From Cliffs I see snow on the mountains.

December 12. 

Cold at last. 

December 12, 2015

Saw a violet on the C. Miles road where the bank had been burned in the fall. 

Baeomyces roseus also. 

Tansy still fresh yellow by the Corner Bridge. 

From Cliffs I see snow on the mountains. 

Last night's rain was snow there, then. They now have a parti-colored look, like the skin of a pard, as if they were spread with a saddle-cloth for Boreas to ride.

I hear of a cultivated rose blossoming in a garden in Cambridge within a day or two. 

The buds of the aspen are large and show wool in the fall.

H. D Thoreau, Journal, December 12, 1852

Baeomyces roseus. See April 3, 1859 ("We need a popular name for the baeomyces. C. suggests "pink mould" Perhaps "pink shot" or "eggs" would do.")

Saw a violet on the C. Miles road where the bank had been burned in the fall. See December 9, 1852 ("A man tells me he saw a violet to-day.") See also November 9, 1850 ("I found many fresh violets (Viola pedata) to-day (November 9th) in the woods.”);  November 16, 1850 (Violets, dandelions, and some other flowers blossom again, and mulleins and in numerable other plants begin again to spring and are only checked by the increasing cold. There is a slight uncertainty whether there will be any winter this year.")

Tansy still fresh yellow by the Corner Bridge. See November 18, 1855 ("Tansy still shows its yellow disks, but yarrow is particularly fresh and perfect, cold and chaste, with its pretty little dry-looking rounded white petals and green leaves."); November 23, 1852 ("Among the flowers which may be put down as lasting thus far, as I remember, in the order of their hardiness: yarrow, tansy (these very fresh and common) . . . and perhaps tall buttercup, etc."); December 6, 1852 ("Tansy still fresh.")

From Cliffs I see snow on the mountains. See December 12, 1859 ("I got a new view of the mountains . . .very grand in their snowy mantle, which had a slight tinge of purple . . . It is now that these mountains, in color as well as form, most resemble the clouds.") See also December 8, 1854 ("Why do the mountains never look so fair as from my native fields?")

.

The buds of the aspen are large and show wool. See February 6, 1856 ("The down is just peeping out from some of the aspen buds. "); February 27. 1852 ("The buds of the aspen show a part of their down or silky catkins."); March 4, 1860 ("Aspen down a quarter of an inch out.")

Now the abundance of dead weeds.

 

October 21.

Thursday P.M. To Second Division Brook and Ministerial Swamp.

Cerastium.

Apparently some flowers yield to the frosts, others linger here and there till the snow buries them.

Saw that the side flowering skull-cap was killed by the frost. If they grow in some nook out of the way of frosts they last so much the longer. Methinks the frost puts a period to a large class.

The goldenrods, being dead, are now a dingy white along the brooks (white fuzz dark brown leaves), together with rusty, fuzzy trumpet-weeds and asters in the same condition.

This is a remarkable feature in the landscape now the abundance of dead weeds. The frosts have done it. Winter comes on gradually.

The red maples have lost their leaves before the rock maple which is now losing its leaves at top first.

All the country over the frosts have come and seared the tenderer herbs along all brook sides. How unobserved this change until it has taken place.

The birds that fly at the approach of winter are come from the north.

Some time since I might have said some birds are leaving us, others, like ducks, are just arriving from the north, the herbs are withering along the brooks, the humming insects are going into winter quarters.

The deciduous trees are green but about four months in the year from June 1st to October 1st perhaps.

Polygonum articulaium lingers still.

Silvery cinquefoil, hedge-mustard, and clover.

I find caddis cases with worms in Second Division Brook.

And what mean those little piles of yellow sand on dark colored stones at the bottom of the swift running water kept together and in place by some kind of gluten and looking as if sprinkled on the stones one eighteenth of an inch in diameter.

These caddis worms just build a little case around themselves and sometimes attach a few dead leaves to disguise it and then fasten it slightly to some swaying grass stem or blade at the bottom in swift water and these are their quarters till next spring .

This reminds me that winter does not put his rude fingers in the bottom of the brooks.

When you look into the brooks you see various dead leaves floating or resting on the bottom and you do not suspect that some are the disguises which the caddis worms have borrowed.

Fresh Baeomyces roseus near Tommy Wheeler's.

The cotton woolly aphides on the alders.

