The different moods or degrees of wildness and poetry of which the song of birds is the keynote

May 11.


5 A. M. -- In the morning and evening waters are still and smooth, and dimpled by innate currents only, not disturbed by foreign winds and currents of the air, and reflect more light than at noonday.

P. M. – To Corner Spring via Hubbard's Bathing Place.

The buck-bean is budded, but hard to find now.

The Viola lanceolata is now abundant thereabouts, me thinks larger and quite as fragrant (which is not saying much) as the blanda. How long has it been open? 

May 11, 2019

It is a warm afternoon, and great numbers of painted and spotted tortoises are lying in the sun in the meadow.

I notice that the thin scales are peeling off of one of the painted and curled up more than half an inch at the edges, and others look as if they had just lost them, the dividing-line being of a dull cream color.

Has this lying in the sun anything to do with it? 

I nearly stepped upon a song sparrow and a striped snake at the same time. The bird fluttered away almost as if detained. I thought it was a case of charming, without doubt, and should think so still if I had not found her nest with five eggs there, which will account for her being so near the snake that was about to devour her.

The amelanchier has a sickish fragrance.

It must be the myrtle-bird which is now so common in Hubbard's Meadow Woods or Swamp, with a note somewhat like a yellow bird's, striped olive-yellow and black on back or shoulders, light or white beneath, black dim; restless bird; sharp head.

The catbird has a squeaking and split note with some clear whistles.

The late pipes (limosum?), now nearly a foot high, are very handsome, like Oriental work, their encircled columns of some precious wood or gem, or like small bamboos, from Oriental jungles. Very much like art.

The gold-thread, apparently for a day or two, though few flowers compared with buds; not at once referred to its leaf, so distant on its thread-like peduncle.

The water-saxifrage also for a day or two in some places, on its tall, straight stem, rising from its whorl of leaves.

Sorrel now fairly out in some places. I will put it under May 8th.

A high blueberry by Potter's heater piece.

A yellow lily.

The red-eye at the spring; quite a woodland note.

The different moods or degrees of wildness and poetry of which the song of birds is the keynote. The wood thrush Mr. Barnum never hired nor can, though he could bribe Jenny Lind and put her into his cage.

How many little birds of the warbler family are busy now about the opening buds, while I sit by the spring! They are almost as much a part of the tree as its blossoms and leaves. They come and give it voice.  Its twigs feel with pleasure their little feet clasping them.

I hear the distant drumming of a partridge. Its beat, however distant and low, falls still with a remarkably forcible, almost painful, impulse on the ear, like veritable little drumsticks on our tympanum, as if it were a throbbing or fluttering in our veins or brows or the chambers of the ear, and belonging to ourselves, — as if it were produced by some little insect which had made its way up into the passages of the ear, so penetrating is it. It is as palpable to the ear as the sharpest note of a fife.

Of course, that bird can drum with its wings on a log which can go off with such a powerful whir, beating the air. I have seen a thoroughly frightened hen and cockerel fly almost as powerfully, but neither can sustain it long. Beginning slowly and deliberately, the partridge's beat sounds faster and faster from far away under the boughs and through the aisles of the wood until it becomes a regular roll, but is speedily concluded. 

How many things shall we not see and be and do, when we walk there where the partridge drums! 

As I stand by the river in the truly warm sun, I hear the low trump of a bullfrog, but half sounded, - doubting if it be really July, some bassoon sounds, as it were the tuning that precedes the summer's orchestra; and all is silent again.

How the air is saturated with sweetness on causeways these willowy days! The willow alone of trees as yet makes light, often rounded masses of verdure in large trees, stage above stage. But oftenest they are cut down at the height of four or five feet and spread out thence.

There appear to be most clouds in the horizon on (one) of these days of drifting downy clouds, because, when we look that way, more fall within our field of view, but when we look upward, overhead we see the true proportion of clear blue.

The mountains are something solid which is blue, a terra firma in the heavens; but in the heavens there is nothing but the air.

Blue is the color of the day, and the sky is blue by night as well as by day, because it knows no night.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 11, 1853

May 11, See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 11

It is a warm afternoon, and great numbers of painted and spotted tortoises are lying in the sun in the meadow. See May 10, 1857 ("Now the Emys picta lie out in great numbers, this suddenly warm weather.")

