To observe the sun set.

July 23

July 23, 2015 

As the light in the west fades, the sky there,

 seen between the clouds, has a singular clarity and serenity. 

P. M. – To Annursnack.

Herbage is drying up; even weeds are wilted, and the corn rolls.

Agriculture is a good school in which to drill a man. Successful farming admits of no idling.

Now is the haying season.

How active must these men be, all the country over, that they may get through their work in season! A few spoiled windrows, all black and musty, have taught them that they must make hay while the sun shines, and get it in before it rains.

Much that I had taken to be the lanceolate loosestrife is the heart-leaved, especially by the Corner road.

Pycnanthemum muticum, mountain mint. Have I not mistaken this for the other species heretofore? 

The dwarf choke-cherry is ripe now, long before the rum cherry.

Also the Pyrus arbutifolia.

Cnicus pumilus, pasture thistle. [Cirsium pumilum.]

Chenopodium hybridum, maple-leaved goose-foot.

What is that white hairy plant with lanceolate leaves and racemes now, with flat burs, one to three, and a long spine in the midst, and five ovate calyx-leaves left (these turned to one side of the peduncle), burs very adhesive, close to road in meadow just beyond stone bridge on right; long out of bloom? 

Every man says his dog will not touch you. Look out, nevertheless.

Twenty minutes after seven, I sit at my window to observe the sun set.

The lower clouds in the north and southwest grow gradually darker as the sun goes down, since we now see the side opposite to the sun, but those high overhead, whose under sides we see reflecting the day, are light.

The small clouds low in the western sky were at first dark also, but, as the sun descends, they are lit up and aglow all but their cores.

Those in the east, though we see their sunward sides, are a dark blue, presaging night, only the highest faintly glowing.

A roseate redness, clear as amber, suffuses the low western sky about the sun, in which the small clouds are mostly melted, only their golden edges still revealed.

The atmosphere there is like some kinds of wine, perchance, or molten cinnabar, if that is red, in which also all kinds of pearls and precious stones are melted.

Clouds generally near the horizon, except near the sun, are now a dark blue.

(The sun sets.) It is half past seven.

The roseate glow deepens to purple.

The low western sky is now, and has been for some minutes, a splendid map, where the fancy can trace islands, continents, and cities beyond compare.

The glow forsakes the high eastern clouds; the uppermost clouds in the west now darken, the glow having forsaken them too; they become a dark blue, and anon their undersides reflect a deep red, like heavy damask curtains, after they had already been dark.

The general redness gradually fades into a pale reddish tinge in the horizon, with a clear white light above it, in which the clouds grow more conspicuous and darker and darker blue, appearing to follow in the wake of the sun, and it is now a quarter to eight, or fifteen minutes after sunset, twenty-five minutes from the first.

A quarter of an hour later, or half an hour after sunset, the white light grows cream colored above the increasing horizon redness, passing through white into blue above.

The western clouds, high and low, are now dark fuscous, not dark blue, but the eastern clouds are not so dark as the western.

Now, about twenty minutes after the first glow left the clouds above the sun's place, there is a second faint fuscous or warm brown glow on the edges of the dark clouds there, sudden and distinct, and it fades again, and it is early starlight, but the tops of the eastern clouds still are white, reflecting the day.

The cream color grows more yellowish or amber.

About three quarters of an hour after sunset the evening red is deepest, i. e. a general atmospheric redness close to the west horizon.

There is more of it, after all, than I expected, for the day has been clear and rather cool, and the evening red is what was the blue haze by day.

The moon, now in her first quarter, now begins to preside, — her light to prevail, — though for the most part eclipsed by clouds.

As the light in the west fades, the sky there, seen between the clouds, has a singular clarity and serenity.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 23, 1852

Now is the haying season. See August 5, 1854 ("We are now in the midst of the meadow-haying season.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Haymaking

Much that I had taken to be the lanceolate loosestrife is the heart-leaved, especially by the Corner road. See July 22, 1852 ("Is not that the Lysimachia ciliata, or hairy-stalked loosestrife, by the Corner road, not the lanceolata?"); July 24, 1853 ("Lysimachia ciliata and, by the causeway near, the ovate-leaved, quite distinct from the lanceolate")

Cnicus pumilus, pasture thistle. See July 23, 1856 ("Pasture thistle, not long.") See also  August 6, 1852 ("I find a bumblebee asleep in a thistle blossom (a pasture thistle)") August 15, 1851 ("Cnicus pumilus, pasture thistle. How many insects a single one attracts ! While you sit by it, bee after bee will visit it, and busy himself probing for honey and loading himself with pollen, regardless of your over shadowing presence. He sees its purple flower from afar, and that use there is in its color."); October 11, 1856 ("A pasture thistle with many fresh flowers and bees on it.")

