. 

Now for dangle-berries. 

Also Viburnum nudum fruit has begun. 

I saw a cherry-bird peck from the middle of its upright (vertical) web on a bush one of those large (I think yellow-marked) spiders within a rod of me. It dropped to the ground, and then the bird picked it up. It left a hole or rent in the middle of the web. The spider cunningly spreads his net for feebler insects, and then takes up his post in the centre, but perchance a passing bird picks him from his conspicuous station. 

I perceived for the first time, this afternoon, in one place, a slight mouldy scent. There are very few fungi in a dry summer like this.

The Uvularia sessilifolia is for the most part turned yellow, with large green fruit, or even withered and brown. 

Some medeola is quite withered. Perhaps they are somewhat frost-bitten. 

I see a goldfinch eating the seeds of the coarse barn yard grass, perched on it. It then goes off with a cool twitter. 

Notice arrowhead leaves very curiously eaten by some insect. They are dotted all over in lines with small roundish white scales, — which your nail will remove, and then a scar is seen beneath, — as if some juice had exuded from each puncture and then hardened. 

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. 

The first significant event (for a long time) was the frost of the 17th. That was the beginning of winter, the first summons to summer. Some of her forces succumbed to it. The second event was the rain of yesterday. 

My neighbor told me yesterday that about four inches of rain had fallen, for he sent his man for a pail that was left in the garden during the rain, and there was about four inches depth of water in it. I inquired if the pail had upright sides. "No," he said, "it was flaring ! ! " However, according to another, there was full four inches in a tub. 

Leersia or cut-grass in prime at Potter's holes. 

That first frost on the 17th was the first stroke of winter aiming at the scalp of summer. Like a stealthy and insidious aboriginal enemy, it made its assault just before daylight in some deep and far-away hollow and then silently withdrew. Few have seen the drooping plants, but the news of this stroke circulates rapidly through the village. Men communicate it with a tone of warning. The foe is gone by sunrise, but some fearful neighbors who have visited their potato and cranberry patches report this stroke. The implacable and irresistible foe to all this tender greenness is not far off, nor can we be sure, any month in the year, that some scout from his low camp may not strike down the tenderest of the children of summer. 

The earliest and latest frosts are not distinguishable. This foe will go on steadily increasing in strength and boldness, till his white camps will be pitched over all the fields, and we shall be compelled to take refuge in our strongholds, with some of summer's withered spoils stored up in barns, maintaining ourselves and our herds on the seeds and roots and withered grass which we have embarned. Men in anticipation of this time have been busily collecting and curing the green blades all the country over, while they have still some nutriment in them. Cattle and horses have been dragging homeward their winter's food.

A new plant, apparently Lycopodium inundatum, Hubbard's meadow-side, Drosera Flat, not out.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 26, 1859


Elder-berries have fairly begun to be ripe. See note to August 23, 1856 (Elder-berries, now looking purple, are weighing down the bushes along fences by their abundance. ")
  
Cornus sericea berries See August 28, 1856 ("The bright china-colored blue berries of the Cornus sericea begin to show themselves along the river. .”)

The creak of the mole cricket has a very afternoon sound. See August 23, 1857 ("The mole cricket nowadays"); August 22, 1856 ("The creak of the mole cricket is heard along the shore."); September 11, 1855 ("Loudly the mole cricket creaks by mid-afternoon.")

Viburnum nudum fruit has begun. See August 25, 1854 ("The Viburnum nudum berries, in various stages, — green, deep-pink, and also deep-blue, not purple or ripe, — are very abundant at Shadbush Meadow. They appear to be now in their prime and are quite sweet, but have a large seed. Interesting for the various colors on the same bush and in the same cluster.")

One of those large (I think yellow-marked) spiders. See September 12, 1858 ("They are the yellow-backed spider, commonly large and stout but of various sizes. I count sixty-four such webs there, and in each case the spider occupies the centre, head downward.")

A new plant, apparently Lycopodium inundatum. See August 28, 1860 ("The Lycopodium inundatum common by Harrington's mud-hole, Ministerial Swamp.") 

