The last three have been true March days for wind.

March 4

Sunday. 2 P. M. – To Conantum via Clamshell. 

Thermometer 44; very strong and gusty northwest wind, with electric-looking wind-clouds. One spits a · little rain, but mostly clear. The frost is all out of the upper part of the garden. These wind-clouds come up and disappear fast, and have a more or less perpendicular fibre. 

Sit under Lupine Promontory again, to see the ripples. The wind is too strong, the waves run too high and incessantly, to allow the distinct puffs or gusts that drop from over the hill to be seen distinctly enough on tumultuous surface. Yet it is interesting. It spreads and runs as a bird spreads its tail suddenly, or it is as if a gust fell on a head of dark hair and made dimples or “crowns” in it, or it is as when dust before a brisk sweeper curls along over a floor. 

There is much less of that yellowish anchor ice than on the 2d. Cakes of it successively rise, being separated by warmth from the bottom, and are driven off to the leeward shore. In some places that shore is lined with such cakes now, which have risen and been blown clear across the meadow and river, — large masses. Some portions of them are singularly saturated, of a yellowish or clay-color, and an uneven upper surface, with a finely divided perpendicular grain, looking (in form) just like some kinds of fungi (that commonly yellowish kind). There strike against one another and make a pleasant musical, or tinkling, sound. 

Some of the ice will occasionally be lifted up on its edge two feet high and very conspicuous afar. 

That reddish-purple tinge in the meadow ripples appears to be owing to a reflection in some cases from the somewhat russet bottom. 

I see some curled dock, just started. 

The earth is never lighter - colored than now, — the hillsides reflecting the sun when first dried after the winter, — especially, methinks, where the sheep's fescue grows(?). It contrasts finely with the rich blue of the water. 

I saw half a dozen crows on a cake of ice in the middle of the Great Meadows yesterday, evidently looking for some favorite food which is washed on to it, - snails, or cranberries perhaps. 

I see a bush of the early willow — by wall far in front of the C. Miles house — whose catkins are conspicuous thirty rods off, very decidedly green, three eighths of an inch by measure. The bush at this distance had quite a silvery look, and the catkins show some redness within. Many of the scales as usual had fallen. 

A hen-hawk rises and sails away over the Holden Wood as in summer. Saw and heard one scream the 2d. 

I notice, where (ice or) snow has recently melted, a very thin dirty-white web like a dense cobweb, left flat on the grass, such as I saw some years ago. 

There is a broad and very black space extending through Fair Haven Pond over the channel, visible half a mile off, where the ice is thinnest and saturated with water. The channel is already open a little way at the upper end of the pond. This pond at its outlet contracts gradually into the river, so that you could hardly tell where the pond left off and the river began. I see that the ice at present extends that way only so far as I last year assumed that the pond did. In this sense the river hence to the Hubbard Bridge is pond-like compared with the portion below. 

See two apparently sternothærus eggs dropped in a slight hollow in the grass, evidently imperfectly planted by the turtle; still whole. 

The last three have been true March days for wind. 

The handsome and neat brown (pale-brown yet distinct on the lighter withered sod) of the lechea is now conspicuous as a shading in the drying fields.

See no ducks to-day, though much water. Nights too cold? 

Aspen down a quarter of an inch out.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 4, 1860

There is a broad and very black space extending through Fair Haven Pond over the channel, visible half a mile off, where the ice is thinnest and saturated with water. See March 30, 1852 (" From the Cliffs I see that Fair Haven Pond is open over the channel of the river, - which is in fact thus only revealed, of the same width as elsewhere, running from the end of Baker's Wood to the point of the Island. The slight current there has worn away the ice. I never knew before exactly where the channel was.") See also February 28, 1857 ("Nearly one third the channel is open in Fair Haven Pond. ");. March 26, 1860 ("Fair Haven Pond may be open by the 20th of March, as this year [1860], or not till April 13 as in '56, or twenty-three days later"); March 29, 1854 ("Fair Haven half open; channel wholly open. Thin cakes of ice at a distance now and then blown up on their edges glistening in the sun.").

