A Book of the Seasons: Locust Days, Dogdayish Days

 

I first heard the locust sing

so dry and piercing

by the side of the pine woods

in the heat of the day.

Henry Thoreau,  July 18, 1851

I do not like the name “dog-days.”

Can we not have a new name for this season?

It is the season of mould and mildew,

and foggy, muggy, often rainy weather.

August 15, 1858

June 14. Heard the first locust from amid the shrubs by the roadside. He comes with heat. June 14, 1853

June 14.   The dog-day cicada (canicularis), or harvest-fly. [Harris] says it begins to be heard invariably at the beginning of dog-days; he heard it for many years in succession with few exceptions on the 25th of July. June 14, 1854 

June 15. The drouth begins. The dry z-ing of the locust is heard . . . First locust. June 15, 1852

June 23.  Sultry  dogdayish weather, with moist mists or low clouds hanging about, the first of this kind we have had . . . a fresh, cool moisture and a suffocating heat are strangely mingled. June 23, 1853

June 23. This is a decidedly dogdayish day, foretold by the red moon of last evening. The sunlight, even this fore-noon, was peculiarly yellow, passing through misty clouds, and this afternoon the atmosphere is decidedly blue. I see it in the street within thirty rods, and perceive a distinct musty odor. First bluish, musty dog-day, and sultry. June 23, 1860

June 24. The dogdayish weather continues. June 24, 1860

June 26. Still hazy and dogdayish. June 26, 1860

June 29. Dogdayish and showery, with thunder. At 6 P. M. 91°, the hottest yet . . . [O]ur most violent thunder-shower followed the hottest hour of the month.  June 29, 1860

July 16. After the late rains and last night's fog, it is somewhat dog-dayish, and there is a damp, earthy, mildewy scent to the ground in wood-paths. July 16, 1854

July 17. Last night and this morning another thick dogdayish fog. I find my chamber full this morning. July 17, 1854

July 17. A very warm afternoon. Thermometer at 97° at the Hosmer Desert. I hear the early locust. July 17, 1856

July 18. I first heard the locust sing, so dry and piercing, by the side of the pine woods in the heat of the day. July 18, 1851

July 18. A hot midsummer day with a sultry mistiness in the air and shadows on land and water beginning to have a peculiar distinctness and solidity. The river, smooth and still, with a deepened shade of the elms on it, like midnight suddenly revealed, its bed-curtains shoved aside, has a sultry languid look. The atmosphere now imparts a bluish or glaucous tinge to the distant trees. A certain debauched look. This a crisis in the season. After this the foliage of some trees is almost black at a distance. July 18, 1854

July 19. To-day I met with the first orange flower of autumn . . . [T]his is the fruit of a dog-day sun. The year has but just produced it. July 19, 1851

July 19.  The more smothering, furnace-like heats are beginning, and the locust days. July 19, 1854

July 22. First locust heard.  July 22, 1860

July 26. Dog-days, - sultry, sticky weather, - now when the corn is topped out. Clouds without rain. Rains when it will. Old spring and summer signs fail . . . I mark again, about this time when the first asters open, the sound of crickets or locusts that makes you fruitfully meditative, helps condense your thoughts, like the mel dews in the afternoon. This the afternoon of the year.  July 26, 1853

July 26. I hear borne on the wind from far, mingling with the sound of the wind, the z-ing locust, scarcely like a distinct sound. July 26, 1854 

July 26. The peculiarity of the stream is in a certain languid or stagnant smoothness of the water, and of the bordering woods in a dog-day density of shade reflected darkly in the water . . . Almost constantly I hear borne on the wind from far, mingling with the sound of the wind, the z-ing locust, scarcely like a distinct sound. July 26, 1854

July 26. Dogdayish.  July 26, 1859

July 27. The drought ceases with the dog-days. July 27, 1853

July 27. Now observe the darker shades, and especially the apple trees, square and round, in the northwest landscape. Dogdayish.  July 27, 1859

July 30.  This is a perfect dog-day. The atmosphere thick, mildewy, cloudy. It is difficult to dry anything. The sun is obscured, yet we expect no rain. Bad hay weather. July 30, 1856

July 31. Our dog-days seem to be turned to a rainy season. July 31, 1855 

July 31. For a morning or two I have noticed dense crowds of little tender whitish parasol toadstools . . .first fruit of this dog-day weather. . . .This dog-day afternoon [a]s I make my way amid rank weeds still wet with the dew, the air filled with a decaying musty scent and the z-ing of small locusts, I hear the distant sound of a flail, and thoughts of autumn occupy my mind, and the memory of past years. July 31, 1856