[Northern bog-clubmoss is by far the most common species of bog-clubmoss in New England.  The tops of the erect shoots are distinctively widened. Its diminutive size, thin horizontal shoots, and entire trophophylls (sterile leaves) quickly distinguish most populations; it frequently occurs in the absence of other species or hybrids. ~ GoBotany]

See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Lycopodiums

Each humblest plant, or weed, as we call it, stands there to express some thought or mood of ours,

August 26. 

P. M. — To Great Meadows. 

The Solidago arguta is apparently in its prime. 

Hips of moss rose not long scarlet. 

The Juncus effusus, a long [time] withered (the upper part). 

The liatris is about (or nearly) in prime. 

Aster loevis, how long? 

Two interesting tall purplish grasses appear to be the prevailing ones now in dry and sterile neglected fields and hillsides, — Andropogon furcatus, forked beard grass, and apparently Andropogon scoparius, purple wool grass, though the last appears to have three awns like an Aristida. 

The first is a very tall and slender-culmed grass,with four or five purple finger-like spikes, raying upward from the top. It is very abundant on the hillside behind Peter’s. The other is also quite slender, two to three or four feet high, growing in tufts and somewhat curving, also commonly purple and with pretty purple stigmas like the last, and it has purple anthers. When out of bloom, its appressed spikes are re curving and have a whitish hairy or fuzzy look. 

These are the prevailing conspicuous flowers where I walk this afternoon in dry ground. 

I have sympathy with them because they are despised by the farmer and occupy sterile and neglected soil. They also by their rich purple reflections or tinges seem to express the ripeness of the year. It is high-colored like ripe grapes, and expresses a maturity which the spring did not suggest. Only the August sun could have thus burnished these culms and leaves. 

The farmer has long since done his upland haying, and he will not deign to bring his scythe to where these slender wild grasses have at length flowered thinly. You often see the bare sand between them. I walk encouraged between the tufts of purple wool grass, over the sandy fields by the shrub oaks, glad to recognize these simple contemporaries. 

These two are almost the first grasses that I have learned to distinguish. I did not know by how many friends I was surrounded. The purple of their culms excites me like that of the pokeweed stems. 

Think what refuge there is for me before August is over, from college commencements and society that isolates me! I can skulk amid the tufts of purple wood grass on the borders of the Great Fields! Wherever I walk this afternoon the purple-fingered grass stands like a guide-board and points my thoughts to more poetic paths than they have lately travelled. 

A man shall, perchance, rush by and trample down plants as high as his head, and cannot be said to know that they exist, though he may have cut and cured many tons of them for his cattle. Yet, perchance, if he ever favorably attend to them, he may be overcome by their beauty. 

Each humblest plant, or weed, as we call it, stands there to express some thought or mood of ours, and yet how long it stands in vain! 

I have walked these Great Fields so many Augusts and never yet distinctly recognized these purple companions that I have there. I have brushed against them and trampled them down, for sooth, and now at last they have, as it were, risen up and blessed me. 

Beauty and true wealth are always thus cheap and despised. Heaven, or paradise, might be defined as the place which men avoid. Who can doubt that these grasses which the farmer says are of no account to him find some compensation in my appreciation of them? 

I may say that I never saw them before, or can only recall a dim vision of them, and now wherever I go I hardly see anything else. It is the reign and presidency only of the andropogons.

I walk down the Great Meadows on the upland side. They are still mowing, but have not got more than half, and probably will not get nearly all. I see where the tufts of Arum peltandrum have been cut off by the mower, and the leaves are all gone, but the still green fruit, which had curved downward close to the ground on every side amid the stubble, was too low for his scythe, and so escaped. Thus this plant is perpetuated in such localities, though it may be cut before the seed is mature. 

The wool-grass, black-bracted, of these meadows long since went out of bloom, and is now not merely withered at top but wasted half away, and is quite gray, while that which I examine in another meadow, green-bracted, has but recently ceased to bloom. Looking from this side, the meadow appears to be filled almost exclusively with wool-grass, yet very little has any culm or has blossomed this year. 