I see a bush of the early willow . . . whose catkins are conspicuous thirty rods off, very decidedly green, three eighths of an inch by measure.  See February 19, 1857 ("Some willow catkins have crept a quarter of an inch from under their scales and look very red, probably on account of the warm weather"); See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding

I saw half a dozen crows on a cake of ice in the middle of the Great Meadows yesterday, evidently looking for some favorite food which is washed on to it, - snails, or cranberries perhaps. See March 22, 1854 ("See crows along the water's edge. What do they eat?"): March 22, 1855 (" I have noticed crows in the meadows ever since they were first partially bare, three weeks ago "); March 22, 1856 ("Many tracks of crows in snow along the edge of the open water against Merrick’s at Island. They thus visit the edge of water—this and brooks —before any ground is exposed. Is it for small shellfish?"); March 20, 1856 ("Perhaps these [Paludina decisa] make part of the food of the crows which visit this brook and whose tracks I now see on the edge, and have all winter. Probably they also pick up some dead frogs"); March 5, 1859 (" I see crows walking about on the ice half covered with snow in the middle of the meadows, where there is no grass, apparently to pick up the worms and other insects left there since the midwinter freshet ."). See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring:  The crowing of cocks, the cawing of crows

A hen-hawk rises and sails away over the Holden Wood as in summer. Saw and heard one scream the 2d. See March 15, 1856 ("Hear two hawks scream. There is something truly March-like in it, like a prolonged blast or whistling of the wind"); March 15, 1860 ("A hen-hawk sails away from the wood southward.  

  

These hawks, as usual, began to be common about the first of March, showing that they were returning from their winter quarters.").  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: the Hawks of March

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

March 4. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 4

A hen-hawk rises 

and sails over Holden Wood 

as in the summer.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, True March days for wind. 

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-600304

The sour scent of cinnamon ferns decaying.

a fragrance

from the past

almost forgotten

~ Buson

October 2

Rain in the night and cloudy this forenoon. We had all our dog-days in September this year. It was too dry before, even for fungi. Only the last three weeks have we had any fungi to speak of. 

Nowadays I see most of the election-cake fungi, with crickets and slugs eating them. 

I see a cricket feeding on an apple, into which he has eaten so deep that only his posteriors project, but he does not desist a moment though I shake the apple and finally drop it on the ground. 

P. M. — To lygodium. 

One of the large black birches on Tarbell's land is turned completely brownish-yellow and has lost half its leaves; the other is green still. 

I see in the cornfield above this birch, collected about the trunk of an oak, on the ground, fifty to a hundred ears of corn which have been stripped to the cob, evidently by the squirrels. Apparently a great part of the kernels remain on the ground, but in every case the germ has been eaten out. It is apparent that the squirrel prefers this part, for he has not carried off the rest. 

I perceive in various places, in low ground, this afternoon, the sour scent of cinnamon ferns decaying. It is an agreeable phenomenon, reminding me of the season and of past years. 

So many maple and pine and other leaves have now fallen that in the woods, at least, you walk over a carpet of fallen leaves. 

As I sat on an old pigeon-stand, not used this year, on the hill south of the swamp, at the foot of a tree, set up with perches nailed on it, a pigeon hawk, as I take it, came and perched on the tree. As if it had been wont to catch pigeons at such places. 

That large lechea, now so freshly green and some times scarlet, looks as if it would make a pretty edging like box, as has been suggested. 

The Aster undulatus and Solidago coesia and often puberula are particularly prominent now, looking late and bright, attracting bees, etc. 

I see the S. coesia so covered with the little fuzzy gnats as to be whitened by them. 

How bright the S. puberula in sprout-lands, — its yellow wand, — perhaps in the midst of a clump of little scarlet or dark-purple black oaks! 

The A. undulatus looks fairer than ever, now that flowers are more scarce. 

The climbing fern is perfectly fresh, — and apparently therefore an evergreen, — the more easily found amid the withered cinnamon and flowering ferns. 

Acorns generally, as I notice, — swamp white, shrub, black, and white, — are turned brown; but few are still green. Yet few, except of shrub oaks, have fallen. I hear them fall, however, as I stand under the trees. This would be the time to notice them. 

How much pleasanter to go along the edge of the woods, through the field in the rear of the farmhouse, whence you see only its gray roof and its haystacks, than to keep the road by its door! This we think as we return behind Martial Miles's. 