Gilpin speaks of floats of timber on the river Wey in 1775 as picturesque objects. Thus in the oldest settled and civilized country there is a resemblance or reminiscence still of the primitive new country, and more or less timber never ceases to grow on the head waters of its streams and perchance the wild muskrat still perforates its banks. England may endure as long as she grows oaks for her navy. Timber rafts still annually come down the Rhine, like the Mississippi and St Lawrence. But the forests of England are thin for Gilpin says of the Isle of Wight in Charles II's time, "There were woods in the island so complete and extensive that it is said a squirrel might have travelled in several parts many leagues together on the tops of the trees."

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 21, 1852

Fresh Baeomyces roseus near Tommy Wheeler's. See April 3, 1859 ("We need a popular name for the baeomyces. C. suggests "pink mould" Perhaps "pink shot" or "eggs" would do.")

The cotton woolly aphides on the alders. See September 22, 1852 ("Large woolly aphides are now clustered close together on the alder stems") See also June 14, 1853 ("I observed the cotton of aphides on the alders yesterday and to-day. ");  October 29, 1855 ("I see many aphides very thick and long-tailed on the alders."); May 19, 1856 ("Woolly aphides on alder. "); November 10, 1858 ("Aphides on alder."); June 4, 1860 (Aphides on alders, which dirty your clothes with their wool as you walk."")

The red maples have lost their leaves before the rock maple which is now losing its leaves at top first. See October 21, 1858 ("The large sugar maples on the Common are in the midst of their fall to-day.")

The deciduous trees are green but about four months in the year. See October 28, 1852 ("Four months of the green leaf make all our summer, if I reckon from June 1st to October 1st, the growing season, and methinks there are about four months when the ground is white with snow. That would leave two months for spring and two for autumn.")

A peculiarly fine September day,

September 21. 

September 21, 2019

Heard in the night a snapping sound and the fall of some small body on the floor from time to time. In the morning I found that it was produced by the witch-hazel nuts on my desk springing open and casting their seeds quite across the chamber, hard and stony as these nuts are. 

It is overcast, like yesterday, and yet more rain-promising. Methinks the 19th was such a day (the second after rain) as the 18th in '58, — a peculiarly fine September day, looking toward the fall, warm and bright, with yellow butterflies in the washed road, and early-changed maples and shrubs adorning the low grounds. The red nesaea blazing along the Assabet above the powder-mills. The apple crop, red and yellow, more conspicuous than ever amid the washed leaves. 

The farmers on all sides are digging their potatoes, so prone to their work that they do not see me going across lots. 

I sat near Coombs's pigeon-place by White Pond. The pigeons sat motionless on his bare perches, from time to time dropping down into the bed and uttering a quivet or two. Some stood on the perch; others squatted flat. I could see their dove-colored breasts. Then all at once, being alarmed, would take flight, but ere long return in straggling parties. 

He tells me that he has fifteen dozen baited, but does not intend to catch any more at present, or for two or three weeks, hoping to attract others. Rice says that white oak acorns pounded up, shells and all, make the best bait for them. 

I see now in the wood-paths where small birds and partridges, etc., have been destroyed, — only their feathers left, — probably by hawks. Do they not take their prey often to a smooth path in the woods? 

White Pond is being dimpled here and there all over, perhaps by fishes; and so is the river. It is an overcast day. Has that anything to do with it? 

I see some of the rainbow girdle reflected around its edge. Looking with the proper intention of the eye, I see it is ribbed with the dark prolonged reflections of the pines almost across. But why are they bent one side? Is it the effect of the wind? 

We are having our dog-days now and of late, methinks, having had none to speak of in August; and now at last I see a few toadstools, — the election-cake (the yellowish, glazed over) and the taller, brighter-yellow above. Those shell-less slugs which eat apples eat these also. 

Jays are more frequently heard of late, maybe because other birds are more silent. 

Considerable many acorns are fallen (black oak chiefly) in the path under the south edge of Conant's Wood, this side of White Pond. Acorns have been falling very sparingly ever since September 1, but are mostly wormy. They are as interesting now on the shrub oak (green) as ever. 

I suspect that it is not when the witch-hazel nut first gapes open that the seeds fly out, for I see many (if not most of them) open first with the seeds in them; but when I release a seed (it being still held by its base), it flies as I have said. I think that its slippery base is compressed by the unyielding shell, which at length expels it, just as I can make one fly by pressing it and letting it slip from between my thumb and finger. It appears to fit close to the shell at its base, even after the shell gapes. 