The dwarf choke-cherry is ripe now. See July 13, 1852 ("The northern wild red cherry of the woods is ripe, handsome, bright red, but scarcely edible; also, sooner than I expected, ") July 18, 1853 ("The Cerasus Virginiana, or choke-cherry, is turning, nearly ripe.") and note to July 25, 1853 ("Cerasus Virginiana, — choke-cherry, — just ripe."); also  August 15, 1852 ("The red choke-berry is small and green still. I plainly distinguish it, also, by its woolly under side.); August 21, 1854 ("Red choke-berries are dried black; ripe some time ago."); August 25, 1854 (Choke-berries are very abundant there, but mostly dried black."); See also July 19, 1852 ("The Cerasus pumila ripe.");July 28, 1856 ("Sand cherry ripe. The fruit droops in umble-like clusters, two to four peduncles together, on each side the axil of a branchlet or a leaf.") August 10, 1860 ("Sand cherry is well ripe — some of it — and tolerable, better than the red cherry or choke-cherry."); August 11, 1852 ("The rum cherry is ripe."); August 15, 1852 (' In E. Hubbard's swamp I gather some large and juicy and agreeable rum cherries. They are much finer than the small ones on large trees; quite a good fruit. The birds make much account of them.")

Also the Pyrus arbutifolia. [Black choke-berry]  See July 19, 1854 ("Black choke-berry, several days."); July 24, 1853 ("The black choke-berry, probably some days."); August 12, 1858 ("I am also interested in the rich-looking glossy black choke-berries which nobody eats, but which bend down the bushes on every side,—sweetish berries with a dry, and so choking, taste. Some of the bushes are more than a dozen feet high."); September 6, 1857 (" I see in the swamp black choke berries twelve feet high at least and in fruit.")

I sit at my window to observe the sun set. See December 23, 1851 ("I see that there is to be a fine, clear sunset, and make myself a seat in the snow on the Cliff to witness it."); December 25, 1851 (“I go forth to see the sun set. Who knows how it will set, even half an hour beforehand ?”); January 20, 1852 ("To see the sun rise or go down every day would preserve us sane forever,”); June 5, 1854 ("I have come to this hill to see the sun go down, to recover sanity and put myself again in relation with Nature."); August 14, 1854 ("I have come forth to this hill at sunset to see the forms of the mountains in the horizon, — to behold and commune with something grander than man.”); November 4, 1857 ("I climb Pine Hill just as the sun is setting,"); November 13, 1857 ("See the sun rise or set if possible each day."); December 23, 1859 ("I ascended Ball's Hill to see the sun set.")

About three quarters of an hour after sunset the evening red is deepest. See July 20, 1852 ("And now the evening redness deepens till all the west or northwest horizon is red; as if the sky were rubbed there with some rich Indian pigment, a permanent dye; as if the Artist of the world had mixed his red paints on the edge of the inverted saucer of the sky. An exhilarating, cheering redness, most wholesome."); July 21, 1852 ("Do we perceive such a deep Indian red after the first starlight at any other season as now in July?"); July 26, 1852 ("The grandest picture in the world is the sunset sky")

As the light in the west fades, the sky there, seen between the clouds, has a singular clarity and serenity. See December 14, 1852 ("Ah, who can tell the serenity and clarity of a New England winter sunset? "); January 17, 1852 ("Those western vistas through clouds to the sky show the clearest heavens, clearer and more elysian than if the whole sky is comparatively free from clouds. As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind. Some see only clouds there; some behold there serenity, purity, beauty ineffable.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Western Sky

July 23. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 23

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

These are the wildest and richest gardens that we have

August 5. 

I can tell the extent to which a man has heard music by the faith he retains in the trivial and mean, even by the importance he attaches to what is called the actual world. Any memorable strains will have unsettled so low a faith and substituted a higher. Men profess to be lovers of music, but for the most part they give no evidence in their opinions and lives that they have heard it. It would not leave them narrow-minded and bigoted. 

Hearing that one with whom I was acquainted had committed suicide, I said I did not know when I had planted the seed of that fact that I should hear of it. 

P. M. —To C. Miles's blueberry swamp. 

There is a pond-hole there perfectly covered with the leaves of the floating-heart and whiter than ever with its small white flowers, as if a slight large-flaked snow had fallen on it. The ground rises gently on every side, and first by the edge grow a few gratiolas, then the Lysimachia stricta, with a few blossoms left, then, a rod or two distant, in the higher rows of this natural coliseum, the red-panicled racemes of the hardhack rise. 

That is a glorious swamp of Miles's, — the more open parts, where the dwarf andromeda prevails. Now, perhaps, an olivaceous green is the tint, not at all reddish, the lambkill and the bluish or glaucous rhodora and the pyrus intermixed making an extensive rich moss like bed, in which you sink three feet to a dry bottom of moss or dead twigs, or, if peaty ground, it is covered with cup lichens; surrounded all by wild-looking woods, with the wild white spruce advancing into it and the pitch pine here and there, and high blueberry and tall pyrus and holly and other bushes under their countenance and protection. 

These are the wildest and richest gardens that we have. Such a depth of verdure into which you sink. They were never cultivated by any. 

Descending wooded hills, you come suddenly to this beautifully level pasture, comparatively open, with a close border of high blueberry bushes. You cannot believe that this can possibly abut on any cultivated field. Some wood or pasture, at least, must intervene. Here is a place, at last, which no woodchopper nor farmer frequents and to which no cows stray, perfectly wild, where the bittern and the hawk are undisturbed. 

The men, women, and children who perchance come hither blueberrying in their season get more than the value of the berries in the influences of the scene. 

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. 

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

The Hieracium scabrum is just opening. 

Large spotted polygonum by the river, with white flowers on a slender spike. 