I observed that many pignuts had fallen yesterday, though quite green. 

Some of the Umbelliferoe, now gone to seed, are very pretty to examine. The Cicuta maculata, for instance, the concave umbel is so well spaced, the different um-bellets (?) like so many constellations or separate systems in the firmament. 

Hear a hylodes in the swamp.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 2, 1859

Nowadays I see most of the election-cake fungi, with crickets and slugs eating them. See note to September 21, 1859 ("And now at last I see a few toadstools, — the election-cake (the yellowish, glazed over) and the taller, brighter-yellow above. Those shell-less slugs which eat apples eat these also."); October 15, 1857 ("I saw the other day a cricket standing on his head in a chocolate-colored (inside) fungus")

I see a cricket feeding on an apple. See October 2, 1857 ("Since the cooler weather many crickets are seen clustered on warm banks and by sunny wall-sides."); See also October 11, 1857 ("These are cricket days.")

The sour scent of cinnamon ferns decaying, an agreeable phenomenon, reminding me of the season and of past years. See October 2, 1857 ("In the more open swamp beyond, these ferns, recently killed by the frost and exposed to the sun, fill the air with a very strong sour scent") See also  October 1, 1858 ("The cinnamon ferns are crisp and sour in open grounds");  and note to September 24, 1859 (" Stedman Buttrick's handsome maple and pine swamp is full of cinnamon ferns.") See also May 7, 1852 ("How full of reminiscence is any fragrance!"): July 31, 1856 ("Thoughts of autumn occupy my mind, and the memory of past years."); August 18, 1856 (" The alder cricket, clear, loud, and autumnal . . . reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time . . . a pleasing, thoughtful melancholy, like the sound of the flail.") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Cinnamon Fern 

 The climbing fern is perfectly fresh, — and apparently therefore an evergreen. See May 1, 1859 ("The climbing fern is persistent, i. e. retains its greenness still, though now partly brown and withered.")

The Cicuta maculata like so many constellations or separate systems in the firmament. See August 30, 1857 ("The flower of Cicuta maculata smells like the leaves of the golden senecio. ")

October 2. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  October 2

The sour scent of ferns

reminds me of the season

and of the past years.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, 

The sour scent of cinnamon ferns decaying. 

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 © 2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-591002

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

I hear of the first early blueberries.

July 16. 

Thursday. P. M. — To Hemlocks. 

Geum album, apparently well out. 

As I walk through the pasture side of the hill, see a mouse or two glance before me in faint galleries in the grass. They are seldom seen, for these small deer, like the larger, disappear suddenly, as if they had exploded before your eyes. 

Lechea thymifolia of Gray is the large-podded one according to plate in his "Genera.” 

G., in same, shows five petals to Portulaca and says it "has from early times been naturalized around gardens almost every where ... is said to be truly wild in Arkansas and Texas.” *

I hear of the first early blueberries brought to market. What a variety of rich blues their berries present, i. e. the earliest kind! Some are quite black and without bloom. What innocent flavors!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 16, 1857

Geum album, apparently well out.  See July 6, 1856 (“White avens, evidently Bigelow’s Geum album (which Gray makes only a variety of G. Virginianum), a good while, very rough and so much earlier than the G. Virginianum that only one flower remains. The heads have attained their full size, with twisted tails to the awns, while the other will not open for some days. I think Bigelow must be right.”) See also July 16, 1856 (“Geum Virginianum, apparently two or three days.”); June 28, 1857 (“Geum Virginianum some time, apparently, past its prime . . .say, then, the 18th. ”);

G[ray] shows five petals to Portulaca . . . See August 14, 1856 ("On roadside heap at Emerson's, a portulaca with leaves one inch wide and seven petals (!) instead of five.”)

• *"Asa Gray, The Genera of the Plants of the United States , Portulaca -  Purslane : "Etymology, Geographical Distribution, &c. The old Latin name, of uncertain meaning, for the Common Purslane, which has been used from all antiquity as a potherh, and in salads. All are natives of the tropics and of the southern border of the northern temperate zone ; but the common Purslane has from early times been naturalized around gardens almost every where. Several showy species have recently become common in cultiva tion. P. pilosa is indigenous on our Southern frontiers ; and P. oleracea itself is said to be truly wild in Arkansas and Texas.”

