The painted tortoises are nowadays laying their eggs.

June 6.

Tuesday.

I perceive the sweetness of the locust blossoms fifteen or twenty rods off as I go down the street.

P. M. – To Assabet Bathing-Place and return by stone bridge.

I see now great baggy light-green puffs on the panicled andromeda, some with a reddish side, two or three inches through.

The Stellaria longifolia has been out, apparently, a day or two.

A slender rush, flowered at the top, at bathing-place, some time.

The painted tortoises are nowadays laying their eggs. I see where they have just been digging in the sand or gravel in a hundred places on the southerly sides of hills and banks near the river, but they have laid their eggs in very few. I find none whole.

Here is one which has made its hole with the hind part of its shell and its tail apparently, and the ground is wet under it. They make a great deal of water at these times, apparently to soften the earth or to give it consistency, or both.

They are remarkably circumspect, and it is difficult to see one working. They stop instantly and draw in their heads, and do not move till you are out of sight, and then probably try a new place.

They have dabbled in the sand and left the marks of their tails all around.

The black oaks, birches, etc., etc., are covered with ephemeræ of various sizes and colors, with one, two, three, or no streamers, ready to take wing at evening, i.e. about seven. I am covered with them and much incommoded.

There is garlic by the wall, not yet out.

The air over the river meadows is saturated with sweetness, but I look round in vain on the yellowish sensitive fern and the reddish eupatorium springing up.

From time to time, at mid-afternoon, is heard the trump of a bullfrog, like a Triton's horn.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 6, 1854

The Stellaria longifolia has been out, apparently, a day or two. See June 6, 1859 ("Stellaria longifolia, at Well Meadow Head, how long?") See also June 8, 1856 ("Stellaria longrfolia opposite Barbarea Shore not yet out")

The painted tortoises are nowadays laying their eggs. See  June 6, 1858 ("See three or four Emys insculpta about, making their holes in the gravelly bank south of Assabet Bath"); June 6, 1855 ("I see a yellow-spotted tortoise twenty rods from river, and a painted one four rods from it which has just made a hole for her eggs.");  June 7, 1854 ("Yesterday I saw the painted and the wood tortoise out."); June 10, 1857 ("A wood tortoise making a hole for her eggs just like a picta's hole.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Painted Turtle (Emys picta); A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wood Turtlw (Emys insculpta);  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Yellow-Spotted Turtle (Emys guttata)

The black oaks, birches, etc., etc., are covered with ephemeræ of various sizes and colors, with one, two, three, or no streamers, ready to take wing at evening, i.e. about seven. See June 2, 1854 "The whole atmosphere over the river was full of shad-flies.") . . .It was a great flight of ephemera"); June 9, 1854 ("The air is now full of shad-flies, and there is an incessant sound made by the fishes leaping for their evening meal.”); June 8, 1856 (“My boat being by chance at the same place where it was in ’54, I noticed a great flight of ephemera”); June 9, 1856 ("Again, about seven, the ephemera came out, in numbers as many as last night, ... and the fishes leap as before.")

From time to time, at mid-afternoon, is heard the trump of a bullfrog, like a Triton's horn. See May 10, 1858 (" I hear the first regular bullfrog's trump. . . . This sound, heard low and far off over meadows when the warmer hours have come, grandly inaugurates the summer."); May 25, 1855 ("Heard the first regular bullfrog’s trump on the 18th; none since."); June 1, 1853 ("The hylodes are no longer heard. The bullfrogs begin to trump.”); June 4, 1853 ("The bullfrog now begins to be heard at night regularly; has taken the place of the hylodes."); June 13, 1851 ("The different frogs mark the seasons pretty well,- the peeping hyla, the dreaming frog, and the bullfrog . . . The bullfrog belongs to summer."); June 15, 1860 ("The bullfrogs now commonly trump at night, and the mosquitoes are now really troublesome.”)

From time to time, at

mid-afternoon, is heard the 

trump of a bullfrog

The cool peep of the robin calling to its young.

June 10.

Friday.

June 10, 2016

Another great fog this morning.

Haying commencing in front yards.

P. M. – To Mason ‘s pasture in Carlisle.

Cool but agreeable easterly wind.

Streets now beautiful with verdure and shade of elms, under which you look, through an air clear for summer, to the woods in the horizon.