I nearly stepped upon a song sparrow so near a snake that was about to devour her. See May 19, 1856 ("Saw a small striped snake in the act of swallowing a Rana palustris . . .. The snake, being frightened, released his hold, and the frog hopped off to the water. ")

The different moods or degrees of wildness and poetry of which the song of birds is the keynote. See May 11, 1854 ("The true poet will ever live aloof from society, wild to it, as the finest singer is the wood thrush, a forest bird.")

 How many little birds of the warbler family are busy now about the opening buds . . .  They are almost as much a part of the tree as its blossoms and leaves. They come and give it voice. See May 7, 1852 ("For now, before the leaves, they begin to people the trees in this warm weather."); (May 15, 1859 (“Now, when the warblers begin to come in numbers with the leafing of the trees, the woods are so open that you can easily see them. ”);May 15, 1860 ("Deciduous woods now swarm with migrating warblers, especially about swamps.”);May 18, 1856 ("The swamp is all alive with warblers about the hoary expanding buds of oaks, maples, etc., and amid the pine and spruce."); May 23, 1857("This is the time and place to hear the new-arriving warblers, the first fine days after the May storm. When the leaves generally are just fairly expanding,")

It must be the myrtle-bird which is now so common in Hubbard's Meadow Woods or Swamp. See May 1, 1855 ("The myrtle-bird is one of the commonest and tamest birds now. It catches insects like a pewee, darting off from its perch and returning to it, and sings something like a-chill chill, chill chill, chill chill, a-twear, twill twill twee,"); May 4, 1855 ("Myrtle-birds numerous, and sing their tea lee, tea lee in morning"); May 7, 1852 (" One or more little warblers in the woods this morning are new to the season, myrtlebirds among them.")

Beginning slowly and deliberately, the partridge's beat sounds faster and faster from far away under the boughs and through the aisles of the wood until it becomes a regular roll.  See April 19, 1860 ("You will hear at first a single beat or two far apart and have time to say, "There is a partridge," so distinct and deliberate is it often, before it becomes a rapid roll.");April 25, 1854 ("The first partridge drums in one or two places, as if the earth's pulse now beat audibly with the increased flow of life. It slightly flutters all Nature and makes her heart palpitate.")

The sky is blue by night as well as by day. See note to January 21, 1853 (''The blueness of the sky at night — the color it wears by day — is an everlasting surprise to me.")

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 ©  2009-2021

I saw bluets whitening the fields,

May 7.

May 7, 2020
Saxifrage
See .May 5, 1860 ("She has just woven in, or laid on the edge, a fresh sprig of saxifrage in flower. . . . Think how many pewees must have built under the eaves of this cliff since pewees were created and this cliff itself built!!”)

River one eighth of an inch lower than yesterday. 

Chimney swallow. 

Catbird sings. 

Hear the white throat sparrow’s peabody note in gardens. 

Canada plum in full bloom, or say in prime. Also common plum in full bloom? 

It is very hazy, as yesterday, and I smell smoke. 

P. M. – To Assabet stone bridge. 

Find in the road beyond the Wheeler cottages a little round, evidently last year’s, painted turtle. Has no yellow spots, but already little red spots on the edges of the sides. The sternum a sort of orange or pinkish red. 

This warm weather, I see many new beetles and other insects. 

Ribes florida by bridge (flower). 

Cultivated cherry flowered yesterday at least, not yet ours. 

Myrtle-bird. 

Met old Mr. Conant with his eye and half the side of his face black and blue, looking very badly. He said he had been jerked down on to the barn-floor by a calf some three weeks old which he was trying to lead. The strength of calves is remarkable. I saw one who had some difficulty in pulling along a calf not a week old. With their four feet they have a good hold on the earth. The last one was sucking a cow that had sore teats, and every time it bunted, the cow kicked energetically, raking the calf’s head and legs, but he stood close against the cow’s belly and never budged in spite of all her kicks, though a man would have jumped out of the way. Who taught the calf to bunt? 

I saw bluets whitening the fields yesterday a quarter of a mile off. They are to the sere brown grass what the shad-bush is now to the brown and bare sprout lands or young woods. 

When planting potatoes the other day, I found small ones that had been left in the ground, perfectly sound!