July 31. It is emphatically one of the dog-days. A dense fog, not clearing off till we are far on our way, and the clouds (which did not let in any sun all day) were the dog-day fog and mist, which threatened no rain. A muggy but comfortable day. July 31, 1859

July 31. Decidedly dog-days, and a strong musty scent, not to be wondered at after the copious rains and the heat of yesterday. July 31, 1860

August 1. Since July 30th, inclusive, we have had perfect dog-days without interruption. The earth has suddenly invested with a thick musty mist. The sky has become a mere fungus. A thick blue musty veil of mist is drawn before the sun. The sun has not been visible, except for a moment or two once or twice a day, all this time, nor the stars by night. Moisture reigns. August 1, 1856

August 2. That fine z-ing of locusts in the grass which I have heard for three or four days is, methinks, an August sound and is very inspiriting. August 2, 1859

August 2

Midsummer standstill.

That fine z-ing of locusts

is an August sound.

 August 2, 1859

August 13. The last was a melting night, and a carnival for mosquitoes. Could I not write meditations under a bridge at midsummer? The last three or four days less dogdayish. We paused under each bridge yesterday, - we who had been sweltering on the quiet waves , — for the sake of a little shade and coolness, holding on by the piers with our hands  August 13, 1853

August 13. Now the mountains are concealed by the dog-day haze. August 13, 1854 

August 13. This month thus far has been quite rainy. It has rained more or less at least half the days. You have had to consider each afternoon whether you must not take an umbrella. It has about half the time either been dogdayish or mizzling or decided rain. August 13, 1858

August 14. This misty and musty dog-day weather has lasted now nearly a month.  Locust days, — sultry and sweltering. I hear them even till sunset. The usually invisible but far-heard locust.   August 14, 1853

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

August 16. These are locust days. I hear them on the elms in the street, but cannot tell where they are. August 16, 1852

August 18. The locust is heard.  Fruits are ripening. Ripe apples here and there scent the air. August 18, 1852

August 19. The dog-day mists are gone; the washed earth shines; the cooler air braces man. No summer day is so beautiful as the fairest spring and fall days. August 19, 1853

August 19. The dog-day weather is suddenly gone and here is a cool, clear, and elastic air. You may say it is the first day of autumn. August 19, 1858

August 20. There is so thick a bluish haze these dog-days that single trees half a mile off, seen against it as a light colored background, stand out distinctly a dark mass, — almost black, — as seen against the more distinct blue woods.  August 20, 1854

August 21. Saw one of those light-green locusts about three quarters of an inch long on a currant leaf in the garden. It kept up a steady shrilling (unlike the interrupted creak of the cricket). August 21, 1853

August 24. [W]e have no rain, and I see the blue haze between me and the shore six rods off. . . . Looking across the pond, the haze at the water's edge under the opposite woods looks like a low fog. To-night, as for at least four or five nights past, and to some extent, I think, a great many times within a month, the sun goes down shorn of his beams, half an hour before sunset, round and red, high above the horizon. There are no variegated sunsets in this dog-day weather. August 24, 1854

August 24. This and yesterday very foggy, dogdayish days. Yesterday the fog lasted till nine or ten, and to-day, in the afternoon, it amounts to a considerable drizzling rain.  August 24, 1860

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

August 26

All bushes resound.

I wade up to my ears in the

alder locust song.

August 26, 1860

September 1.  The character of the past month, as I remember, has been, at first  very thick and sultry, dogdayish, the height of summer, and throughout very rain, followed by crops of toadstools, and latterly, after the dog-days and most copious of the rains, autumnal. September 1, 1853

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Locust Days, Dogdayish Days

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

I keep dry by following this blue guide

June 26.

Still hazy and dogdayish.

Go to the menagerie in the afternoon.

At 5 P. M., — river ten and a half inches above summer level, — cross the meadow to the Hemlocks.

The blue-eyed grass, now in its prime, occupies the drier and harder parts of the meadow, where I can walk dry-shod, but where the coarser sedge grows and it is lower and wetter there is none of it.

I keep dry by following this blue guide, and the grass is not very high about it. You cross the meadows dry-shod by following the winding lead of the blue-eyed grass, which grows only on the firmer, more elevated, and drier parts.