I notice, however, one tract, in the midst of the rest, an oblong square with perfectly straight sides, reaching from the upland toward the river, where it has quite generally blossomed and the culms still stand as high as my head. This, plainly, is because the land of a particular proprietor has been subjected to a peculiar treatment. 

Minott tells me that once, one very dry summer, when but part of these meadows had been cut, Moore and Hosmer got the owners to agree to have them burnt over, in the expectation that it would improve the quality of the grass, and they made quite an affair of it, — had a chowder, cooked by Moore’s boys, etc.; but the consequence was that this wool-grass came in next year more than ever. 

Some come a good way for their meadow-grass, even from Lincoln. George Baker has some in this meadow and some in the Sudbury meadows. But Minott says they want to get rid of their river meadow now, since they can get more and very much better grass off their redeemed swamps, or meadows of their own making, near home. 

Hardhack, meadow-sweet, alders, maples, etc., etc., appear to be creeping into the meadow. 

M. says they used to mow clean up to the ditch by the hard land. He remembers how he used to suffer from the heat, working out in the sun on these broad meadows, and when they took their luncheon, how glad he was to lie along close to the water, on the wet ground under the white maples by the riverside. And then one would swim a horse over at the Holt go up to Jack Buttrick’s (now Abner’s), where there was a well of cool water, and get one or two great jugs full, with which he recrossed on the horse. He tells of one fellow who trod water across there with a jug in each hand! 

He has seen young woodcocks in the nest there, i. e. on the ground where he had mowed, the middle of August; and used to see the summer ducks perched on the maples, on some large limb close up to the main stem, since they cannot cling to a small twig.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 26, 1858

Hips of moss rose not long scarlet. See August 27, 1852 ("Hips of the early roses are reddening.”); August 27, 1856 (“The large depressed globular hips of the moss rose begin to turn scarlet in low ground ”); August 29, 1854 ("The moss rose hips will be quite ripe in a day or two.”)

The farmer has long since done his upland haying, and he will not deign to bring his scythe to where these slender wild grasses have at length flowered thinly. See August 12, 1858 (“That very handsome high-colored fine purple grass grows particularly on dry and rather unproductive soil just above the edge of the meadows, on the base of the hills, where the hayer does not deign to swing his scythe. He carefully gets the meadow-hay and the richer grass that borders it, but leaves this fine purple mist for the walker’s harvest”); September 1, 1857 ("Landing at Bittern Cliff, I see that fine purple grass; how long? "); October 9, 1857 ("Under the pines by the Clamshell, that fine purple grass is now withered and faded to a very light brown which reflects the autumnal light.”)

Each humblest plant, or weed, as we call it, stands there to express some thought or mood of ours. See May 23, 1853 ("Every new flower that opens, no doubt, expresses a new mood of the human mind.”); August 30, 1851 ("The fall of each humblest flower marks the annual period of some phase of human life experience. I can be said to note the flower's fall only when I see in it the symbol of my own change. When I experience this, then the flower appears to me."); August 7, 1853 ("Is it not as language that all natural objects affect the poet? He sees a flower or other object, and it is beautiful or affecting to him because it is a symbol of his thought. . .The objects I behold correspond to my mood.”);  June 6, 1857 (“A year is made up of a certain series and number of sensations and thoughts which have their language in nature. Now I am ice, now I am sorrel. Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind. ”)

Each humblest plant or

weed stands there to express some

thought or mood of ours

Up Assabet with Bradford and Hoar.

August 26. 

Wednesday. P. M. — Up Assabet with Bradford and Hoar. 

B. tells me he found the Malaxis liliifolia on Kineo. Saw there a tame gull as large as a hen, brown dove color. A lumberer called some timber “frowy.” 