H. D. Thoreau. Journal, May 7, 1860

Hear the white throat sparrow’s peabody note in gardens. See May 7, 1854 ("A white-throated sparrow still (in woods).").;   May 7, 1860 ("Hear the white throat sparrow’s peabody note in gardens."); See also and compare  April 19,1855 ("Hear the tull-lull of the white-throated sparrow in street”); May 3, 1859 (" Hear the te-e-e of a white-throat sparrow. "); May 4, 1855 ("See more white-throated sparrows than any other bird to-day in various parts of our walk, generally feeding in numbers on the ground in open dry fields and meadows next to woods, then flitting through the woods. Hear only that sharp, lisping chip from them."); May 6, 1859 ("Hear the tea-lee of the white-throat sparrow.")and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the White-throated Sparrow.. Note also  June 21, 1858 ("What I call the myrtle-bird’s is the white-throat sparrow’s note") and see May 5, 1857 ('Hear the tull-lull of a myrtle-bird (very commonly heard for three or four days after");  May 6, 1858 ("I heard a myrtle-bird's tull-lull yesterday, and that somebody else heard it four or five days ago.")

Canada plum in full bloom. Also common plum in full bloom? See May 5, 1855 ("Canada plum and cultivated cherry and Missouri currant look as if they would bloom to-morrow.”);  May 10, 1855 ("Canada plum opens petals to-day and leafs. Domestic plum only leafs.”).

It is very hazy, as yesterday, and I smell smoke. See May 7, 1856 ("To-day and yesterday the sunlight is peculiarly yellow, on account of the smoky haze. I notice its peculiar yellowness, almost orange, even when, coming through a knot-hole in a dark room, it falls on the opposite wall. ")
Find in the road a little round painted turtle. Has no yellow spots, but already little red spots on the edges of the sides. The sternum a sort of orange or pinkish red. See June 15, 1854 ("A young painted tortoise on the surface of the water, as big as a quarter of a dollar, with a reddish or orange sternum . . . was red beneath."). See also  May 7, 1858 ("The male yellow spotted and also wood turtle have very distinctly depressed sternums, but not so the male Emys picta that I have noticed.").

I saw bluets whitening the fields yesterday a quarter of a mile off. See May 21, 1855 ("Bluets whiten the fields, and violets are now perhaps in prime.")

What the shad-bush is now. See May 7, 1853 ("The delicate cherry-like leaf, transparent red, of the shad-bush is now interesting, especially in the sun. ) See also May 6, 1860 ("The Amelanchier Botryapium in flower now spots the brown sprout-land hillside on the southeast side, across the pond, very interestingly. . . .They are the more interesting for coming thus between the fall of the oak leaves and the expanding of other shrubs and trees. Some of the larger, near at hand, are very light and elegant masses of white bloom. The white-fingered flower of the sprout-lands."). May 15, 1858("The shad-bush in bloom is now conspicuous, its white flags on all sides. Is it not the most massy and conspicuous of any wild plant now in bloom?")

To sit under the first apple tree in blossom is to take another step into summer.

May 21. 

Morning by river. 

May 21, 2019

A song sparrow's nest and eggs so placed in a bank that none could tread on it; bluish-white, speckled.

Also a robin's nest and eggs in the crotch of a maple.

Methinks birds that build amid the small branches of trees wait for the leaves to expand. [?]

The dew hangs on the grass like globules of quicksilver. Can I tell by it if it has rained in the night? I hear that it has.

P. M. — The black oak is just beginning to blossom.

The earlier apple trees are in bloom, and resound with the hum of bees of all sizes and other insects. To sit under the first apple tree in blossom is to take another step into summer.  The apple blossoms are so abundant and full, white tinged with red; a rich-scented Pomona fragrance, telling of heaps of apples in the autumn, perfectly innocent, wholesome, and delicious. 

On hillsides cut off two years ago, the red oaks now contrast at a little distance with the yellowish-green birches. The latter are covered with green lice, which cover me. 

The catbird sings like a robin sometimes, sometimes like a blackbird's sprayey warble. There is more of squeak or mew, and also of clear whistle, than in the thrasher's note. 

Nemopanthes in bloom; leaves three quarters of an inch. 

Sand cherry also, fully. 

Young blueberries every where in bloom, and Viola pedata along the woodland paths, in high land. 

Sorrel in bloom, beginning. I am eager to taste a handful.