The ex-plenipotentiary refers in after [-dinner] speeches with complacency to the time he spent abroad and the various lords and distinguished men he met, as to a deed done and an ever-memorable occasion! Of what account are titles and offices and opportunities, if you do no memorable deed? 

I perceive that a spike of arum berries which I gathered quite green September 1 is now turned completely scarlet, and though it has lain on my desk in a dry and warm chamber all the while, the berries are still perfectly plump and fresh (as well as glossy) to look at, — as much so as any. 

The greater part [of], almost all, the mikania was killed by the frost of the 15th and 16th. Only that little which was protected by its position escaped and is still in bloom. And the button-bush too is generally browned above by the same cause. This has given a considerably brown look to the side of the river. 

Saw baeomyces (lately opened, probably with the rain of the 17th) by roadside. 

Yesterday was a still, overcast, rain-promising day, and I saw this morning (perhaps it was yesterday) the ground about the back door all marked with worm-piles. Had they not come out for water after the dry weather? 

See a St. Domingo cuckoo (black-billed) still.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 21, 1859

The witch-hazel nuts on my desk springing open and casting their seeds quite across the chamber. September 18, 1859 ("The double-fruited stone splits and reveals the two shining black oblong seeds. It has a peculiarly formed nut, in pretty clusters, clothed, as it were, in close-fitting buckskin.")

A peculiarly fine September day, looking toward the fall, warm and bright, with yellow butterflies.  See September 21, 1854  ("With this bright, clear, but rather cool air the bright yellow of the autumnal dandelion is in harmony "); September 21, 1857 ("The warmth of the sun is just beginning to be appreciated again on the advent of cooler days.") See also September 18, 1858 ("It is a wonderful day."); September 18, 1860 ("This is a beautiful day, warm but not too warm, a harvest day . . ."If you are not happy to-day you will hardly be so to-morrow.”)

Yellow butterflies in the washed road. See note to September 19, 1859 ("See many yellow butterflies in the road this very pleasant day after the rain of yesterday.")

The red nesaea blazing along the Assabet above the powder-mills. See July 21, 1859 ("The nesaea grows commonly along the river near the powder-mills, one very dense bed of it at the mouth of the powder-mill canal.")

The farmers on all sides are digging their potatoes, so prone to their work that they do not see me going across lots. Compare September 27, 1858 ("The farmers digging potatoes on shore pause a moment to watch my sail and bending mast."); November 18, 1851 ("The man who is bent upon his work is frequently in the best attitude to observe what is irrelevant to his work. "); April 12, 1854 ("It is from out the shadow of my toil that I look into the light."); April 30, 1856 (“ Again, it is with the side of the ear that you hear. The music or the beauty belong not to your work. . . but you will hear more of it if you devote yourself to your work.”)

At last I see a few toadstools, — the election-cake (the yellowish, glazed over). See October 2, 1859 ("Nowadays I see most of the election-cake fungi, with crickets and slugs eating them"); October 4, 1858 ("See crickets eating the election-cake toadstools."); October 10, 1858 ("I find the under sides of the election-cake fungi there covered with pink-colored fleas"); October 20, 1856 (“I notice, as elsewhere of late, a great many brownish-yellow (and some pink) election-cake fungi, eaten by crickets; about three inches in diameter."); October 16, 1859 ("That election-cake fungus which is still growing (as for some months) appears to be a Boletus"); October 20, 1857 ("I see the yellowish election-cake fungi."); October 29, 1855 ("There are many fresh election-cake toadstools amid the pitch pine”); See also Concord: A Sense of Place, October 20, 2015, Election-cake Fungus Mystery.

Jays are more frequently heard of late. See September 21, 1854 (“I hear many jays since the frosts began”)

"What do you get for lecturing now?"

April 3. 

An easterly wind and rain. 

P. M. — To White Pond. 

C. says he saw a striped snake on the 30th. 

We go by Clamshell. The water on the meadows is now visibly lowered considerably, and the tops of bushes begin to appear. The high water has stood over and washed down the base of that avalanche of sand from my new ravine, leaving an upright edge a foot high, and as it subsided gradually, it has left various parallel shore lines, with stones arranged more or less in rows along them, thus forming a regular beach of four or five rods' length. 