The hemlocks are too much grown now and are too dark a green to show the handsomest bead-work by contrast.

Under the Hemlocks, on the bare bank, apparently the Aira flexuosa, not long.

Young black willows have sprouted and put forth their two minute round leafets where the cottony seeds have lodged in a scum against the alders, etc. Leafets from one fortieth to one twenty-fifth of an inch in diameter. When separated from the continuous film of down they have a tendency to sink.

The Canada naiad (?), which I gathered yesterday, had perhaps bloomed. Thought I detected with my glass something like stamens about the little balls.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 26, 1860



Go to the menagerie in the afternoon. See June 26, 1851 ("Visited a menagerie this afternoon. I am always sur prised to see the same spots and stripes on wild beasts from Africa and Asia and also from South America, — on the Brazilian tiger and the African leopard , — and their general similarity . All these wild animals — lions, tigers, chetas, leopards, etc . — have one hue, — tawny and commonly spotted or striped, — what you may call pard - color , a color and marking which I had not as sociated with America  These are wild beasts. What constitutes the difference between a wild beast and a tame one  How much more human the one than the other  Growling, scratching, roaring, with whatever beauty and gracefulness, still untamable, this royal Bengal tiger or this leopard. They have the character and the importance of another order of men . The majestic lion, the king of beasts, he must retain his title ")

The hemlocks are too much grown now and are too dark a green to show the handsomest bead-work by contrast. See June 5, 1853 ("The fresh light green shoots of the hemlocks have now grown half an inch or an inch, spotting the trees, contrasting with the dark green of last year's foliage."); June 7, 1860  ("the bead-work of the hemlock"); June 11, 1859 ("Hemlocks are about at height of their beauty, with their fresh growth.")

Young black willows have sprouted and put forth their two minute round leafets where the cottony seeds have lodged in a scum against the alders. See, June 26, 1859 ("The black willow down . . . rests on the water by the sides of the stream, where caught by alders, etc., in narrow crescents ten and five feet long, at right angles with the bank, so thick and white ");  June 27, 1860 ("The black willow down is now washed up and collected against the alders and weeds."); June 29, 1857 ("The river is now whitened with the down of the black willow, and I am surprised to see a minute plant abundantly springing from its midst and greening it,. . ., — like grass growing in cotton in a tumbler.")

Bacon says he has seen pitch pine pollen in a cloud going over a hill a mile off

June 14.

P. M.--To lime-kiln with Mr. Bacon of Natick.

Sisymbrium amphibium (?) of Bigelow, some days, at foot of Loring's land.

Common mallows well out; how long? 

What is that sisymbrium or mustard-like plant at foot of Loring 's ?

Erigeron strigosus (??) out earliest, say yesterday.

Observed a ribwort near Simon Brown's barn by road, with elongated spikes and only pistillate flowers.

Hedge-mustard, how long? Pepper grass, how long? Some time.

Scirpus lacustris, maybe some days.

I see a black caterpillar on the black willows nowadays with red spots.

Mr. Bacon thinks that cherry-birds are abundant where cankerworms are.

Says that only female mosquitoes sting (not his observation alone); that there are one or two arbor-vitæs native in Natick.

He has found the Lygodium palmatum there.

There is one pure-blooded Indian woman there. Pearl [?], I think he called her.

He thought those the exuviæ of mosquitoes on the river weeds under water.

Makes his own microscopes and uses garnets.

He called the huckleberry-apple a parasitic plant, — pterospora, – which grown on and changed the nature of the huckleberry.

Observed a diseased Andromeda paniculata twig prematurely in blossom.

Caught a locust, — properly harvest-fly (cicada), — drumming on a birch, which Bacon and Hill (of Waltham) think like the septendecim, except that ours has not red eyes but black ones. 

Harris's other kind, the dog-day cicada (canicularis), or harvest-fly. He says it begins to be heard invariably at the beginning of dog-days; he (Harris) heard it for many years in succession with few exceptions on the 25th of July.

Bacon says he has seen pitch pine pollen in a cloud going over a hill a mile off; is pretty sure.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 14, 1854

To lime-kiln with Mr. Bacon of Natick. See August 24, 1857 ("Ride to Austin Bacon’s, Natick.")
Makes his own microscopes and uses garnets. See August 24. 1857 ("A. Bacon showed me a drawing apparatus which he said he invented, very simple and convenient, also microscopes and many glasses for them which he made.")