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


A song sparrow's nest and eggs so placed in a bank that none could tread on it; bluish-white, speckled.See  May 6, 1860 ("See a song sparrow’s nest with four eggs in the side of a bank, or rather ditch. I commonly find the earliest ones in such sheltered and concealed places"); May 12, 1857 ("I hear of, and also find, a ground-bird's (song sparrow's) nest with five eggs.");   May 27, 1856 ("Fringilla melodia’s nest in midst of swamp, with four eggs, made partly of usnea; two stories, i.e. upon an old nest, elevated one foot above the water; eggs with very dark blotches.")

Also a robin's nest and eggs in the crotch of a maple. See May 21, 1856 ("A robin’s nest without mud, on a young white oak in woods, with three eggs.") See also  May 6. 1855 (''A robin’s nest with two eggs, betrayed by peeping."); May 13, 1853 ("A robin's nest, with young, on the causeway"); May 19, 1854 ("The robin's nest and eggs are the earliest I see.")

The dew hangs on the grass like globules of quicksilver. May 11, 1852 ("Dews come with the grass. There is, I find on examining, a small, clear drop at the end of each blade, quite at the top on one side."); May 13, 1860: ("Each dewdrop is a delicate crystalline sphere trembling at the tip of a fresh green grass-blade.")

The earlier apple trees are in bloom. See note to May 25 , 1852 ("It is blossom week with the apples.")

Viola pedata along the woodland paths, in high land.  See  October 23, 1853 ("Many phenomena remind me that now is to some extent a second spring. . . The Viola pedata looking up from so low in the wood-path makes a singular impression.") See also Basho:

on mountain path

greeted by

a wild violet

Hotter still than the last two days, — 90° and more.

May 8

Sunday. Hotter still than the last two days, — 90° and more. 

Summer yellowbird. 

C. sees a chimney swallow. 

Indeed, several new birds have come, and many new insects, with the expanding leafets. Catbird. 

The swollen leaf -buds of the white pine — and yet more the pitch pine — look whitish, and show life in the tree. 

Go on the river. 

The sweet flags, both pads, and equisetum and pontederia are suddenly becoming conspicuous, also the Arum peltandrum. 

Grackles here yet. 

Tree-toad is heard. 

Apple trees begin to make a show with their green. 

See two great devil's-needles go by coupled, the foremost blue, the second brown. 

Hear a dor-bug in the house at evening.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 8, 1859


Summer yellowbird. Indeed, several new birds have come, and many new insects, with the expanding leafets. See . May 8, 1854 (“Hear a yellowbird in the direction of the willows. Its note coarsely represented by che-che-che-char-char- char”); May 8, 1857 ("The ring of toads, the note of the yellowbird, the rich warble of the red-wing, the thrasher on the hillside, the robin's evening song, the woodpecker tapping some dead tree across the water "); May 10, 1858 (" For some days the Salix alba have shown their yellow wreaths here and there, suggesting the coming of the yellowbird, and now they are alive with them.")

Several new birds have come, and many new insects, with the expanding leafets. Catbird. See April 18, 1852 (I would make a chart of our life,  know why just this circle of creatures completes the world, what kinds of birds come with what flowers.) May 8, 1857 ("From amid the alders, etc., I hear the mew of the catbird and the yorrick of Wilson's thrush.")

Go a-graping up Assabet with some young ladies.

September 25. 

A smart white frost last night, which has killed the sweet potato vines and melons. 

P. M. — Go a-graping up Assabet with some young ladies. 

The zizania fruit is green yet, but mostly dropped or plucked. Does it fall, or do birds pluck it? 

The Gentiana Andrewsii are now in prime at Gentian Shore. Some are turned dark or reddish-purple with age. 

There is a very red osier-like cornel on the shore by the stone-heaps. 

Edward Hoar says he found last year Datum Stramomlum in their garden. Add it, then, to our plants. 

In the evening Mr. Warren brings me a snipe and a pectoral sandpiper. This last, which is a little less than the snipe but with a longer wing, must be much like T. solitarius, and I may have confounded them. The shaft of the first primary is conspicuously white above. 

The catbird still mews occasionally, and the chewink is heard faintly. 

Melvin says he has found the pigeon hawk’s nest here (distinct from partridge hawk’s); also that he sometimes sees the larger yellow-legs here. Goodwin also says the last.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 25, 1858

Go a-graping up Assabet with some young ladies. See August 12, 1853 ("To Conantum by boat, berrying, with three ladies.")