By the way, I amused myself yesterday afternoon with looking from my window, through a spy glass, at the tops of the woods in the horizon.

It was pleasant to bring them so near and individualize the trees, to examine in detail the tree-tops which before you had beheld only in the mass as the woods in the horizon.

It was an exceedingly rich border, seen thus against (sic), and the imperfections in a particular tree-top more than two miles off were quite apparent.

I could easily have seen a hawk sailing over the top of the wood, and possibly his nest in some higher tree.

Thus to contemplate, from my attic in the village, the hawks circling about their nests above some dense forest or swamp miles away, almost as if they were flies on my own premises! I actually distinguished a taller white pine with which I am well acquainted, with a double top rising high above the surrounding woods, between two and three miles distant, which, with the naked eye, I had confounded with the nearer woods.

But to return, as C. and I go through the town, we hear the cool peep of the robin calling to its young, now learning to fly.

The locust bloom is now perfect, filling the street with its sweetness, but it is more agreeable to my eye than my nose.

The curled dock out.

The fuzzy seeds or down of the black (?) willows is filling the air over the river and, falling on the water, covers the surface.

By the 30th of May, at least, white maple keys were falling. How early, then, they had matured their seed!

Cow-wheat out, and Iris Virginica, and the grape.

The mountain laurel will begin to bloom to-morrow.

The frost some weeks since killed most of the buds and shoots, except where they were protected by trees or by themselves, and now new shoots have put forth and grow four or five inches from the sides of what were the leading ones.

It is a plant which plainly requires the protection of the wood. It is stunted in the open pasture.

We continued on, round the head of “Cedar Swamp,” and may say that we drank at the source of it or of Saw Mill Brook, where a spring is conducted through a hollow log to a tub for cattle.

Crossed on to the old Carlisle road by the house north of Isaiah Green ‘s, and then across the road through the woods to the Paul Adams house by Bateman‘s Pond.

Saw a hog-pasture of a dozen acres in the woods, with thirty or forty large hogs and a shelter for them at night, a half-mile east of the last house, — something rare in these days here abouts.

What shall this great wild tract over which we strolled be called?

Many farmers have pastures there, and wood-lots, and orchards. It consists mainly of rocky pastures.

It contains what I call the Boulder Field, the Yellow Birch Swamp, the Black Birch Hill, the Laurel Pasture, the Hog-Pasture, the White Pine Grove, the Easterbrooks Place, the Old Lime-Kiln, the Lime Quarries, Spruce Swamp, the Ermine Weasel Woods; also the Oak Meadows, the Cedar Swamp, the Kibbe Place, and the old place northwest of Brooks Clark‘s.

Ponkawtasset bounds it on the south.

There are a few frog-ponds and an old mill-pond within it, and Bateman‘s Pond on its edge.

What shall the whole be called?

The old Carlisle road, which runs through the middle of it, is bordered on each side with wild apple pastures, where the trees stand without order, having, many if not most of them, sprung up by accident or from pomace sown at random, and are for the most part concealed by birches and pines.

These orchards are very extensive, and yet many of these apple trees, growing as forest trees, bear good crops of apples.

It is a paradise for walkers in the fall.

There are also boundless huckleberry pastures as well as many blueberry swamps.

Shall we call it the Easterbrooks Country? It would make a princely estate in Europe, yet it is owned by farmers, who live by the labor of their hands and do not esteem it much.

Plenty of huckleberries and barberries here.

A second great uninhabited tract is that on the Marlborough road, stretching westerly from Francis Wheeler‘s to the river, and beyond about three miles, and from Harrington‘s on the north to Dakin‘s on the south, more than a mile in width.

A third, the Walden Woods.

A fourth, the Great Fields.

These four are all in Concord.

There are one or two in the town who probably have Indian blood in their veins, and when they exhibit any unusual irascibility, their neighbors say they have got their Indian blood roused.

C. proposes to call the first-named wild the Melvin Preserve, for it is favorite hunting-ground with George Melvin. It is a sort of Robin Hood Ground.

Shall we call it the Apple Pastures?

Now, methinks, the birds begin to sing less tumultuously, with, as the weather grows more constantly warm, morning and noon and evening songs, and suitable recesses in the concert.

High blackberries conspicuously in bloom, whitening the side of lanes.