What a variety of rich blues their berries present, See July 11, 1857 (“Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum ripe. Their dark blue with a bloom is a color that surprises me. ”); July 13, 1852 ("There are evidently several kinds of . . . blueberries not described by botanists: of the very early blueberries at least two varieties, one glossy black with dark-green leaves, the other a rich light blue with bloom and yellowish-green leaves"); July 13, 1854 (“The V. Pennsylvanicum is soft and rather thin and tasteless, mountain and spring like, with its fine light-blue bloom, very handsome, simple and ambrosial.”) August 4, 1856 (“still fresh, the great very light blue (i. e. with a very thick blue bloom) Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum in heavy clusters, that early ambrosial fruit, delicate-flavored, thin-skinned, and cool, — Olympian fruit”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Blueberry

This month has been windy and cold.

March 13. 

Thermometer this morning, about 7 A. M., 2°, and the same yesterday. 

This month has been windy and cold, a succession of snows one or two inches deep, soon going off, the spring birds all driven off. It is in strong contrast with the last month. 

Captain E. P. Dorr of Buffalo tells me that there is a rise and fall daily of the lakes about two or three inches, not accounted for. A difference between the lakes and sea is that when there is no wind the former are quite smooth, no swell. Otherwise he thought that no one could tell whether he was on the lakes or the ocean. 

Described the diver’s descending one hundred and sixty-eight feet to a sunken steamer and getting up the safe after she had been sunk three years. De scribed the breeding of the capelin at Labrador, a small fish about as big as a sardine. They crowd along the shore in such numbers that he had seen a cartload crowded quite on to the shore high and dry by those in the rear. ' 

Elliott, the botanist, says (page 184) that the Lechea villosa (major of Michaux), “if kept from running to seed, would probably form a very neat edging for the beds of a flower garden; the foliage of the radical branches is very handsome during the winter, and the size of the plant is well suited to such a purpose.” 

Rhus Toxicodendron (page 363): “The juice which exudes on plucking the leaf-stalks from the stem of the R. radicans is a good indelible dye for marking linen or cotton.”. 

Of the Drosera rotundzfolia (page 375), “This fluid never appears to fall from the hairs, but is secreted nearly in proportion to its evaporation, and the secre tion is supposed to be greatest in dry clear weather,” hence called sundew. 

Howitt, in his “ Boy’s Adventures in Australia,” says, “People here thought they had discovered large numbers of the graves of the blacks, lying lengthways, as amongst the whites, but these have turned out to be a natural phenomenon, and called Dead Men’s Graves.” The natives generally bury — when they do not burn — in a sitting posture. Is the country cold enough to allow these mounds to have been made by the ice?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 13, 1857

This month has been windy and cold, a succession of snows one or two inches deep, soon going off, the spring birds all driven off. It is in strong contrast with the last month. See February 18, 1857 ("The snow is nearly all gone, and it is so warm and springlike that I walk over to the hill, listening for spring birds."); March 5, 1857 ("This and the last four or five days very gusty. Most of the warmth of the fire is carried off by the draught, which consumes the wood very fast, faster than a much colder but still day in winter.") See also  March 15, 1853 ("I have not taken a more blustering walk this past winter than this afternoon."); March 28, 1854 ("Coldest day for a month or more, — severe as almost any in the winter."); March 28, 1855 ("I run about these cold and blustering days, on the whole perhaps the worst to bear in the year, . . . As for the singing of birds, — the few that have come to us, — it is too cold for them to sing and for me to hear. "); March 12, 1856 (" If the present cold should continue uninterrupted a thousand years would not the pond become solid?"); March 8, 1860 ("Nowadays we separate the warmth of the sun from the cold of the wind and observe that the cold does not pervade all places, but being due to strong northwest winds, if we get into some sunny and sheltered nook where they do not penetrate, we quite forget how cold it is elsewhere. ")

Late flowers, berries and changing leaves

October 2. 

P. M. — To Cliffs via Hubbard's meadow. 

Succory still, with its cool blue, here and there, and Hieracium Canadense still quite fresh, with its very pretty broad strap-shaped rays, broadest at the end, alternately long and short, with five very regular sharp teeth in the end of each. 