The Gentiana Andrewsii are now in prime at Gentian Shore. See  August 29, 1858  ("Gentiana Andrewsii, one not quite shedding pollen.")

The catbird still mews occasionally, and the chewink is heard faintly. See October 4, 1857 ("Hear a catbird and chewink, both faint."); also September 21, 1854 ("Hear the chewink and the cluck of the thrasher.");  September 25, 1855 ("Meanwhile the catbird mews in the alders by my side"); September 21, 1856 ("I hear of late faint chewink notes in the shrubbery, as if they were meditating their strains in a subdued tone against another year."); ; September 19, 1858 ("Hear a chewink’s chewink. But how ineffectual is the note of a bird now! We hear it as if we heard it not, and forget it immediately.")

Melvin says that he sometimes sees the large yellow-legs here. See September 14, 1854 ("A flock of thirteen tell tales, great yellow-legs, start up with their shrill whistle from the midst of the great Sudbury meadow")

A song sparrow's nest in a little spruce

June 13. 

Louring all day. 

P. M. – To Ledum Swamp. 

Lambkill, maybe one day. 

Strawberries. 

In the great apple tree front of the Miles house I hear young pigeon woodpeckers. 

The ledum is apparently past prime. 

The Kalmia glauca and the Andromeda Polifolia are done, the kalmia just done. 

The ledum has grown three or four inches (as well as the andromeda). It has a rather agreeable fragrance, between turpentine and strawberries. It is rather strong and penetrating, and some times reminds me of the peculiar scent of a bee. The young leaves, bruised and touched to the nose, even make it smart.

It is the young and expanding ledum leaves which are so fragrant. There is a yellow fungus common on its leaves, and a black one on the andromeda. 

The Vaccinium Oxycoccus grows here and is abundantly out; some days certainly. 

I hear and see the parti-colored warbler, blue yellow-backed, here on the spruce trees. It probably breeds here. 

Also, within three feet of the edge of the pond-hole, where I can hardly stand in india-rubber shoes without the water flowing over them, a large ant-hill swarming with ants, – though not on the surface because of the mizzling rain. 

One of the prevailing front-rank plants here, standing in the sphagnum and water, is the elodea. 

I see a song sparrow's nest here in a little spruce just by the mouth of the ditch. It rests on the thick branches fifteen inches from the ground, firmly made of coarse sedge without, lined with finer, and then a little hair, small within, — a very thick, firm, and portable nest, an inverted cone; — four eggs. They build them in a peculiar manner in these sphagnous swamps, elevated apparently on account of water and of different materials. Some of the eggs have quite a blue ground. 

Go to Conantum end. 

The Rubus frondosus will not bloom apparently for a day or two, though the villosus is apparently in prime there. 

I hear the peculiar notes of young bluebirds that have flown. 

Arenaria lateriflora, how long? 

The Scheuchzeria palustris, now in flower and going to seed, grows at Ledum Pool, as at Gowing's Swamp. 

See now in meadows, for the most part going to seed, Carex scoparia, with its string of oval beads; and C. lupulina, with its inflated perigynia; also what I take to be C. stipata, with a dense, coarse, somewhat sharp triangular mass of spikelets; also C. stellulata, with a string of little star-like burs. The delicate, pendulous, slender-peduncled C. debilis.

Catbirds hatched.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 13, 1858

Lambkill, maybe one day. See June 9, 1855 ("Lambkill out."); June 10, 1855 ("The Kalmia glauca is done before the lambkill is begun here"); June 13, 1854 ("How beautiful the solid cylinders of the lamb-kill now just before sunset, — small ten-sided, rosy-crimson basins, about two inches above the recurved, drooping dry capsules of last year");


In the great apple tree front of the Miles house I hear young pigeon woodpeckers. See May 17, 1858 ("Measured the large apple tree in front of the Charles Miles house. It is nine feet and ten inches in circumference ");  June 13, 1855 ("C. finds a pigeon woodpecker’s nest in an apple tree, five of those pearly eggs, about six feet from the ground."); June 10, 1856 ("In a hollow apple tree, hole eighteen inches deep, young pigeon woodpeckers, large and well feathered. . . .")