Bacon says there are one or two arbor-vitæs native in Natick. See August 24, 1857 ("B[acon] says that the arbor-vitae grows indigenously in pretty large patches in Needham")

Thee dog-day cicada begins to be heard invariably at the beginning of dog-days; he (Harris) heard it for many years in succession with few exceptions on the 25th of July. See note to July 22, 1860 ("First locust heard.")

Bacon says he has seen pitch pine pollen in a cloud going over a hill a mile off; See. June 3, 1857 ("The pitch pine at Hemlocks is in bloom. . . .As usual, when I jar them the pollen rises in a little cloud about the pistillate flowers and the tops of the twigs, there being a little wind"); June 9, 1850 ("I see the pollen of the pitch pine now beginning to cover the surface of the pond.")

This sixteen miles up river.

July 31. 

7.30 A. M. — Up river. 

C. and I, having left our boat at Rice's Bend last night, walk to it this forenoon on our way to Saxonville. Water three quarters of an inch above summer level. 

It is emphatically one of the dog-days. A dense fog, not clearing off till we are far on our way, and the clouds (which did not let in any sun all day) were the dog-day fog and mist, which threatened no rain. A muggy but comfortable day. As we go along the Corner road, the dense fog for a background relieves pleasantly the outlines of every tree, though only twenty rods off, so that each is seen as a new object, especially that great oak scrag behind Hubbard's, once bent into a fence, now like a double-headed eagle, dark on the white ground. 

We go in the road to Rice's on account of the heavy dew, yet the fine tops of red-top, drooping with dew over the path, with a bluish hue from the dew, — blue with dew, — wet our shoes through. 

The roads are strewn with meadow-hay, which the farmers teamed home last evening (Saturday). 

The grass is thickly strewn with white cobwebs, tents of the night, which promise a fair day. I notice that they are thickest under the apple trees. Within the woods the mist or dew on them is so very fine that they look smoke-like and dry, yet even there, if you put your finger under them and touch them, you take off the dew and they become invisible. They are revealed by the dew, and perchance it is the dew and fog which they reveal which are the sign of fair weather. 

It is pleasant to walk thus early in the Sunday morning, while the dewy napkins of the cobwebs are visible on the grass, before the dew evaporates and they are concealed. 

Returning home last evening, I heard that exceedingly fine z-ing or creaking of crickets (?), low in the grass in the meadows. You might think it was a confused ringing in your head, it is so fine. Heard it again toward evening. Autumnalish.

On the 26th I saw quails which had been picking dung in a cart-path. Probably their broods are grown. 

The goldfinch's note, the cool watery twitter, is more prominent now. 

We had left our paddles, sail, etc., under one of Rice's buildings, on some old wagon-bodies. Rice, who called the big bittern "cow-poke, baked-plum- pudding." 

It is worth the while to get at least a dozen miles on your journey before the dew is off. 

Stopped at Weir Hill Bend to cut a pole to sound with, and there came two real country boys to fish. One little fellow of seven or eight who talked like a man of eighty, — an old head, who had been, probably, brought up with old people. He was not willing to take up with my companion's jesting advice to bait the fish by casting in some of his worms, because, he said, "It is too hard work to get them where we live." 

Begin to hear the sharp, brisk dittle-ittle-ittle of the wren amid the grass and reeds, generally invisible. I only hear it between Concord line and Framingham line. 

What a variety of weeds by the riverside now, in the water of the stagnant portions! Not only lilies of three kinds, but heart-leaf, Utricularia vulgaris and purpurea, all (at least except two yellow lilies) in prime. Sium in bloom, too, and Bidens Beckii just begun, and Ranunculus Purshii still. 

The more peculiar features of Concord River are seen in these stagnant, lake-like reaches, where the pads and heart-leaf, pickerel-weed, button-bush, utricularias, black willows, etc., abound. 

Above the Sudbury causeway, I notice again that remarkable large and tall typha, apparently T. latifolia (yet there is at least more than an inch interval between the two kinds of flowers, judging from the stump of the sterile bud left on). It is seven or eight feet high (its leaves), with leaves flat on one side (only concave at base, the sheathing part) and regularly convex on the other. They are so much taller than any I see elsewhere as to appear a peculiar species. Long out of bloom. They are what you may call the tallest reed of the meadows, unless you rank the arundo with them, but these are hardly so tall. 