B. has found Cassia Chamoacrista by the side of the back road between Lincoln and Waltham, about two miles this side of Waltham.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 26, 1857

B. tells me he found the Malaxis liliifolia on Kineo. See August 24, 1857 (“We came down northward to the Boston and Worcester turnpike, by the side of which the Malaxis liliifolia grows, though we did not find it. ”)

B. has found Cassia Chamoacrista by the side of the back road . . . See August 11, 1856 ("Mr. Bradford . . .gives me a sprig of Cassia Marilandica, wild senna, found by Minot Pratt just below Leighton's by the road side.")

A weather-painted house and barn, with an orchard by its side, in midst of a sandy field surrounded by green woods, with a small blue lake on one side.

August 26

Tuesday. More wind and quite cold this morning, but very bright and sparkling, autumn-like air, reminding of frosts to be apprehended, also tempting abroad to adventure. The fall cricket — or is it alder locust? — sings the praises of the day. 

So about 9 a. m. up river to Fair Haven Pond. 

The flooded meadow, where the grasshoppers cling to the grass so thickly, is alive with swallows skimming just over the surface amid the grass-tops and apparently snapping up insects there. Are they catching the grasshoppers as they cling to bare poles? (I see the swallows equally thick there at 5 p. m. when I return also.) 

River slowly falling. The most conspicuous weed rising above the water is the wool-grass, with its great, rich, seedy heads, which rise from a few inches to a foot above at present, as I push over the uncut meadows. 

I see many white lilies fairly and freshly in bloom after all this flood, though it looks like a resurrection.

The wind is northwest, apparently by west, and I sail before it and under Hubbard's Bridge. 

The red maples of Potter's Swamp show a dull-purple blush and sometimes a low scarlet bough, the effect evidently of the rain ripening them. 

Rice told me about their crossing the causeway from Wayland to Sudbury some sixty years ago in a freshet which he could just remember, in a half-hogs head tub, used for scalding pigs, having nailed some boards on the bottom to keep it from upsetting. It was too deep for a team. 

We begin to apprehend frosts before the melons are ripe! 

A blue heron sails away from a pine at Holden Swamp shore and alights on the meadow above. Again he flies, and alights on the hard Conantum side, where at length I detect him standing far away stake-like (his body concealed), eying me and depending on his stronger vision. 

The desmodium flowers are pure purple, rose-purple in the morning when quite fresh, excepting the two green spots. The D. rotundifolium also has the two green (or in its case greenish) spots on its very large flower. These desmodiums are so fine and inobvious that it is difficult to detect them. I go through a grove in vain, but when I get away, find my coat covered with their pods. They found me, though I did not them. The round-leafed desmodium has sometimes seven pods and large flowers still fresh. 

The Lespedeza Stuvei is very abundant on Black berry Steep, two and a half to three feet high. It has a looser top and less dense spikes than the hirta. It gives a pink hue to the hillside. The L. violacea is smaller and much more violet, the hirta more white. Galium pilosum still common; and Desmodium acuminatum still by rock on Blackberry Steep. This to be added to the desmodiums of this place. 

As I stand there, a young male goldfinch darts away with a twitter from a spear thistle top close to my side, and, alighting near, makes frequent returns as near to me and the thistle as it dares pass, not yet knowing man well enough to fear him. 

I rest and take my lunch on Lee's Cliff, looking toward Baker Farm. 

July 20, 2018

What is a New England landscape this sunny August day? A weather-painted house and barn, with an orchard by its side, in midst of a sandy field surrounded by green woods, with a small blue lake on one side. A sympathy between the color of the weather-painted house and that of the lake and sky. I speak not of a country road between its fences, for this house lies off one, nor do I commonly approach them from this side. The weather-painted house. This is the New England color, homely but fit as that of a toadstool. What matter though this one has not been inhabited for thirty years? 

Methinks I hear the crow of a cock come up from its barn-yard. I think I hear the pine warbler's note in the woods behind me. Hear a plain phebe note from a chickadee. 

Bluets still. 

Epilobium down flies abundantly on hillsides. 

I gather a bundle of pennyroyal; it grows largest and rankest high and close under these rocks, amid the loose stones. I tie my bundle with the purple bark of the poke-weed. 