A song sparrow's nest here in a little spruce just by the mouth of the ditch. See  April 30, 1858 ("I find a Fringilla melodia nest with five eggs. Part, at least, must have been laid before the snow of the 27th, but it is perfectly sheltered under the shelving turf and grass on the brink of a ditch."); June 14, 1855 ("A song sparrow’s nest in ditch bank under Clamshell, of coarse grass lined with fine, and five eggs nearly hatched and a peculiar dark end to them."); July 12, 1857 ("A song sparrow's nest in a small clump of alder, two feet from ground! Three or four eggs.")

See Carex now in meadows. See June 11, 1855 ("Carex cephalophora (?) on Heywood’s Peak. That fine, dry, wiry wild grass in hollows in woods and sprout-lands, never mown, is apparently the C. Pennsylvanica, or early sedge. ")

I hear the peculiar notes of young bluebirds that have flown. See. June 13, 1852 (" I hear the feeble plaintive note of young bluebirds, just trying their wings or getting used to them")

June 13. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, June 13

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 © 2009-2021

When my umbrella frightened the horse . . .

October 4

October 4, 2017

A. M. — By boat to Conantum. 

River fallen again. 

Barberrying and graping. Many of the grapes shrivelled and killed by frost now, and the leaves mostly fallen. 

The yellow leaves of the white willow thickly strew the bottom of my boat. These willows shed their oldest leaves first, even like pines. The recent and green ones are seen mottling a yellowish ground, especially in the willow; and, in the case of the willow, at least, these green ones wither and fall for the most part without turning yellow at all. 

The button-bushes are generally greenish-yellow now; only the highest and most exposed points brown and crisp in some places.

The black willow, rising above them, is crisped yellowish-brown, so that the general aspect of the river's brim now is a modest or sober ripe yellowish-brown, — generally no bright colors. 

When I scare up a bittern from amid the weeds, I say it is the color of that bird's breast, — or body generally, for the darker part of its wings correspond to the sere pickerel-weed. 

Now that the pontederia is brown, the humble, weedy green of the shore is bur weed, polygonum, wool-grass, and, in some places, rushes. Such is the river's border ordinarily, — either these weeds mingled with the sere and dark-brown pontederia or a convex raised rim of button-bushes, two to four feet high by a rod wide, through [which] the black willows rise one to a dozen feet higher. 

Here and there, to be sure, are the purple-leaved Cornus sericea, yellowish sweet-gale, reddish rose bushes, etc., etc. Alders are still a fresh green. 

The grape leaves are generally crisp and curled, having a very light-colored appearance, but where it is protected by other foliage it is still a dense canopy of greenish-yellow shields. 

From the midst of these yellowing button-bushes, etc., I hear from time to time a half-warbled strain from some young sparrow who thinks it is spring. 

Scared up from the low shore at the bend, on the south side, opposite Clamshell, a flock of seventy-five or one hundred of what appeared solitary tattlers (??), that went off with a rippling note, wheeled, and alighted there again.

Now again, when other trees prove so fickle, the steadfast evergreenness of the pines is appreciated. 

Bright-tinted flaming scarlet or yellow maples amid pines show various segments of bright cones embosomed in green. At Potter's Swamp, where they are all maples, it adds to the beauty of the maple swamp at this season that it is not seen as a simple mass of color, but, different trees being of different tints, - green, yellow, scar let, crimson, and different shades of each, – the out line of each tree is distinct to where one laps on to another. Yet a painter would hardly venture to make them thus distinct a quarter of a mile off. 

Hear a catbird and chewink, both faint. 

Fever-bush has begun to yellow. Some nightshade leaves are a very dark purple. 

See a grackle on the shore, so near I see the light mark about the eye. 

While I lived in the woods I did various jobs about the town, - some fence-building, painting, gardening, carpentering, etc., etc. One day a man came from the east edge of the town and said that he wanted to get me to brick up a fireplace, etc., etc., for him. I told him that I was not a mason, but he knew that I had built my own house entirely and would not take no for an answer. So I went. 

It was three miles off, and I walked back and forth each day, arriving early and working as late as if I were living there. The man was gone away most of the time, but had left some sand dug up in his cow-yard for me to make mortar with. I bricked up a fireplace, papered a chamber, but my principal work was whitewashing ceilings. Some were so dirty that many coats would not conceal the dirt. In the kitchen I finally resorted to yellow-wash to cover the dirt. I took my meals there, sitting down with my employer (when he got home) and his hired men. I remember the awful condition of the sink, at which I washed one day, and when I came to look at what was called the towel I passed it by and wiped my hands on the air, and thereafter I resorted to the pump. I worked there hard three days, charging only a dollar a day. 