Lechea racemulosa (?) of Bigelow, — not in Gray, — a fine, almost leafless, bushy, sometimes reddish, low plant in dry fields.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 5, 1852

The men, women, and children who perchance come hither blueberrying in their season get more than the value of the berries in the influences of the scene. See June 26, 1853 ("Many of my fellow-citizens might go fishing a thousand times, perchance, before the sediment of fishing would sink to the bottom and leave their purpose pure, -- before they began to angle for the pond itself.”); August 30, 1856 (“It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such. It is the bog in our brain and bowels”);  December 28, 1856 (“getting what they went for, though they may not be aware of it, i. e. a wilder experience than the town affords.”); July 30, 1860 (“Am glad to press my way through Miles's Swamp.”)

Choke-berries, fair to the eye but scarcely palatable. See August 5, 1856 (“”Choke-cherries . . .begin to be ripe, though still red. They are scarcely edible, but their beauty atones for it. See those handsome racemes of ten or twelve cherries each, dark glossy red, semi- transparent. You love them not the less because they are not quite palatable”)

I cannot sufficiently admire the rhexia, one of the highest-colored purple flowers. See August 1, 1856 (“They make a splendid show, these brilliant rose-colored patches, especially in the neighborhood of Copan. It is about the richest color to be seen now. Yet few ever see them in this perfection”); August 27, 1856 (“The rhexia greets me in bright patches on meadow banks.”); August 28, 1859 ("The rhexia in Ebby Hubbard's field is considerably past prime, and it is its reddish chalices which show most at a distance now. I should have looked ten days ago. Still it is handsome with its large yellow anthers against clear purple petals. It grows there in large patches with hardhack."):  October 2, 1856 (“The scarlet leaves and stem of the rhexia, some time out of flower, makes almost as bright a patch in the meadow now as the flowers did,”)

August 5. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 5

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

How often vegetation is either yellow or red!

February 13.

Last night said to have been a little colder than the night before, and the coldest hitherto.

P. M. – Ride to Cafferty's Swamp.

The greatest breadth of the swamp appears to be northeasterly from Adams's. There is much panicled andromeda in it, some twelve feet high, and, as I count, seventeen years old, with yellowish wood. I saw three tupelos in the swamp, each about one foot in diameter and all within two rods.

In those parts of the swamp where the bushes were not so high but that I could look over them, I observed that the swamp was variously shaded, or painted even, like a rug, with the sober colors running gradually into each other, by the colored recent shoots of various shrubs which grow densely, as the red blueberry, and the yellowish-brown panicled andromeda, and the dark-brown or blackish Prinos verticillatus, and the choke-berry, etc.

Standing on a level with those shrubs, you could see that these colors were only a foot or so deep, according to the length of the shoots. So, too, oftener would the forests appear if we oftener stood above them.

How often vegetation is either yellow or red! as the buds of the swamp-pink, the leaves of the pitcher-plant, etc., etc., and to-day I notice yellow-green recent shoots of high blueberry.

Observed a coarse, dense-headed grass in the meadow at Stow's old swamp lot. What did the birds do for horsehair here formerly?

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

The red blueberry. See November 6, 1853 (“The remarkable roundish, plump red buds of the high blueberry.”); November 23, 1857 (“You distinguish it by its gray spreading mass; its light-gray bark, rather roughened; its thickish shoots, often crimson; and its plump, roundish red buds.”); November 20, 1857 ("the bright-crimson shoots of high blueberry . . . have a very pretty effect, a crimson vigor to stand above the snow.")

The yellowish-brown panicled andromeda. See November 23, 1857 ("The panicled andromeda is upright, light-gray, with a rather smoother bark, more slender twigs, and small, sharp red buds lying close to the twig."); December 6, 1856 ("The rich brown fruit of the panicled andromeda growing about the swamp, hard, dry, inedible, suitable to the season. The dense panicles of the berries are of a handsome form, made to endure, lasting often over two seasons, only becoming darker and gray")

How often vegetation is either yellow or red! as the buds of the swamp-pink See December 1, 1852 (“The large bright yellowish and reddish buds of the swamp-pink,"); December 11, 1855 ("The great yellow buds of the swamp-pink, the round red buds of the high blueberry, and the fine sharp red ones of the panicled andromeda"); January 25, 1858 ("The round red buds of the blueberries; the small pointed red buds, close to the twig, of the panicled andromeda; the large yellowish buds of the swamp pink.")

The leaves of the pitcher-plant. See September 28, 1851 ("These leaves are of various colors from plain green to a rich striped yellow or deep red. No plants are more richly painted and streaked than the inside of the broad lips of these."); November 11, 1858 ("In the meadows the pitcher-plants are bright-red"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Pitcher Plant

By the black oaks at the sand hole east of Clamshell.

September 11. 

Friday. Up railroad and to Clamshell. 

Solidago puberula apparently in prime, with the S. stricta, near gerardia oaks. 

Red choke-berry ripe; how long? On the east edge of Dennis Swamp, where I saw the strange warbler once. 

To my surprise I find, by the black oaks at the sand hole east of Clamshell, the Solidago rigida, apparently in prime or a little past. The heads and rays were so large I thought at first it must be a hieracium. The rays are from ten to fourteen, and three to three and a half fortieths of an inch wide. The middle leaves are clasping by a heart-shaped base. The heads are seven fortieths of an inch wide and seventeen fortieths long, in recurved panicles, – these. Eaton says truly, “Scales of the calyx round-obtuse, nerved, membranous at the edges.” 