Mention is made in the Town Records, as quoted by Shattuck, page 33, under date of 1654, of “the Hogepen-walke about Annursnake," and reference is at the same time made to “the old hogepen.” The phrase is “in the Hogepen-walke about Annursnake," i. e. in the hog-pasture.

There is some propriety in calling such a tract a walk, methinks, from the habit which hogs have of walking about with an independent air and pausing from time to time to look about from under their flapping ears and snuff the air.

The hogs I saw this afternoon, all busily rooting without holding up their heads to look at us, — the whole field looked as if it had been most miserably plowed or scarified with a harrow, — with their shed to retreat to in rainy weather, affected me as more human than other quadrupeds.

They are comparatively clean about their lodgings, and their shed, with its litter bed, was on the whole cleaner than an Irishman ‘s shanty.

I am not certain what there was so very human about them.

In 1668 the town had a pasture near Silas Holden‘s and a herd of fifty cattle constantly watched by a “herdsman,” etc. (page 43).

In 1672 there is an article referring to the “crane field and brickil field.”

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 10, 1853

Streets now beautiful with verdure and shade of elms, under which you look, through an air clear for summer, to the woods in the horizon. See May 27, 1853 ("A new season has commenced - summer - leafy June. The elms begin to droop and are heavy with shade."); June 2, 1852 ("The elms now hold a good deal of shade and look rich and heavy with foliage. You see darkness in them"); June 4, 1860 ("The foliage of the elms over the street impresses me as dense and heavy already."); June 9, 1856 ("Now I notice where an elm is in the shadow of a cloud,—the black elm-tops and shadows of June. It is a dark eyelash which suggests a flashing eye beneath")

I amused myself yesterday afternoon with looking from my window, through a spy glass. See June 9, 1853 ("I have come with a spy-glass to look at the hawks.")

Crossed on to the old Carlisle road by the house north of Isaiah Green ‘s, and then across the road through the woods . . . saw a hog-pasture of a dozen acres in the woods, with thirty or forty large hogs. See September 19, 1851 ("Mr. Isaiah Green of Carlisle. . .spoke of one old field, now grown up, which [we] were going through, as the "hog-pasture.");  October 3, 1859 ("Looking from the hog-pasture over the valley of Spencer Brook westward, we see the smoke rising from a huge chimney above a gray roof amid the woods, at a distance, where some family is preparing its evening meal.")

Shall we call it the Easterbrooks Country? See October 20, 1857 (“What a wild and rich domain that Easterbrooks Country . . . the miles of huckleberries, and of barberries, and of wild apples, so fair, both in flower and fruit,”); October 15, 1859 (“Each town should have a park, or rather a primitive forest, of five hundred or a thousand acres, where a stick should never be cut for fuel, a common possession forever, for instruction and recreation. . . All Walden Wood might have been preserved for our park forever, with Walden in its midst, and the Easterbrooks Country, an unoccupied area of some four square miles, might have been our huckleberry-field”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cedar Swamps

We hear the cool peep of the robin calling to its young, now learning to fly. See June 9, 1856 ("A young robin abroad. ");  June 18, 1854 ("I think I heard the anxious peep of a robin whose young have just left the nest.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Robins in Spring

The locust bloom is now perfect, filling the street with its sweetness. See June 7, 1854 ("The locusts so full of pendulous white racemes five inches long, filling the air with their sweetness and resounding with the hum of humble and honey bees"); June 9, 1852 ("The locust in bloom"); June 11, 1856 ("The locust in graveyard shows but few blossoms yet.")

June 10.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 10

The cool peep of the 

robin calling to its young

now learning to fly.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The cool peep of the

robin calling to its young

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-530610

A May storm, gentle and warm – Foliage changes several shades darker in the rain seen while still cloudy.

May 19. 

Thunder-showers in the night, and it still storms, with holdings-up. A May storm, gentle and rather warm. 

The days of the golden willow are over for this season; their withered catkins strew the causeways and cover the water and also my boat, which is moored beneath them. 

The locust has grown three inches and is blossom-budded. It may come just after the white ash at least, and before the celtis. 

The weather toward evening still cloudy and some what mizzling. 

The foliage of the young maples, elms, etc., in the street has become, since the rain commenced, several shades darker, changing from its tender and lighter green, as if the electricity of the thunder-storm may have had some effect on it. 

It is best observed while it is still cloudy; almost a bluish, no longer yellowish green, it is peculiarly rich. 