The baeomyces is in its perfection this rainy day.

 I have for some weeks been insisting on the beauty and richness of the moist and saturated crust of the earth. It has seemed to me more attractive and living than ever, — a very sensitive cuticle, teeming with life, especially in the rainy days. I have looked on it as the skin of a pard. And on a more close examination I am borne out by discovering, in this now so bright baeomyces and in other earthy lichens and in cladonias, and also in the very interesting and pretty red and yellow stemmed mosses, a manifest sympathy with, and an expression of, the general life of the crust. This early and hardy cryptogamous vegetation is, as it were, a flowering of the crust of the earth. Lichens and these mosses, which depend on moisture, are now most rampant. If you examine it, this brown earth-crust is not dead. 

We need a popular name for the baeomyces. C. suggests " pink mould." Perhaps " pink shot " or "eggs " would do. 

A great many oak leaves have been blown off in the late windy weather. When I disturb a leaf in the woods I find it quite dry within this rainy day. I saw the other day a long winrow of oak leaves, a foot high, washed up on the meadow-edge a quarter of a mile off, opposite Ball's Hill, whence they partly came. 

It does not rain hard to-day, but mizzles, with considerable wind, and your clothes are finely bedewed with it even under an umbrella. The rain-drops hanging regularly under each twig of the birches, so full of light, are a very pretty sight as you look forth through the mizzle from under your umbrella. In a hard rain they do not lodge and collect thus. 

I hear that Peter Hutchinson hooked a monstrous pickerel at the Holt last winter. It was so large that he could not get his head through the hole, and so they cut another hole close by, and then a narrow channel from that to the first to pass the line through, but then, when they came to pull on the line, the pickerel gave a violent jerk and escaped. Peter thinks that he must have weighed ten pounds. 

Men's minds run so much on work and money that the mass instantly associate all literary labor with a pecuniary reward. 

They are mainly curious to know how much money the lecturer or author gets for his work. They think that the naturalist takes so much pains to collect plants or animals because he is paid for it. An Irishman who saw me in the fields making a minute in my note-book took it for granted that I was casting up my wages and actually inquired what they came to, as if he had never dreamed of any other use for writing. I might have quoted to him that the wages of sin is death, as the most pertinent answer. 

"What do you get for lecturing now?" I am occasionally asked. 

It is the more amusing since I only lecture about once a year out of my native town, often not at all; so that I might as well, if my objects were merely pecuniary, give up the business. 

Once, when I was walking on Staten Island, looking about me as usual, a man who saw me would not believe me when I told him that I was indeed from New England but was not looking at that region with a pecuniary view, — a view to speculation; and he offered me a handsome bonus if I would sell his farm for him. 

I see by the White Pond path many fox-colored sparrows apparently lurking close under the lee side of a wall out of the way of the storm. Their tails near the base are the brightest things of that color — a rich cinnamon -brown — that I know. Their note to-day is the chip much like a tree sparrow's. We get quite near them. 

Near to the pond I see a small hawk, larger than a pigeon hawk, fly past, — a deep brown with a light spot on the side. I think it probable it was a sharp- shinned hawk. 

The pond is quite high (like Walden, which, as I noticed the 30th ult., had risen about two feet since January, and perhaps within a shorter period), and the white sand beach is covered. 

The water being quite shallow on it, it is very handsomely and freshly ripple-marked for a rod or more in width, the ripples only two or three inches apart and very regular and parallel, but occasionally there is a sort of cell a foot long (a split closed at each end) in one. 

In some parts, indeed, it reminded me of a cellular tissue, but the last foot next the shore had no ripple-marks; apparently they were constantly levelled there. These were most conspicuous where a dark sediment, the dead wood or crumbled leaves, perchance, from the forest, lay in the furrows and contrasted with the white sand. The cells were much more numerous and smaller in proportion than I represent them. 

I find in drawing these ripple-marks that I have drawn precisely such lines as are used to represent a shore on maps, and perchance the sight of these parallel ripple-marks may have suggested that method of drawing a shore-line. I do not believe it, but if we were to draw such a lake-shore accurately it would be very similar.