My old S. stricta (early form) must be S. arguta var. juncea. It is now done.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 11, 1857

Red choke-berry ripe; how long? See September 1, 1856 ("red choke-berries, which last further up in this swamp, with their peculiar glossy red and squarish form, are really very handsome.")

Dennis Swamp... See May 30, 1855 ("Hear a familiar warbler not recognized for some years, in the thick copse in Dennis’s Swamp,")

by the black oaks at the sand hole east of Clamshell, the Solidago rigida, apparently in prime. See September 26, 1857 ("Solidago rigida, just done, within a rod southwest of the oak"). See also September 15, 1854 (“Solidago speciosa at Clamshell out several days”); . September 27, 1856 (“To Clamshell by boat. Solidago speciosa not quite out!!”)

Solidago puberula apparently in prime, with the S. stricta . . .My old S. stricta (early form) must be S. Arguta var. juncea. See  August 21, 1856 ("the prevailing solidagos now are, lst, stricta (the upland and also meadow one which I seem to have called puberula), 2d, the three-ribbed, of apparently several varieties, which I have called arguta or gigantea (apparently truly the last)");  September 6, 1856 ("Solidago arguta very common, apparently in prime, with sharp-toothed, more or less elliptic leaves and slender terminal drooping racemes; size of S. stricta."): September 15, 1856 ("Early Solidago stricta (that is, arguta) done . . .").

What green, herbaceous, graminivorous ideas he must have! I wish that my thoughts were as seasonable as his!

September 6. 

Sunday. P. M. – To Assabet, west bank. 

Turned off south at Derby's Bridge and walked through a long field, half meadow, half upland. Soapwort gentian, out not long, and dwarf cornel again. 

There is a handsome crescent-shaped meadow on this side, opposite Harrington's. A good-sized black oak in the pasture by the road half-way between the school house and Brown’s. 

Walked under Brown’s hemlocks by the railroad. How commonly hemlocks grow on the north slope of a hill near its base, with only bare reddened ground beneath! This bareness probably is not due to any peculiar quality in the hemlocks, for I observe that it is the same under pitch and white pines when equally thick. I suspect that it is owing more to the shade than to the fallen leaves. 

I see one of those peculiarly green locusts with long and slender legs on a grass stem, which are often concealed by their color. What green, herbaceous, graminivorous ideas he must have! I wish that my thoughts were as seasonable as his! 

Some haws begin to be ripe. 

We go along under the hill and woods north of railroad, west of Lords land, about to the west of the swamp and to the Indian ditch. I see in the swamp black choke berries twelve feet high at least and in fruit. 

C. says that they use high blueberry wood for tholepins on the Plymouth ponds. 

I observe to-day, away at the south end of our dry garden, a moist and handsome Rana halecina. It is the only frog that I ever see in such localities. He is quite a traveller. 

A very cool day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 6, 1857

Soapwort gentian, out not long. See September 8, 1852 ("Gentiana saponaria out."); September 19, 1851 ("The soapwort gentian now.");  September 19, 1852 ("The soapwort gentian cheers and surprises, -- solid bulbs of blue from the shade, the stale grown purplish. It abounds along the river, after so much has been mown"); September 22, 1852 ("The soapwort gentian the flower of the river-banks now.") September 25, 1857 ("You notice now the dark-blue dome of the soapwort gentian in cool and shady places under the bank.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Soapwort Gentian

I see one of those peculiarly green locusts . . . which are often concealed by their color. See August 21, 1853 ("Saw one of those light-green locusts about three quarters of an inch long on a currant leaf in the garden . . . The wings are transparent, with marks somewhat like a letter."); August 23, 1856 ("A green locust an inch and three quarters long"); August 27, 1860 ("See one of the shrilling green alder locusts on the under side of a grape leaf. Its body is about three quarters of an inch or less in length; antennae and all, two inches. Its wings a . . . transparent, with lines crossing them.")

Rana halecina (Lithobates pipiens) – Northern Leopard Frog.  See August 22, 1854 ("There are now hopping all over this meadow small Rana palustris, and also some more beautifully spotted halecina or shad frogs."); June 17, 1856 ("Went to Rev. Horace James’s reptiles (Orthodox) . . . He distinguished the Rana halecina in the alcohol by more squarish (?) spots."); April 3, 1858 ("They were the R. halecina. I could see very plainly the two very prominent yellow lines along the sides of the head and the large dark ocellated marks, even under water, on the thighs, etc. . . .Their note is a hard dry tut tut tut tut, not at all ringing like the toad’s . . . and from time to time one makes that faint somewhat bullfrog-like er er er. Both these sounds, then, are made by one frog, and what I have formerly thought an early bullfrog note was this. This, I think, is the first frog sound I have heard from the river meadows or anywhere . . .")

At the same season with this haze of buds comes also the kindred haziness of the air.

May 26. 

Pink azalea in garden. 

Mountain-ash a day; also horse-chestnut the same. Beach plum well out, several days at least. 

Wood pewee, and Minott heard a loon go laughing over this morning. 

The vireo days have fairly begun. They are now heard amid the elm-tops. 