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, with its bristly leaves. Its seed-vessels are perfect little cream-pitchers of graceful form. 

The mountain sumach now a dark scarlet quite generally. 

The prinos berries are in their prime, seven sixteenths of an inch in diameter. They are scarlet, some what lighter than the arum berries. They are now very fresh and bright, and what adds to their effect is the perfect freshness and greenness of the leaves amid which they are seen. 

Gerardia purpurea still. 

Brakes in Hubbard's Swamp Wood are withered, quite dry. 

Solidago speciosa completely out, though not a flower was out September 27th, or five days ago; say three or four days. 

The river is still higher, owing to the rain of September 30th, partly covering the meadows; yet they are endeavoring to rake cranberries. After all, I perceive that in some places the greatest injury done by the water to these berries has probably been that it prevented their ripening, but generally it has been by softening them. They carry them home, spread, and dry them, and pick out the spoilt ones. One gets only fifty bushels where he would have had two hundred. 

Eupatorium purpureum is generally done. 

Now and then I see a Hypericum Canadense flower still. The leaves, etc., of this and the angulosum are turned crimson. 

I am amused to see four little Irish boys only five or six years old getting a horse in a pasture, for their father apparently, who is at work in a neighboring field. They have all in a row got hold of a very long halter and are leading him. All wish to have a hand in it. It is surprising that he obeys such small specimens of humanity, but he seems to be very docile, a real family horse. At length, by dint of pulling and shouting, they get him into a run down a hill, and though he moves very deliberately, scarcely faster than a walk, all but the one at the end of the line soon cut and run to right and left, without having looked be hind, expecting him to be upon them. They haul up at last at the bars, which are down, and then the family puppy, a brown pointer, about two-thirds grown, comes bounding to join them and assist. He is as youthful and about as knowing as any of them. The horse marches gravely behind, obeying the faint tug at the halter, or honestly stands still from time to time, as if not aware that they are pulling at all, though they are all together straining every nerve to start him. It is interesting to behold this faithful beast, the oldest and wisest of the company, thus implicitly obeying the lead of the youngest and weakest.

The second lechea radical shoots are one inch long. 

Solidago bicolor considerably past prime. Corydalis still fresh. 

Saw apparently two phoebes on the tops of the dry mulleins. Why so rarely seen for so many months?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 2, 1856

The mountain sumach now a dark scarlet quite generally. See October 2, 1853 (“The smooth sumach is but a dull red.”)

The prinos berries are in their prime . . . See September 23, 1854 ("Very brilliant and remarkable now are the prinos berries, so brilliant and fresh when most things -- flowers and berries -- have withered.”);  September 28, 1851 ("The swamp is bordered with the red-berried alder, or prinos,")  

Prinos: Ilex verticillata (Prinos verticillatus) Black Alder. Winterberry. Feverbush.
Common winterberry is a shrub usually from 6 to 8 feet high (sometimes much higher) with grayish bark and smooth twigs. The leaves are from 2 to 3 inches long and about an inch wide. They are usually rather thick and sharply toothed. In autumn the leaves turn black. The flowers which appear from May to July, are small and white, the male clusters consisting of 2 to 10 flowers and the female clusters of only 1 to 3. The bright-red, shining fruits about the size of a pea and each containing about six seeds, are clustered around the stem. Branches and twigs of this plant with their bright-red berries are a familiar sight during the Christmas season when they are much used for decorative purposes.

Solidago bicolor considerably past prime. See August 12, 1852 ("Solidago bicolor, white goldenrod, apparently in good season")

Two phoebes on the tops of the dry mulleins. Why so rarely seen for so many months? See  August 26, 1854 ("I hear part of a phoebe's strain, as I go over the railroad bridge. It is the voice of dying summer."); September 10, 1854 ("Heard my last phoebe August 26th. ")

Past autumns and the lapse of time

August 18

P. M. — To Beck Stow's.

Now, perhaps, get thoroughwort. The lecheas in the Great Fields are now turning red, especially the fine one. 