The button-bush, which is, perhaps, at the height of its bloom, resounds with bees, etc., perhaps as much as the bass has. It is remarkable that it is these late flowers about which we hear this susurrus. You notice it with your back to them seven or eight rods off. 

See a blue heron several times to-day and yesterday. They must therefore breed not far off. We also scare up many times green bitterns, perhaps young, which utter their peculiar note in the Beaver Hole Meadows and this side. 

For refreshment on these voyages, [we] are compelled to drink the warm and muddy-tasted river water out of a clamshell which we keep, — so that it reminds you of a clam soup, — taking many a sup, or else leaning over the side of the boat while the other leans the other way to keep your balance, and often plunging your whole face in at that, when the boat dips or the waves run. 

At about one mile below Saxonville the river winds from amid high hills and commences a great bend called the Ox-Bow. Across the neck of this bend, as I paced, it is scarcely twenty rods, while it must be (as I judged by looking, and was told) a mile or more round. Fisher men and others are accustomed to drag their boats overland here, it being all hard land on this neck. A man by the bridge below had warned us of this cut-off, which he said would save us an hour! 

A man fishing at the Ox-Bow said without hesitation that the stone-heaps were made by the sucker, at any rate that he had seen them made by the sucker in Charles River, — the large black sucker (not the horned one). 

Another said that the water rose five feet above its present level at the bridge on the edge of Framingham, and showed me about the height on the stone. It is an arched stone bridge, built some two years ago. 

About the Sudbury line the river becomes much narrower and generally deeper, as it enters the first large meadows, the Sudbury meadows, and is very winding, — as indeed the Ox-Bow was. It is only some thirty or forty feet wide, yet with firm upright banks a foot or two high, — canal-like. This canal-like reach is the transition from the Assabet to the lake-like or Musketaquid portion. 

At length, off Pelham Pond, it is almost lost in the weeds of the reedy meadow, being still more narrowed and very weedy, with grassy and muddy banks. This meadow, which it enters about the Sudbury line, is a very wild and almost impenetrable one, it is so wet and muddy. It is called the Beaver-Hole Meadows and is a quite peculiar meadow, the chief growth being, not the common sedges, but great bur-reed, five or six feet high and all over it, mixed with flags, Scirpus fluviatilis, and wool-grass, and rank canary grass. Very little of this meadow can be worth cutting, even if the water be low enough.

This great sparganium was now in fruit (and a very little in flower). I was surprised by the sight of the great bur-like fruit, an inch to an inch and a half in diameter, the fruit-stems much branched and three or four feet high. It is a bur of sharp-pointed cones; stigmas linear. I can hardly believe that this is the same species that grows in C. It is apparently much earlier than ours. Yet ours may be a feeble growth from its very seeds floated down. Can it be that in this wild and muddy meadow the same plant grows so rankly as to look like a new species? It is decidedly earlier as well as larger than any I find in C. It does not grow in water of the river, but densely, like flags, in the meadow far and wide, five or six feet high, and this, with the Scirpus fluviatilis, etc., makes a very novel sight. 

Where there are rare, wild, rank plants, there too some wild bird will be found. The marsh wrens and the small green bitterns are especially numerous there. Doubtless many rails here. They lurk amid these reeds.

Behind the reeds on the east side, opposite the pond, was a great breadth of pontederia. Zizania there just begun. 

This wren (excepting, perhaps, the red-wing black bird) is the prevailing bird of the Sudbury meadows, yet I do not remember to have heard it in Concord. I get a nest, suspended in a patch of bulrush (Scirpus lacustris) by the river's edge, just below the Sudbury causeway, in the afternoon. It is a large nest (for the bird), six inches high, with the entrance on one side, made of coarse material, apparently withered bulrush and perhaps pipes and sedge, and no particular lining; well woven and not very thick; some two and a half or three feet above water. The bird is shy and lurks amid the reeds. 

We could not now detect any passage into Pelham Pond, which at the nearest, near the head of this reach, came within thirty rods of the river. 

Do not the lake-like reaches incline to run more north and south? 

The potamogetons do not abound anywhere but in shallows, hence in the swifter places. The lake-like reaches are too deep for them. 

Cardinal-flower. Have seen it formerly much earlier. Perhaps the high water in June kept it back. 