About the same time I also contracted to build a wood-shed of no mean size, for, I think, exactly six dollars, and cleared about half of it by a close calculation and swift working. The tenant wanted me to throw in a gutter and latch, but I carried off the board that was left and gave him no latch but a button. It stands yet, — behind the Kettle house. I broke up Johnny Kettle's old “trow,” in which he kneaded his bread, for material. 

Going home with what nails were left in a flower bucket on my arm, in a rain, I was about getting into a hay-rigging, when my umbrella frightened the horse, and he kicked at me over the fills, smashed the bucket on my arm, and stretched me on my back; but while I lay on my back, his leg being caught over the shaft, I got up, to see him sprawling on the other side. This accident, the sudden bending of my body backwards, sprained my stomach so that I did not get quite strong there for several years, but had to give up some fence-building and other work which I had undertaken from time to time. 

I built the common slat fence for $1.50 per rod, or worked for $1.00 per day. I built six fences. 

Minott and Rice are apt to tell me the same story many times over. Minott told me the other day again of his peach tree. John Richardson was going by with a basket full of peach-stones. “What are you going to do with them?” asked M. He said he was going to plant. “Well, give me two or three of them, and I'll try too.” So he raised one fine tree, which bore first rate rare-ripes as big as an apple, but after bearing once or twice something got into it and the tree died. They’re short-lived things.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 4, 1857

The yellow leaves of the white willow thickly strew the bottom of my boat. See October 8, 1855 ("Found my boat yesterday full of willow leaves after the rain. ");October 13, 1857 ("Some white willows are very fresh and green yet. "); October 16, 1858 ("Willows generally turn yellow. . .  though the Salix alba hardly attains to more than a sheeny polish"); October 17, 1858 ("It is the lower leaves of the willows generally which have fallen first.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A Book of the Seasons: White Willow (Salix Alba)

I hear from time to time a half-warbled strain from some young sparrow who thinks it is spring. See October 4, 1859 ('I hear half-strains from many of them, as the song sparrow, bluebird, etc., and the sweet phe-be of the chickadee.”) See also October 9, 1851 ("As I return over the bridge, I hear a song sparrow singing on the willows exactly as in spring. ")

 


Fever-bush has begun to yellow. See October 5, 1858 (“The fever-bush is in the height of its change and is a showy clear lemon yellow, contrasting with its scarlet berries.”)

Yellow leaves of the 

white willow thickly strew the 

bottom of my boat. 

The full moon rises.

May 8, 2017

May 8.

A third fine day. 

The sugar maple at Barrett's is now in full bloom. 

I finish the arbor to-night. This has been the third of these remarkably warm and beautiful. I have worked all the while in my shirt-sleeves. 

Summer has suddenly come upon us, and the birds all together. Some boys have bathed in the river. 

Walk to first stone bridge at sunset. Salix alba, possibly the 6th. 

It is a glorious evening. 

I scent the expanding willow leaves (for there are very few blossoms yet) fifteen rods off. Already hear the cheerful, sprightly note of the yellowbird amid them. It is perfectly warm and still, and the green grass reminds me of June. The air is full of the fragrance of willow leaves. The high water stretches smooth around. 

I hear the sound of Barrett's sawmill with singular distinctness. The ring of toads, the note of the yellowbird, the rich warble of the red-wing, the thrasher on the hillside, the robin's evening song, the woodpecker tapping some dead tree across the water; and I see countless little fuzzy gnats in the air, and dust over the road, between me and the departed sun. 

Perhaps the evenings of the 6th and 7th were as pleasant. But such an evening makes a crisis in the year. I must make haste home and go out on the water. 

I paddle to the Wheeler meadow east of hill after sundown. From amid the alders, etc., I hear the mew of the catbird and the yorrick of Wilson's thrush. One bullfrog's faint er-er-roonk from a distance. (Perhaps the Amphibia, better than any creatures, celebrate the changes of temperature.) One dump note. 

It grows dark around. The full moon rises, and I paddle by its light. 