August 18, 2016

As I go along the hillsides in sprout-lands, amid the Solidago stricta,

looking for the blackberries left after the rain, 

the sun warm as ever, but the air cool nevertheless, 

I hear the steady (not intermittent) shrilling of apparently the alder cricket, clear, loud, and autumnal, a season sound. Hear it, but see it not. 

It reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time, suggests a pleasing, thoughtful melancholy, like the sound of the flail. Such preparation, such an outfit has our life, and so little brought to pass! 

Hear a faint-warbling bird amid birches and pines. Clear-yellow throat and breast, greenish-yellow head, conspicuous white bar on wings, white beneath, forked tail, bluish legs. Can it be pine warbler? The note, thus faint, is not like it. See black and white creeper. 

Yellow Bethlehem-star yet, and indigo. 

Saw yesterday and some days before a monster aphis some five eighths of an inch long on a huckleberry leaf. I mistook it, as before, for a sort of loose-spun cocoon. It was obovate, indistinctly ribbed, of long, loose, white, streaming down, but being touched it recoiled and, taken off the leaf, rolled itself into a ball. The father of all the aphides.

OEnothera pumila still.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 18, 1856

I hear the steady shrilling of . . . the alder cricket, clear, loud, and autumnal, a season sound. See August 18, 1851 ("How early in the year it begins to be late! The sound of the crickets, even in the spring, makes our hearts beat with its awful reproof, while it encourages with its seasonable warning"); See also  August 4, 1856 (" Have heard the alder cricket some days. The turning-point is reached."); August 4, 1851 ("I hear the note of a cricket, and am penetrated with the sense of autumn.") ; August 15, 1852 ("That clear ring like an alder locust (is it a cricket ?) for some time past is a sound which belongs to the season."); and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Cricket in August

It reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time . . . so little brought to pass!  See ; August 18, 1851 ("It plainly makes men sad to think. Hence pensiveness is akin to sadness") August 18, 1853 ("What means this sense of lateness that so comes over one now, — as if the rest of the year were down-hill, and if we had not performed anything before, we should not now? . . .The year is full of warnings of its shortness, as is life. The sound of so many insects and the sight of so many flowers affect us so,. . . They say, 'For the night cometh in which no man may work.'"); .August 18, 1853 (“The season of flowers or of promise may be said to be over, and now is the season of fruits; but where is our fruit ?); See also July 31, 1856 ("I hear the distant sound of a flail, and thoughts of autumn occupy my mind, and the memory of past years."); August 20, 1858 ("This weather is a preface to autumn. There is more shadow in the landscape than a week ago, methinks, and the creak of the cricket sounds cool and steady. The grass and foliage and landscape generally are of a more thought-inspiring color, suggest what some perchance would call a pleasing melancholy. "); August 29, 1854 ("Early for several mornings I have heard the sound of a flail. It leads me to ask if I have spent as industrious a spring and summer as the farmer, and gathered as rich a crop of experience.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Midsummer midlife blues

Yellow Bethlehem-star yet. [Hypoxis erecta, or Hypoxis hirsuta, commonly known as yellow or  common star-grass] See June 15, 1851 ("The Hypoxis erecta, yellow Bethlehem-star . . . should be called yellow-eyed grass, methinks."); June 5, 1855 ("Yellow Bethlehem-star in prime.");  August 24, 1853 ("Yellow Bethlehem-star still."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Yellow Bethlehem-star

Indigo. See July 17, 1852 ("Some fields are covered now with tufts or clumps of indigo- weed, yellow with blossoms."); July 25, 1853 ("Bunches of indigo, still in bloom, more numerously than anywhere that I remember"); August 6, 1858 ("indigo, ' ' 'is still abundantly in bloom. "); August 17, 1851 ("Indigo-weed still in bloom by the dry wood-path-side,")

A monster aphis some five eighths of an inch long on a huckleberry leaf. See August 26, 1856 ("Another monster aphis on a huckleberry leaf.")

August 18. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau August 18

A sound reminds me.

Past autumns, lapse of time – so

little brought to pass.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Past autumns and the lapse of time

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 © 2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560818

Bobolinks are heard

July 15

P. M. — To Hubbard's Close and Walden. 

Carrots by railroad, how long? 