This sixteen miles up, added to eleven down, makes about twenty-seven that I have boated on this river, to which may be added five or six miles of the Assabet.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 31, 1859

The grass is thickly strewn with white cobwebs, tents of the night, which promise a fair day. . . . perchance it is the dew and fog which they reveal which are the sign of fair weather. See July 22, 1851 ("These are our fairest days, which are born in a fog."); July 25, 1852 ("This is one of those ambosial, white, ever-memorable fogs presaging fair weather. ")

The goldfinch's note, the cool watery twitter, is more prominent now. See July 31, 1855 ("Have observed the twittering over of goldfinches for a week."); August 4, 1852 ("I hear the singular watery twitter of the goldfinch, ter tweeter e et or e ee, as it ricochets over, he and his russet ( ?) female."); August 6, 1852 (“With the goldenrod comes the goldfinch. About the time his cool twitter is heard, does not the bobolink, thrasher, catbird, oven-bird, veery, etc., cease?”); August 9, 1856 (“The notes of the wood pewee and warbling vireo are more prominent of late, and of the goldfinch twittering over.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau the Goldfinch

See a blue heron several times to-day and yesterday. They must therefore breed not far off. August 12, 1853 ("See the blue herons opposite Fair Haven Hill, as if they had bred here."); ;August 19, 1858 (" Blue herons, which have bred or been bred not far from us (plainly), are now at leisure, or are impelled to revisit our slow stream. I have not seen the last since spring. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Blue Heron

Where there are rare, wild, rank plants, there too some wild bird will be found. See May 29, 1856 ("Where you find a rare flower, expect to find more rare ones.")

Begin to hear the sharp, brisk dittle-ittle-ittle of the wren amid the grass and reeds, generally invisible. See August 5, 1858 ("The short-billed marsh wren. It was peculiarly brisk and rasping, not at all musical, the rhythm something like shar te dittle ittle ittle ittle ittle, but the last part was drier or less liquid than this implies. It was a small bird, quite dark above and apparently plain ashy white beneath, and held its head up when it sang, and also commonly its tail. It dropped into the deep sedge . . . then reappeared and uttered its brisk notes quite near us, and, flying off, was lost in the sedge again.")

This sixteen miles up, added to eleven down, makes about twenty-seven that I have boated on this river. See January 31, 1855 ("I skated up as far as the boundary between Wayland and Sudbury just above Pelham’s Pond, about twelve miles, . . . It was, all the way that I skated, a chain of meadows, with the muskrat-houses still rising above the ice. I skated past three bridges above Sherman’s —or nine in all—and walked to the fourth."); September 14, 1854 ("To opposite Pelham’s Pond by boat. . . We went up thirteen or fourteen miles at least, and, as we stopped at Fair Haven Hill returning, rowed about twenty-five miles to-day.")

The goldfinch's note

the cool watery twitter

is more prominent. 

The drought ceases with the dog-days.

July 27. 

8 a. m. — Rains, still quite soakingly. 

June and July perhaps only are the months of drought. The drought ceases with the dog-days. 

P. M. — To White Pond in rain. 

The autumnal dandelion now appears more abundantly within a week. 

Solidago lanceolata also, a few days probably, though only partially open.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 27, 1853

The drought ceases with the dog-days. See July 24, 1854 ("A decided rain-storm to-day and yesterday, such as we have not had certainly since May."); July 31, 1855 ("Our dog-days seem to be turned to a rainy season"); August 15, 1858 ("It is the season of mould and mildew, and foggy, muggy, often rainy weather.")

The autumnal dandelion now appears more abundantly within a week. See August 4. 1854 ("The autumnal dandelion is now more common.");  September 13, 1856 ("Surprised at the profusion of autumnal dandelions in their prime on the top of the hill")

Apple trees, square and round, in the northwest landscape.

July 26. 

P. M. — To Great Meadows.

July 26, 2019

I see in Clark's (?) land, behind Garfield's, a thick growth of white birches, apparently three years old, blown from the wood on the west and southwest.

Looking from Peter's, the meadows are somewhat glaucous, with a reddish border, or bank, by the river, where the red-top and Agrostis scabra grow, and a greener stream where the pipes are, in the lowest part, by the Holt, and in some places yellowish-green ferns and now brown-topped wool-grass. 

There is much of what I call Juncus scirpoides now in its prime in the wetter parts, as also the Eleocharis palustris, long done, and Rhyncospora alba lately begun. Also buck-bean by itself in very wet places which have lost their crust. 

Elodea, how long? 

Now observe the darker shades, and especially the apple trees, square and round, in the northwest landscape. 