Thin coats and straw hats are worn. I have noticed that notional nervous invalids, who report to the community the exact condition of their heads and stomachs every morning, as if they alone were blessed or cursed with these parts; who are old betties and quiddles, if men; who can't eat their break fasts when they are ready, but play with their spoons, and hanker after an ice-cream at irregular hours; who go more than half-way to meet any invalidity, and go to bed to be sick on the slightest occasion, in the middle of the brightest forenoon, — improve the least opportunity to be sick ; — I observe that such are self-indulgent persons, without any regular and absorbing employment. They are nice, discriminating, experienced in all that relates to bodily sensations. They come to you stroking their wens, manipulating their ulcers, and expect you to do the same for them. Their religion and humanity stick. They spend the day manipulating their bodies and doing no work; can never get their nails clean. 

Some of the earliest willows about warm edges of woods are gone to seed and downy. 

P. M. — To Saw Mill Brook. 

It is very hazy after a sultry morning, but the wind is getting east and cool. 

The oaks are in the gray, or a little more, and the silvery leafets of the deciduous trees invest the woods like a permanent mist. At the same season with this haze of buds comes also the kindred haziness of the air. 

I see the common small reddish butterflies. 

Very interesting now are the red tents of expanding- oak leaves, as you go through sprout-lands, — the crimson velvet of the black oak and the more pinkish white oak. The salmon and pinkish-red canopies or umbrellas of the white oak are particularly interesting. 

The very sudden expansion of the great hickory buds, umbrella-wise. 

Now, at last, all leaves dare unfold, and twigs begin to shoot. 

As I am going down the footpath from Britton's camp to the spring, I start a pair of nighthawks (they had the white on the wing) from amid the dry leaves at the base of a bush, a bunch of sprouts, and away they flitted in zigzag noiseless flight a few rods through the sprout-land, dexterously avoiding the twigs, uttering a faint hollow what, as if made by merely closing the bill, and one alighted flat on a stump. 

On those carpinus trees which have fertile flowers, the sterile are effete and drop off. 

The red choke-berry not in bloom, while the black is, for a day or more at least. 

Roadside near Britton's camp, see a grosbeak, apparently female of the rose-breasted, quite tame, as usual, brown above, with black head and a white streak over the eye, a less distinct one beneath it, two faint bars on wings, dirty-white bill, white breast, dark spotted or streaked, and from time [to time] utters a very sharp chirp of alarm or interrogation as it peers through the twigs at me. 

May 26, 2018

A lady's-slipper. At Cliffs, no doubt, before. 

At Abel Brooks's (or Black Snake, or Red Cherry, or Rye) Hollow, hear the wood thrush. 

In Thrush Alley, see one of those large ant-hills, recently begun, the grass and moss partly covered with sand over a circle two feet in diameter, with holes two to five inches apart, and the dry sand is dark-spotted with the fresh damp sand about each hole. 

My mother was telling to-night of the sounds which she used to hear summer nights when she was young and lived on the Virginia Road, — the lowing of cows, or cackling of geese, or the beating of a drum as far off as Hildreth's, but above all Joe Merriam whistling to his team, for he was an admirable whistler. 

Says she used to get up at midnight and go and sit on the door-step when all in the house were asleep, and she could hear nothing in the world but the ticking of the clock in the house behind her.

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

Pink azalea in garden. See May 26, 1860 ("Our pink azalea”); May 25, 1856 ("Azalea nudiflora in garden."); May 29, 1855("Azalea nudiflora in garden”); May 17, 1854 ("Azalea nudiflora in woods begins to leaf now.");May 31, 1853 ("I am going in search of the Azalea nudiflora.”) [Rhododendron periclymenoides , pinxterbloom azalea]

Wood pewee. See note to May 26, 1852 ("I hear the pea-wai, the tender note.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Wood-Pewee

It is very hazy after a sultry morning, but the wind is getting east and cool. See May 26, 1855 (“Again a strong cold wind from the north by west, turning up the new and tender pads”); May 26, 1860 (“Overcast, rain-threatening; wind northeast and cool”)

At the same season with this haze of buds comes also the kindred haziness of the air. See May 15, 1860 ("At this season there is thus a mist in the air and a mist on the earth.") May 15, 1854 ("The aspect of oak and other woods at a distance is somewhat like that of a very thick and reddish or yellowish mist about the evergreens."); May 27, 1855 ("How important the dark evergreens now seen through the haze in the distance and contrasting with the gauze-like, as yet thin-clad deciduous trees").

A lady's-slipper. At Cliffs, no doubt, before. See May 27, 1852 ("Ladies'-slippers out. They perfume the air.”); May 30, 1856 (“The lady’s-slipper in pitch pine wood-side near J. Hosmer’s Desert, probably about the 27th”).

May 26. See  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 26

When colors come to be taught in the schools.

September 1

P. M. — With R. W. E. to Saw Mill and Solidago odora. 

He has just had four of his fir trees next his house cut, they shaded his windows so. They were set out by Coolidge, E. thinks twenty-eight years ago. The largest has thirty-seven annual rings at the base and measures at one foot from the ground forty-six and a half inches in circumference; has made, on an average, about half an inch of wood in every direction. 

There is no Bidens cernua, if that is it, by the Turnpike. It was apparently killed by the recent high water. 

Solidago latifolia not out quite. 

We go admiring the pure and delicate tints of fungi on the surface of the damp swamp there, following up along the north side of the brook past the right of the old camp. There are many very beautiful lemon- yellow ones of various forms, some shaped like buttons, some becoming finely scalloped on the edge, some club-shaped and hollow, of the most delicate and rare but decided tints, contrasting well with the decaying leaves about them. There are others also pure white, others a wholesome red, others brown, and some even a light indigo-blue above and beneath and throughout. 