The very grass appears to have undergone a similar change.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 19, 1853

The days of the golden willow are over for this season. Compare May 14, 1852 ("Going over the Corner causeway, the willow blossoms fill the air with a sweet fragrance, and I am ready to sing, Ah! willow, willow! These willows have yellow bark, bear yellow flowers and yellowish-green leaves, and are now haunted by the summer yellowbird and Maryland yellow-throat") See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau. Willows on the Causeway.

The locust has grown three inches and is blossom-budded. See June 10, 1853 ("The locust bloom is now perfect, filling the street with its sweetness."); June 7, 1854 ("The locusts so full of pendulous white racemes five inches long, filling the air with their sweetness and resounding with the hum of humble and honey bees"); June 9, 1852 ("The locust in bloom"); June 11, 1856 ("The locust in graveyard shows but few blossoms yet.")

It may come just after the white ash at least, and before the celtis. See May 18, 1853 ("White ash fully in bloom."); May 18, 1853 ("The Celtis occidentalis in bloom, maybe a day")

A May storm, gentle and rather warm.See May 17, 1853 ("Does not summer begin after the May storm?”);  note to May 18, 1853 ("Perchance a May storm is brewing. This day it has mizzled  . . . Methinks this is common at this season of the tender foliage.")

The very grass appears to have undergone a similar change. Compare May 19, 1860 ("The grass and the tender leaves, refreshed and expanded by the rain, are peculiarly bright and yellowish-green when seen in a favorable light.").

May 19. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 19

Foliage changes

several shades darker in the rain

seen while still cloudy.

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

Great purple fringed orchis..

June 20. 

River, on account of rain, some two feet above summer level. 

Great purple fringed orchis. 

What that colored-flowered locust in Deacon Farrar's yard and house this side Lincoln?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 20, 1859

Two feet above summer level. Compare June 20, 1860 ("More rain falls to-day than any day since March, if not this year."); June 23, 1860 ("At 7 p. m. the river is fifteen and three fourths inches above summer level.")

Great purple fringed orchis. See: June 8, 1853 ("The great fringed orchis just open.");  June 9, 1854 ("Find the great fringed orchis out apparently two or three days. Two are almost fully out, two or three only budded.")  June 12, 1853 ("Visited the great [purple fringed] orchis. . . its great spike, six inches by two, of delicate pale-purple flowers, which begin to expand at bottom, rises above and contrasts with the green leaves of the hellebore and skunk-cabbage and ferns. . . in the cool shade of an alder swamp."); June 13, 1853 ("some rare and beautiful flower, which you may never find again, perchance, like the great purple fringed orchis, ");  June 15, 1852 ("Here also, at Well Meadow Head, I see the fringed purple orchis, unexpectedly beautiful, though a pale lilac purple, — a large spike of purple flowers.. . .  Is it not significant that some rare and delicate and beautiful flowers should be found only in unfrequented wild swamps ? . . .. The most striking and handsome large wild-flower of the year thus far that I have seen.");June 16, 1854 ("It is eight days since I plucked the great orchis; one is perfectly fresh still in my pitcher. It may be plucked when the spike is only half opened, and will open completely and keep perfectly fresh in a pitcher more than a week. ") See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Fringed Orchids

What that colored-flowered locust. Compare June 7, 1854 ("The locusts so full of pendulous white racemes five inches long, filling the air with their sweetness and resounding with the hum of humble and honey bees")

June 20. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 20

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

Some fear to go to bed, lest the roof be blown off.

October 24. 

Early on Nawshawtuct. 

Black willows bare. Golden willow with yellow leaves. Larch yellow. Most alders by river bare except at top. Waxwork shows red. Celtis almost bare, with greenish-yellow leaves at top. 

Some hickories bare, some with rich golden-brown leaves. Locusts half bare, with greenish-yellow leaves. 

Catnip fresh and green and in bloom. Barberries green, reddish, or scarlet. Cranberry beds at distance in meadows (from hill) are red, for a week or more.

Lombardy poplar yellow. 

Red maples and elms alone very conspicuously bare in our landscape. 

White thorns bare, and berries mostly fallen, reddening the ground. 

Hedge-mustard still fresh and in bloom. Button- woods half bare. 

The rock maple leaves a clear yellow; now and then [one] shows some blood in its veins, and blushes. 