I notice the froth concealing a grub, not only on trees and bushes, but on Potentilla Norvegica, Lechea (great-fruited), etc., etc., Pycnanthemum muticum, even Lobelia inflata, red clover, Aster puniceus. This spots my clothes when going through bushes. 

Both small hypericums, Canadense and mutilum, apparently some days at least by Stow's ditch.

Bobolinks are heard — their link, link — above and amid the tall rue which now whitens the meadows.

Checkerberry, a day or two. 

Spiranthes gracilis well out, in dry, slender grass by roadside. 

I do not notice the krigia out in my afternoon walks, and so it is not known by many, but in the morning its disk is very commonly seen. 

When I crossed the entrance to the pond meadow on a stick, a pout ran ashore and was lodged so that I caught it in the grass, apparently frightened. While I held it, I noticed another, very large one approach the shore very boldly within a few feet of me. Going in to bathe, I caught a pout on the bottom within a couple of rods of the shore. It seemed sick. Then, wading into the shallow entrance of the meadow, I saw a school of a thousand little pouts about three quarters of an inch long without any attending pout, and now have no doubt that the pout I had caught (but let go again) was tending them, and the large one was the father, apparently further off. The mother had perhaps gone into deep water to recruit after her air-bath. The young were pretty shy; kept in shallow water, and were taking pretty good care of themselves. If the water should suddenly fall, they might be caught in the meadow. 

Ludwigia alternifolia not quite; in a day or two. 

Amid the high grass or rushes by that meadow-side started a water adder. It was about three feet long, but large round in proportion, with about one hundred and forty abdominal plates and a long, slender tail. It was black above, with indistinct transverse brown bands. Under its head white; first half of belly white, with triangular of conical dark brown red marks on sides; the white gradually becomes more narrow and yellowish for the latter half of the abdomen, bordered by more numerous and still darker reddish marks, becoming confluent and alternating with silvery ones, giving a handsome regularly mottled or spotted look. Silvery across the belly. The barred part dark-reddish. Under the tail no reddish.

Corylus rostrata differs from  common in the twig being smooth and not glandular-hairy. 

Scutellaria galericulata, some time. Polygonum sagittatum, almost. 

That green sponge plant gathered yesterday is remarkably slow to dry; though it has been many hours exposed to the sun and wiped with many papers and has been a whole day exposed to the air, it is far from dry yet. It is more pungent and strong-scented than ever and sickens me to stay in the room with a little of it.

H. D  Thoreau, Journal, July 15, 1856

Both small hypericums, Canadense and mutilum, apparently some days. See  July 26, 1856  ("Arranged the hypericums in bottles this morning and watched their opening.");   August 19, 1856 ("I see Hypericum Canadense and mutilum abundantly open at 3 p. M. Apparently they did not bear the dry, hot weather of July so well. They are apparently now in prime."); August 27, 1856  (" Hypericum Canadense and mutilum now pretty generally open at 4 P.M., thus late in the season, it being more moist and cooler."); See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

Bobolinks are heard — their link, link — above and amid the tall rue which now whitens the meadows. See July 15, 1854 ("The goldfinch twitters over oftener, and I hear the link link of the bobolink, and the crickets creak more as in the fall. All these sounds dispose our minds to serenity. We seem to be passing, or to have passed, a dividing line between spring and autumn."); July 16, 1852 ("I hear the link link, fall-like note of the bobolink (?) in the meadows; he has lost the bobo off. Is it the goldfinch that goes twittering over, but which I cannot see?"); See also  July 12 1856 ("Rue is beginning now to whiten the meadows on all hands."); July 17, 1852 ("The meadows on the Turnpike are white with the meadow-rue now more than ever.") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Bobolink

"Checkerberry," a day or two: American wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbent). See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Checkerberry

A  water adder about three feet long, but large round in proportion, with about one hundred and forty abdominal plates and a long, slender tail. See July 23, 1856 ("The water adder killed on the 15th and left hanging on a twig. . . is already mere skin and skeleton, ") and note to April 26, 1857 ("I have the same objection to killing a snake that I have to the killing of any other animal, yet the most humane man that I know never omits to kill one.")

July 15. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau July 15

Bobolinks link link

amid the tall rue that now

whitens the meadow.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Bobolinks are heard 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

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

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

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560715