When colors come to be taught in the schools, as they should be, both the prism (or the rainbow) and these fungi should be used by way of illustration, and if the pupil does not learn colors, he may learn fungi, which perhaps is better. 

You almost envy the wood frogs and toads that hop amid such gems, — some pure and bright enough for a breastpin. Out of every crevice between the dead leaves oozes some vehicle of color, the unspent wealth of the year, which Nature is now casting forth, as if it were only to empty herself. 

Cohush berries appear now to be in their prime, and arum berries, and red choke-berries, which last further up in this swamp, with their peculiar glossy red and squarish form, are really very handsome. A few medeola berries ripe. 

The very dense clusters of the smilacina berries, finely purple-dotted on a pearly ground, are very interesting; also the smaller and similar clusters of the two-leaved convallaria. Many of the last and a few of the first are already turned red, clear semilucent red. They have a pleasant sweetish taste. 

Cistus flowers well out again in the old camp path, now nearly all grown up. I notice that the birches have sprung up in close, straight rows in the old ruts there. 

I think it stands about thus with asters and golden- rods now : 

The early meadow aster is either quite withered or much the worse for the wear, partly on account of the freshet.
Diplopappus cornifolius, not seen of late.
D. umbellatus, perhaps in prime or approaching it, but not much seen.
A. patens, apparently now in prime and the most abundant of the larger asters.
A. macrophyllus, probably past prime.
A. acuminatus, not seen at all.
A. Radula, rather past prime.
A. dumosus, very common, most so of the small white, and in prime.
D. linariifolius, hardly noticed.
A. undidatus, hardly one seen yet open, a late aster.
A. corymbosus, in prime, or maybe past.
A. laevis, just beginning.
A. Tradescanti, got to be pretty common, but not yet in prime.
A. puniceus, hardly yet in prime.
A. longifolius, hardly one seen yet.
A. multiflorus, not one seen yet.
Solidago stricta, still very abundant, though probably a little past prime.
S. gigantea, say in prime.
S. nemoralis, not quite in prime, but very abundant.
S. altissima, perhaps in prime.
S. odora, in prime, or maybe a little past.
S. puberula, just beginning, rare in any case.
S. bicolor, not quite in prime, but common.
S. lanceolaia, in prime, or past.
S. latifolia, not yet at all.
S. casta, just begun.
S. speciosa, not at all yet.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 1, 1856

Cohush berries appear now to be in their prime, and arum berries, and red choke-berries, . . .. A few medeola berries ripe. See September 2, 1853 ("The dense oval bunches of arum berries now startle the walker in swamps. They are a brilliant vermilion on a rich ground . . . The medeola berries are now dull glossy and almost blue-black; about three, on slender threads one inch long, arising in the midst of the cup formed by the purple bases of the whorl of three upper leaves."); September 3, 1853 ("Now is the season for those comparatively rare but beautiful wild berries which are not food for man.. . .Berries which are as beautiful as flowers, but far less known, the fruit of the flower.")

Asters and golden- rods now. See August 30, 1853 ("Why so many asters and goldenrods now? The sun has shone on the earth, and the goldenrod is his fruit. The stars, too, have shone on it, and the asters are their fruit.")

Wading through Kalmia Swamp just to look at the leaves.

May 26

8 A. M. — By boat to Kalmia glauca and thence to scouring-rush. 

Again a strong cold wind from the north by west, turning up the new and tender pads. 

The young white lily pads are now red and crimson above, while greenish beneath. 

Nightshade dark-green shoots are eight inches long. Button-bush would commonly be said to begin to leaf. 

At Clamshell. Ranunculus acris and bulbosus pollen apparently about two or three days. Comandra pollen apparently two days there. Arenaria serpyllifolia and scleranthus, how long? 

White oak pollen. The oaks apparently shed pollen about four days later than last year; may be owing to the recent cold weather. 

Interrupted fern pollen the 23d; may have been a day or two. Cinnamon fern to-day. 

Checkerberry shoots one inch high. 

Carex stipata? Close-spiked sedge in Clamshell Meadow some time. 

Early willow on right beyond Hubbard’s Bridge leafed since 12th; say 19th or generally before button-bush.

At Kalmia Swamp.

Nemopanthes, apparently several days, and leaf say before tupelo. White spruce pollen one or two days at least, and now begins to leaf. 

To my surprise the Kalmia glauca almost all out; perhaps began with rhodora. A very fine flower, the more interesting for being early. The leaf say just after the lambkill. 

I was wading through this white spruce swamp just to look at the leaves. The more purple rhodora rose here and there above the small andromeda, so that I did not at first distinguish the K. glauca. When I did, probably my eyes at first confounded it with the lambkill, and I did not remember that this would not bloom for some time. There were a few leaves just faintly started. 

But at last my eyes and attention both were caught by those handsome umbels of the K. glauca, rising, one to three together, at the end of bare twigs, six inches or more above the level of the andromeda, etc., together with the rhodora. The rhodora did not accompany it into the more open and level and wet parts, where was andromeda almost alone.

Umbels, one and one half inches [in] diameter, of five to eighteen flowers on red threads three quarters to an inch long, at first deep rose-color, after pale rose. Twigs bare except two or three small old leaves close to the end of the dry-looking twigs. Flowers not arranged in whorls about the twig, but rising quite above it. The larger flowers about nine-sixteenths inch diameter. Flowers somewhat larger, methinks, and more terminal than lambkill. The whole about two feet high in sphagnum. 