People are busy raking the leaves before their houses; some put them over their strawberries. 

It has rained all day, filling the streams. Just after dark, high southerly winds arise, but very warm, blowing the rain against the windows and roof and shaking the house. 

It is very dark withal, so that I can hardly find my way to a neighbor's. We think of vessels on the coast, and shipwrecks, and how this will bring down the remaining leaves and to-morrow morning the street will be strewn with rotten limbs of the elms amid the leaves and puddles, and some loose chimney or crazy building will have fallen. Some fear to go to bed, lest the roof be blown off.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  October 24, 1853

Some hickories bare, some with rich golden-brown leaves. See October 24, 1858 ("Hickories are two thirds fallen, at least.") and note to October 8, 1856 ("The hickory leaves are among the handsomest now, varying from green through yellow, more or less broadly green-striped on the principal veins, to pure yellow, at first almost lemon-yellow, at last browner and crisped. This mingling of yellow and green on the same leaf, the green next the veins where the life is most persistent, is very pleasing.")


Locusts half bare, with greenish-yellow leaves. See October 22, 1858 ("I see locusts are generally yellow but thinly leaved, and those at extremities. "); October 24, 1858 ("The locusts are bare except the tops,")

Just after dark, high southerly winds shaking the house. See October 17, 1857 ("Very high wind in the night, shaking the house. I feel it taking hold under the eaves, which project at the end of the house, each time with a jerk. Some rain also, and these two bring down the leaves.") and note to November 20, 1857 ("High wind in the night, shaking the house.")

High winds just after dark –

some fear to go to bed lest

the roof be blown off.

As if the globe itself were a fruit on its stem, with ever one cheek toward the sun.

October 24.

A northeast storm, though not much rainfalls to-day, but a fine driving mizzle or “drisk.” 

This, as usual, brings the geese, and at 2.30 P. M. I see two flocks go over. I hear that some were seen two or three weeks ago (??), faintly honking. A great many must go over to-day and also alight in this neighborhood. This weather warns them of the approach of winter, and this wind speeds them on their way. Surely, then, while geese fly overhead we can live here as contentedly as they do at York Factory on Hudson’s Bay. We shall perchance be as well provisioned and have as good society as they. 

Let us be of good cheer, then, and expect the annual vessel which brings the spring to us without fail.

 P. M. — To Woodis Park over Hill. 

The celtis has just fallen. Its leaves were apparently a yellow green. 

The sassafras trees are bare, — how long ? — and the white ash apparently just bared. 

The locusts are bare except the tops, and in this respect those on the hills, at least, are as peculiar as birches. Some trees lose their lower leaves first, as birches and locusts; some the upper, as apples (though a few green leaves may remain on the very tips of the twigs) and generally maples, though the last fall fast. 

Hickories are two thirds fallen, at least. [Apparently mocker-nut later.]

This rain and wind too bring down the leaves very fast. The yard is strewn with the yellow leaves of the peach and the orange and scarlet ones of the cherry. You could not spread a cloth but it would soon be strewn with them. 

Thorns and balm-of-Gilead and red mulberries bare. 

The brilliant autumnal colors are red and yellow and the various tints, hues, and shades of these. Blue is reserved to be the color of the sky, but yellow and red are the colors of the earth flower. Every fruit, on ripening, and just before its fall, acquires a bright tint. So do the leaves; so the sky before the end of the day, and the year near its setting. October is the red sunset sky, November the later twilight. 

Color stands for all ripeness and success. We have dreamed that the hero should carry his color aloft, as a symbol of the ripeness of his virtue. The noblest feature, the eye, is the fairest colored, the jewel of the body. The warrior’s flag is the flower which precedes his fruit. He unfurls his flag to the breeze with such confidence and brag as the flower its petals. Now we shall see what kind of fruit will succeed.

The very forest and herbage, the pellicle of the earth as it were, must acquire a bright color, an evidence of its ripeness, as if the globe itself were a fruit on its stem, with ever one cheek toward the sun. Our appetites have commonly confined our views of ripeness and its phenomena — color and mellowness and perfectness — to the fruits which we eat, and we are wont to forget that an immense harvest which we do not eat, hardly use at all, is annually ripened by nature. At our annual cattle-shows and horticultural exhibitions we make, as we think, a great show of fair fruits, destined, however, to a rather ignoble fate, fruits not worshipped for this chiefly; but round about and within our towns there is annually another show of fruits, on an infinitely grander scale, fruits which address our taste for beauty alone. 