H. D Thoreau, Journal, April 3, 1859


I see by the White Pond path many fox-colored sparrows apparently lurking close under the lee side of a wall out of the way of the storm.Their note to-day is the chip much like a tree sparrow's. See March 23, 1858 ("A large flock of fox-colored sparrows flits by along an alder-row, uttering a faint chip like that of the tree sparrow."); March 23, 1853 ("The birds which are merely migrating or tarrying here for a season are especially gregarious now”); April 17, 1855 ("A sudden warm day, like yesterday and this, takes off some birds and adds others. It is a crisis in their career. The fox-colored sparrows seem to be gone, and I suspect that most of the tree sparrows and F. hyemalis, at least, went yesterday.") See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Fox-colored Sparrow.

I see a small hawk, larger than a pigeon hawk, fly past, — a deep brown with a light spot on the side. I think it probable it was a sharp- shinned hawk. See March 28, 1854 (“See a small slate-colored hawk, with wings transversely mottled beneath, — probably the sharp-shinned hawk.”);April 26, 1854 (“Saw probably a pigeon hawk skim straight and low over field and wood, and another the next day apparently dark slate-color.”); April 16, 1855 ( "What I call a pigeon hawk, probably sharp-shinned.”); May 8, 1854 (“Saw a small hawk flying low, about size of a robin — tail with black bars”); May 4, 1855 (“ See a small hawk go over high in the air, with a long tail and distinct from wings. . . .Was it not the sharp-shinned, or Falco fuscus? I think that what I have called the sparrow hawk falsely, and latterly pigeon hawk, is also the sharp-shinned (vide April 26th and May 8th, 1854, and April 16th, 1855), for the pigeon hawk’s tail is white-barred.”). See also  amd note to July 21, 1858 ("It was the Falco fuscus, the American brown or slate-colored hawk.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sharp-shinned Hawk

April 3. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, April 3

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

Botanizing the East Branch (continued)

August 1. 

August 1, 2017

I saw at the end of this carry small Apocynum cannabinum on the rocks, also more of the spurred gentian. . . . 

Here were many Canada blueberries and, on the rocks, a new Allium or garlic, with purple flowers, and the Lobelia Kalmii, both on bare rocks just below the falls. 

On the main land were Norway pines and a sandy soil, and Baeomyces roseus and Desmodium Canadense, — a new soil for this river.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 1, 1857

See The Maine Woods ("We were glad to embark once more, and leave some of the mosquitoes behind. We had passed the Wassataquoik without perceiving it. . . . We found that we had camped about a mile above Hunt's, which is on the east bank, and is the last house for those who ascend Ktaadn on this side. . . .I do not remember that we saw the mountain at all from the river.. . .we stopped early and dined on the east side of a small expansion of the river, just above what are probably called Whetstone Falls, about a dozen miles below Hunt's. There were pretty fresh moose-tracks by the waterside. . . . We carried round the falls just below, on the west side. The rocks were on their edges, and very sharp. The distance was about three fourths of a mile.. . .We made a second carry on the west side, around some falls about a mile below this. . . .On entering the West Branch at Nicketow it appeared much larger than the East. Polis remarked that the former was all gone and lost now, that it was all smooth water hence to Oldtown, and he threw away his pole which was cut on the Umbazookskus. . . .We camped about two miles below Nicketow, on the south side of the West Branch . . .I stirred the soup by accident with a striped maple or moose-wood stick, which I had peeled, and he remarked that its bark was an emetic.")

Small Apocynum cannabinum on the rocks . See July 11, 1857 ("Apocynum cannabinum, with its small white flowers and narrow sepals ");  August 13, 1856 ("I stripped off a shred of Indian hemp bark and could not break it. It is as strong as anything of the kind I know."); August 16, 1856 ("I find the dog's-bane (Apocynum androsoemifolium) bark not the nearly so strong as that of the A. cannabinum. "); and note to September 2, 1856 ("Some years ago I sought for Indian hemp (Apocynum cannabinum) hereabouts in vain, and concluded that it did not grow here. A month or two ago I read again, as many times before, that its blossoms were very small, scarcely a third as large as those of the common species, and for some unaccountable reason this distinction kept recurring to me, and I regarded the size of the flowers I saw, though I did not believe that it grew here; and in a day or two my eyes fell on it, aye, in three different places, and different varieties of it.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Dogsbane and Indian hemp

More of the spurred gentian. See July 31, 1857 (" . . .a new plant, the halenia or spurred gentian, which I observed afterward on the carries all the way down to near the mouth of the East Branch,")