The lambkill is just beginning to be flower-budded.

What that neat song-sparrow-like nest of grass merely, in the wet sphagnum under the andromeda there, with three eggs, -- in that very secluded place, surrounded by the watery swamp and andromeda --  from which the bird stole like a mouse under the andromeda? Vide egg. It is narrower and more pointed at one end and lighter, a little, -- the brown less confluent, -- than that of the song sparrow with one spot on breast which took from ivy tree tuft. The last is bluish-white very thickly spotted and blotched with brown. Four eggs first seen, I think, the 22d.

Swamp-pink leaf before lambkill. A mosquito. Lupine in house from Fair Haven Hill, and probably in field.

At the screech owl’s nest I now find two young slumbering, almost uniformly gray above, about five inches long, with little dark-grayish tufts for incipient horns (?). Their heads about as broad as their bodies. I handle them without their stirring or opening their eyes. There are the feathers of a small bird and the leg of the Mus leucopus in the nest. 

The partridge which on the 12th had left three cold eggs covered up with oak leaves is now sitting on eight. She apparently deserted her nest for a time and covered it. 

Already the mouse-ear down begins to blow in the fields and whiten the grass, together with the bluets.

In Conant’s thick wood on the White-Pond-ward lane, hear the evergreen-forest note, but commonly, at a distance, only the last notes — a fine sharp té te'. The tanager? 

See a beautiful blue-backed and long-tailed pigeon sitting daintily on a low white pine limb.

I perceive no new life in the pipes (Equisetum hyemale), except that some are flower-budded at top and may open in a week, and on pulling them up I find a new one just springing from the base at root. The flower—bud is apparently on those dry-looking last year’s plants which I thought had no life in them.

Returning, I lay on my back again in Conant’s thick wood. Saw a redstart over my head there; black with a sort of brick red on sides of breast, spot on wing, and under root of tail. Note heard once next day, at Kalmia Swamp, somewhat like aveet a'veet aveet a'veet. 

In the meanwhile hear another note, very smart and somewhat sprayey, rasping, tshrip tshrip tshrip tshrip, or five or six times with equal force each time. The bird hops near, directly over my head. It is black, with a large white mark forward on wings and a fiery orange throat, above and below eye, and line on crown, yellowish beneath, white vent, forked tail, dusky legs and bill; holds its wings (which are light beneath) loosely. It inclines to examine about the lower branches of the white pines or midway up. The Blackbumian warbler very plainly; whose note Nuttall knows nothing about. 

Two-leaved Solomon’s-seal pollen not long in most places. Ranunculus recurvatus at Corner Spring up several days at least; pollen. 

Trillium pollen maybe several days. Arum, how long? The Ranunculus Purshii in that large pool in the Holden Swamp Woods makes quite a show at a little distance now. 

See to-day (and saw the 23d) a larger peetweet like bird on the shore, with longer, perhaps more slender, wings, black or blackish without white spots; all white beneath; and when it goes off it flies higher. Is it not the Totanus solitarius, which Brown found at Goose Pond? 

I think that the red-fruited choke-berry has shed pollen about a day, though I have not examined. The leaves are a little downy beneath and the common peduncle and the pedicels stout and quite hairy, while the black-fruited is smooth and gloossy.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 26, 1855

Saw a redstart over my head there; black with a sort of brick red on sides of breast. See A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The American Redstart

The Blackbumian warbler. See A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Blackburnian Warbler

But at last my eyes and attention both were caught by those handsome umbels of the K. glauca. See November 4, 1858 ("Objects are concealed from our view not so much because they are out of the course of our visual ray (continued) as because there is no intention of the mind and eye toward them. We do not realize how far and widely, or how near and narrowly, we are to look. The greater part of the phenomena of nature are for this reason concealed to us all our lives.. . . We cannot see anything until we are possessed with the idea of it, and then we can hardly see anything else."); January 9, 1855 ("Make a splendid discovery this afternoon. Walking through Holden’s white spruce swamp, I see peeping above the snow-crust some slender delicate evergreen shoots . . . the Kalmia glauca var.rosmarinifolia.")

May 26. See  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 26

Young white lily pads 

now red and crimson above

while greenish beneath.

Bluets whiten the fields, and violets are now perhaps in prime.

May 21

P. M. —To Island. 

Salix nigra leafs. 

Is that plump blue-backed, rufous rumped swallow the cliff swallow, flying with barn swallows, etc., over the river? Nuttall apparently so describes it. It dashes within a foot of me. 

Lambkill leaf, a day or two. Choke-berry pollen; perhaps a day or more elsewhere. Viola palmata pretty common, apparently two or three days. Some button bush begins to leaf. Cranberry well started; shoots three quarters of an inch. 

dog-tooth violet
May 21, 2017

Bluets whiten the fields, and violets are now perhaps in prime. 