Sail across to Bee Tree Hill. This hillside, laid bare two years ago and partly last winter, is almost covered with the Aster macrophyllus, now in its prime. It grows large and rank, two feet high. On one I count seventeen central flowers withered, one hundred and thirty in bloom, and half as many buds. 

As I looked down from the hilltop over the sprout-land, its rounded grayish tops amid the bushes I mistook for gray, lichen-clad rocks, such was its profusion and harmony with the scenery, like hoary rocky hilltops amid bushes. There were acres of it, densely planted. Also erechthites as abundant and rank in many places there as if it had been burnt over! So it does not necessarily imply fire. I thought I was looking down on gray, lichen-clad rocky summits on which a few bushes thinly grew. These rocks were asters, single ones a foot over, many prostrate, and making a gray impression. 

Many leaves of shrubs are crisp and withered and fallen there, though as yet no drought nor frost. Nothing but rain can have done it. Aspen leaves are blackened. Stonecrop still. Another monster aphis on a huckleberry leaf. Galium triflorum still. See a great many young oaks and shrub oaks stripped by caterpillars of different kinds now.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal August 26, 1856


The fall cricket — or is it alder locust? — sings the praises of the day. See August 26, 1860 ("The shrilling of the alder locust is the solder that welds these autumn days together."); August 15, 1852 ("That clear ring like an alder locust (is it a cricket ?) for some time past is a sound which belongs to the season.) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Cricket in August

A blue heron sails away from a pine at Holden Swamp shore and alights on the meadow above. See note to August 19, 1858 ("Blue herons, which have bred or been bred not far from us (plainly), are now at leisure, or are impelled to revisit our slow stream. I have not seen the last since spring. "); August 22, 1858 ("See one or two blue herons every day now, driving them far up or down the river before me."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Blue Heron

These desmodiums are so fine and inobvious that it is difficult to detect them . . . They found me, though I did not them. See note to August 19, 1856 ("I spent my afternoon among the desmodiums and lespedezas, sociably.")

I gather a bundle of pennyroyal . . . I tie my bundle with the purple bark of the poke-weed. See August 11, 1853 ("Evening draws on while I am gathering bundles of pennyroyal on the further Conantum height. I find it amid the stubble mixed with blue-curls and, as fast as I get my hand full, tie it into a fragrant bundle.”);  August 13, 1852 ("Pennyroyal abundant in bloom. I find it springing from the soil lodged on large rocks in sprout-lands, and gather a little bundle, which scents my pocket for many days.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Aromatic Herbs

A young male goldfinch darts away with a twitter from a spear thistle top close to my side, and, alighting near, makes frequent returns as near to me and the thistle as it dares. See  August 28, 1856  ("A goldfinch twitters away from every thistle now, and soon returns to it when I am past.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Goldfinch

A sympathy between the color of the weather-painted house and that of the lake and sky. The weather-painted house. This is the New England color. See April 3, 1858  ("In the hazy atmosphere yesterday we could hardly see Garfield's old unpainted farmhouse."); April 24, 1857 ("That is a very New England landscape. Buttrick's yellow farmhouse near by is in harmony with it."); June 15, 1859 (“A regular old-fashioned country house, long and low, one story unpainted, with a broad green field, half orchard, for all yard between it and the road, — a part of the hill side, — and much June-grass before it. This is where the men who save the country are born and bred.”); November 26, 1857 ("Minott's is a small, square, one-storied and unpainted house, with a hipped roof and at least one dormer window, a third the way up the south side of a long hill")

Aster macrophyllus, now in its prime . . . making a gray impression.  See  August 30, 1853 ("I am quite bewildered by the beauty and variety of the asters, now in their prime here. Why so many asters and goldenrods now?") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Asters in August

Another monster aphis on a huckleberry leaf. See August 18, 1856 ("Saw yesterday and some days before a monster aphis some five eighths of an inch long on a huckleberry leaf.")

Sunny August day –

weather-painted house and barn

New England color.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A weather-painted house and barn

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 © 2009-2026

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