It is an evening for the soft-snoring, purring frogs (which I suspect to be Rana palustris). I get within a few feet of them as they sit along the edge of the river and meadow, but cannot see them. Their croak is very fine or rapid, and has a soft, purring sound at a little distance. I see them paddling in the water like toads. 

Within a week I have had made a pair of corduroy pants, which cost when done $1.60. They are of that peculiar clay-color, reflecting the light from portions of their surface. They have this advantage, that, beside being very strong, they will look about as well three months hence as now, — or as ill, some would say. Most of my friends are disturbed by my wearing them. I can get four or five pairs for what one ordinary pair would cost in Boston, and each of the former will last two or three times as long under the same circumstances. The tailor said that the stuff was not made in this country; that it was worn by the Irish at home, and now they would not look at it, but others would not wear it, durable and cheap as it is, because it is worn by the Irish. 

Moreover, I like the color on other accounts. Anything but black clothes. I was pleased the other day to see a son of Concord return after an absence of eight years, not in a shining suit of black, with polished boots and a beaver or silk hat, as if on a furlough from human duties generally, — a mere clothes-horse, — but clad in an honest clay-colored suit and a snug every-day cap. It showed unusual manhood. Most returning sons come home dressed for the occasion. 

The birds and beasts are not afraid of me now. A mink came within twenty feet of me the other day as soon as my companion had left me, and if I had had my gray sack on as well as my corduroys, it would perhaps have come quite up to me. 

Even farmers' boys, returning to their native town, though not unfamiliar with homely and dirty clothes, make their appearance on this new stage in a go-to-meeting suit.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 8, 1857

A third fine day. See May 6, 1857 ("A beautiful and warm day."); May 7, 1857 ("A second fine day."); May 9, 1857; ("Another fine day.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The world can never be more beautiful than now.

Summer has suddenly come upon us, and the birds all together. See May 6, 1852  ("Hear the first warbling vireo this morning on the elms. This almost makes a summer."); May 7, 1852 ("One or more little warblers in the woods this morning are new to the season, . . .The first wave of summer from the south") ; May 7, 1852 ("The birds I have lately mentioned come not singly, as the earliest, but all at once,"); May 10, 1858 ("It is remarkable how many new birds have come all at once to-day."); May 12, 1856 ("How suddenly the birds arrive after the storm, — even yesterday before it was fairly over, —as if they had foreseen its end!") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau. Summer and The Birds of May

It is a glorious evening . . . I must make haste home and go out on the water. See August 31, 1852 ("This is the most glorious part of this day,. . . and the most suggestive.. . . Evening is pensive. The serenity is far more remarkable to those who are on the water.”)

Already hear the cheerful, sprightly note of the yellowbird amid them. See May 8, 1854 (“Hear a yellowbird in the direction of the willows. Its note coarsely represented by che-che-che-char-char- char."); May 8 1859 ("Summer yellowbird.”) and note to May 11, 1856 ("At a distance I hear the first yellow-bird . . . All these willows blossom.”).

The full moon rises, and I paddle by its light. It is an evening for the soft-snoring, purring frogs (which I suspect to be Rana palustris). See April 11, 1854 ("Hear a slight snoring of frogs on the bared meadows. Is it not the R. palustris? This the first moon to walk by.”); May 3, 1852 ("The moon is full. The air is filled with a certain luminous, liquid, white light. You can see the moonlight, as it were, reflected from the atmosphere."); . May 6, 1858 ("In the mornings now, I hear no R. palustris and no hylodes, but a few toads still, but now, at night, all ring together, the toads ringing through the day, the hylodes beginning in earnest toward night and the palustris at evening. I think that the different epochs in the revolution of the seasons may perhaps be best marked by the notes of [frogs]"); May 9, 1853 ("That slumbrous snoring croak far less ringing and musical than the toad' s (which is occasionally heard) now comes up from the meadows edge."); See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, May Moonlight and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The  Pickerel frog  (Rana palustris)

Such an evening makes a crisis in the year.  Compare July 18, 1854 (“The atmosphere now imparts a bluish or glaucous tinge to the distant trees. A certain debauched look. This a crisis in the season.”); August 20, 1854 (“When the red-eye ceases generally, then I think is a crisis, — the woodland quire is dissolved.”)

May 8. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  May 8

Suddenly summer 

has come upon us, and the 

birds all together.

It grows dark around.

The full moon rises, and I

paddle by its light. 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The full moon rises

                                     A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

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