Very cold to-day; cold weather, indeed, from the 20th to 23d inclusive. Sit by fires, and sometimes wear a greatcoat and expect frosts.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 21, 1855

Is that plump blue-backed, rufous rumped swallow the cliff swallow, flying with barn swallows, etc., over the river? See April 30, 1856 ("I was surprised by the great number of swallows—white-bellied and barn swallows and perhaps republican — flying round and round, or skimming very low over the meadow. . .There were a thousand or more of swallows, and I think that they had recently arrived together on their migration.");  May 4, 1856 (“Among others, I see republican swallows flying over river at Island”); May 11, 1856 ("There are many swallows circling low over the river behind Monroe’s, — bank swallows, barn, republican, chimney, and white-bellied. These are all circling together a foot or two over the water, passing within ten or twelve feet of me in my boat."); May 20, 1858 (“Hundreds of swallows are now skimming close over the river. . .. There are bank, barn, cliff, and chimney swallows, all mingled together.”); May 20, 1858 (“The cliff swallow, then, is here.”)

Lambkill leaf, a day or two. See May 26, 1855 ("The lambkill is just beginning to be flower-budded");  June 9, 1855 ("Lambkill out"); .June 10, 1855 ("The Kalmia glauca is done before the lambkill is begun here."); June 13, 1852 ("Lambkill is out. I remember with what delight I used to discover this flower in dewy mornings."); );June 13, 1854 ("How beautiful the solid cylinders of the lamb-kill now just before sunset, ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Lambkill (Kalmia augustifolia)

Bluets whiten the fields, and violets are now perhaps in prime. See May 7,1860 ("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."); May 14, 1852 ("The grass is now whitened with bluets; the fields are green.")

Very cold to-day; cold weather, indeed. See May 21, 1860 (“Cold, at 11 A.M. 50°; and sit by a fire”)

The red inner sides of the hickory bud-scales turned back.

May 14

Our peaches begin to bloom; others probably earlier. Domestic plums open; some maybe yesterday. Missouri currant open yesterday or day before. One apple on a roof open. 

The beech blossom in house opens; say to-morrow in woods, and probably will leaf generally by the next day. 

Second gooseberry in garden open. 

White ash begins to leaf; and waxwork. Clethra leafs. High blueberry open by Hubbard’s Bath. Black scrub oak leafs, and chinquapin. Red choke-berry leafed, say two days later than black. 

May 14, 2015

P. M. — To Cliffs via Hubbard’s Bath. 

See a male hen-harrier skimming low along the side of the river, often within a foot of the muddy shore, looking for frogs, with a very compact flock of small birds, probably swallows, in pursuit. Occasionally he alights and walks or hops flutteringly a foot or two over the ground. 

The Lombardy poplar and silvery white leafed at least two days ago. 

Vaccinium vacillans leafed, and perhaps flower opened, if that is one near West Fair Haven Spring. 

Some hickories, just opening their leaves, make quite a show with the red inner sides of the bud-scales turned back. 

All the oak leaves off the shrub oak plain, except apparently a few white oaks. 

Some gaylussacias leafed. Uva-ursi at Cliffs out some time, and some new shoots leafing. 

Under the dead pine on which the fish hawk sat on the 12th inst, a half-mile from the river, I find a few fish bones — one, I am pretty sure from comparison, the jaw of a pout. So that in three instances, the only ones observed this year, they were feeding on pouts.

Probably the mice, etc., had picked up the rest of his droppings. Thus these inhabitants of the interior get a taste of fish from time to time, -- crumbs from the fish hawk’s table. 

Prinos verticillatus leafs.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 14, 1855

Our peaches begin to bloom; others probably earlier. See May 13, 1854 ("Peach trees in bloom in our garden") See also May 14, 1858 ("To-day, for the first time, it appears to me summerlike and a new season. There is a tender green on the meadows and just leafing trees. The blossoms of the cherry, peach, pear, etc., are conspicuous, and the air is suddenly full of fragrance. Houses are seen to stand amid blossoming fruit trees, and the air about them is full of fragrance and the music of birds.")
.

See a male hen-harrier skimming low along the side of the river, often within a foot of the muddy shore, looking for frogs. See May 14, 1853 ("What is that small slate-colored hawk with black tips to wings?") and note to May 14, 1857 ("See a pair of marsh hawks, the smaller and lighter-colored male, with black tips to wings, and the large brown female, sailing low over J. Hosmer's sprout-land and screaming, apparently looking for frogs or the like.”); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Marsh Hawk (Northern Harrier)

 Under the dead pine on which the fish hawk sat on the 12th inst, a half-mile from the river, I find a few fish bones. See May 12, 1855 ("See I direct my glass toward the dead tree on Cliffs, and am surprised to see the fish hawk still sitting there, about an hour after he first alighted; and now I find that he is eating a fish, which he had under his feet on the limb."). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Osprey (Fish Hawk)

Some hickories, just opening their leaves, make quite a show with the red inner sides of the bud-scales turned back. See May 17, 1853 ("How red are the scales of some hickory buds, now turned back!"); May 24, 1860 (“I notice the first shadows of hickories, - not dense and dark shade, but open-latticed, a network of sun and shadow on the north sides of the trees.”); May 26, 1857 ("The very sudden expansion of the great hickory buds, umbrella-wise."); May 29, 1857 (“Those great hickory buds, how much they contained! You see now the large reddish scales turned back at the base of the new twigs. Suddenly the buds burst, and those large pinnate leaves stretched forth in various directions.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau. The Hickory. and 

Kristel Schoonderwoerd

 Spring is the New Fall (May 15, 2020 )

May 14.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, May 14.

Their leaves just open

hickories make quite a show –

red inner bud-scales.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The red inner sides of the hickory bud-scales turned back.

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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