Dogdayish. 

Methinks the hardhack leaves always stand up, for now they do, and have as soon as they blossomed at least.

July 26, 2019

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

I see in Clark's land, behind Garfield's, a thick growth of white birches, apparently three years old, blown from the wood on the west and southwest. See January 7, 1854 ("The bird-shaped scales of the white birch are blown more than twenty rods from the trees"); January 7, 1856 ("I see birch scales (bird-like) on the snow on the river more than twenty rods south of the nearest and only birch, and trace them north to it”);  March 25, 1858 ("Going across A. Clark's field behind Garfield’s, I see many fox-colored sparrows flitting past in a straggling manner into the birch and pitch pine woods on the left"); November 8, 1860 ("Also a wet and brushy meadow some forty rods in front of Garfield's is being rapidly filled with white pines whose seeds must have been blown  [fifty rods].").

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

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021

Robins fly in flocks.

August 27. 

P. M. — To Walden. 

Dog-day weather again to-day, of which we had had none since the 18th, — i. e. clouds without rain. 

Wild carrot on railroad, apparently in prime. 
Hieracium Canadense, apparently in prime, and perhaps H. scabrum.

Lactuca, apparently much past prime, or nearly done. 

The Nabalus albus has been out some ten days, but N. Fraseri at Walden road will not open, apparently, for some days yet. 

I see round-leaved cornel fruit on Heywood Peak, now half China-blue and half white, each berry. 

Rhus Toxicodendron there is half of it turned scarlet and yellow, as if we had had a severe drought, when it has been remarkably wet. It seems, then, that in such situations some plants will always assume this prematurely withered autumnal aspect. 

Orchis lacera, probably done some time. 

Robins fly in flocks. 

Apparently Juncus tenuis, some time out of bloom, by depot wood-piles, i. e. between south wood-shed and good apple tree; some fifteen inches high. More at my boat’s shore.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 27, 1858

N. Fraseri at Walden road will not open, apparently, for some days yet. See September 13, 1857 (“Nabalus Fraseri, top of Cliffs, — a new plant, ”); September 23, 1857 (“Varieties of nabalus grow along the Walden road in the woods; also, still more abundant, by the Flint's Pond road in the woods.”)

Cornel fruit on Heywood Peak, now half China-blue and half white, each berry. See August 28, 1856 ("The bright china-colored blue berries of the Cornus sericea begin to show themselves along the river. .”)

Rhus Toxicodendron there is half of it turned scarlet and yellow, as if we had had a severe drought.  See September 30, 1857 (“Rhus Toxicodendron turned yellow and red, handsomely dotted with brown.”)

Orchis lacera, probably done some time. See July 13, 1856 ("Orchis lacera, apparently several days, lower part of spike, willow-row, Hubbard side, opposite Wheildon's land")

Overtaken by a shower

August 17. 

Still hear the chip-bird early in the morning, though not so generally as earlier in the season. 

Minott has only lately been reading Shattuck’s “History of Concord,” and he says that his account is not right by a jugful, that he does not come within half a mile of the truth, not as he has heard tell. 

Some days ago I saw a kingbird twice stoop to the water from an overhanging oak and pick an insect from the surface. 

C. saw pigeons to-day. 

P. M. —To Annursnack via swimming-ford. 

The river is twelve to eighteen inches deeper there than usual at this season. Even the slough this side is two feet deep. There has been so much rain of late that there is no curling or drying of the leaves and grass this year. The foliage is a pure fresh green. The aftermath on early mown fields is a very beautiful green. 

Being overtaken by a shower, we took refuge in the basement of Sam Barrett’s sawmill, where we spent an hour, and at length came home with a rainbow over arching the road before us. 

The dog-days, the foggy and mouldy days, are not over yet. The clouds are like a mildew which over  spreads the sky. It is sticky weather, and the air is filled with the scent of decaying fungi.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 17, 1858

Still hear the chip-bird early in the morning, though not so generally as earlier in the season.See August 1, 1853 ("I think that that universal crowing of the chip-bird in the morning is no longer heard.")

Being overtaken by a shower, we took refuge in the basement of Sam Barrett’s sawmill, where we spent an hour, and at length came home with a rainbow over arching the road before us. See July 22, 1858 (“C. and I took refuge from a shower under our boat at Clamshell; staid an hour at least. . . .Left a little too soon, but enjoyed a splendid rainbow for half an hour.”)