The scarlet oak, which was quite green the 12th, is now completely scarlet and apparently has been so a few days. This alone of our indigenous deciduous trees (the pitch pine is with it) is now in its glory. 

(I have not seen the beech, but suppose it past. The Populus grandidentata and sugar maple come nearest to it, but they have lost the greater part of their leaves.)

Look at one, completely changed from green to bright dark-scarlet, every leaf, as if it had been dipped into a scarlet dye, between you and the sun. Was not this worth waiting for? Little did you think ten days ago that that cold green tree could assume such color as this. Its leaves still firmly attached While those of other trees are falling around it. I am the last to blush, but I blush deeper than any of ye. I bring up the rear in my red coat. The scarlet oaks, alone of oaks, have not given up the fight. Perchance their leaves, so finely cut, are longer preserved partly because they present less surface to the elements, and for a long time, if I remember rightly, some scarlet oak leaves will “hold out to burn.”   

Now in huckleberry pastures you see only here and there a few bright scarlet or crimson (for they vary) leaves amid or above the bare reddish stems, burning as if with condensed brightness, — as if the few that remained burned with the condensed brightness of all that have fallen. 

In sheltered woods you [see] some dicksonia still straw-color or pale-yellow. Some thoroughwort the same color. In the shade generally you find paler and more delicate tints, fading to straw-color and white.

The deep reds and scarlets and purples show exposure to the sun. I see an intensely scarlet high blueberry— but where one leaf has overlapped another it is yellow — with a regular outline. 

That large hornets’ nest which I saw on the 4th is now deserted, and I bring it home. But in the evening, warmed by my fire, two or three come forth and crawl over it, and I make haste to throw it out the window.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 24, 1858

I see two flocks go over. I hear that some were seen two or three weeks ago.  See note to October 23, 1858 ("One tells me that he saw geese go over Wayland the 17th") and October 27, 1857 ("I hear that Sammy Hoar saw geese go over to-day. The fall (strictly speaking) is approaching an end in this probably annual northeast storm"); November 13, 1858 ("A large flock of geese go over just before night. "); November 20, 1853 ("Methinks the geese are wont to go south just before a storm, and, in the spring, to go north just after one, say at the end of a long April storm. ") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Geese in Autumn

This rain and wind too bring down the leaves very fast. Compare  October 24, 1855 ("The gentle touch of the rain brings down more leaves than the wind."); October 24, 1853 ("Just after dark, high southerly winds arise, but very warm, blowing the rain against the windows and roof and shaking the house.")

October is the red sunset sky, November the later twilight. See November 14, 1853 ("October is the month of painted leaves, of ripe leaves, when all the earth, not merely flowers, but fruits and leaves, are ripe. With respect to its colors and its season, it is the sunset month of the year, when the earth is painted like the sunset sky. This rich glow flashes round the world. This light fades into the clear, white, leafless twilight of November."); August 31, 1852 ("The evening of the year is colored like the sunset."); November 2, 1853 ("We come home in the autumn twilight, which lasts long and is remarkably light, the air being purer, — clear white light, which penetrates the woods"). Also Autumnal Tints ("October is the month for painted leaves. Their rich glow now flashes round the world. As fruits and leaves and the day itself acquire a bright tint just before they fall, so the year near its setting. October is its sunset sky ; November the later twilight.") and note to October 28, 1852 ("Suddenly the light of the setting sun yellows and warms all the landscape.")

That large hornets’ nest which I saw on the 4th is now deserted. See October 4, 1858 ("Hornets are still at work in their nests."); October 15, 1855 ("The hornets’ nests are exposed, the maples being bare, but the hornets are gone"); October 22, 1858 ("Hornets’ nests are now being exposed, deserted by the hornets") ; October 25, 1854 ("The maples being bare, the great hornet nests are exposed."); See also September 25, 1851 ("The hornets' nest not brown but gray, two shades, whitish and dark, alternating on the outer layers or the covering, giving it a waved appearance."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. Wasps and Hornets

October is the

red sunset sky – November

the later twilight. 

Great cumuli slowly drifting in the intensely blue sky

June 11

P. M. —To Flint’s Pond. 

The locust in graveyard shows but few blossoms yet. 

It is very hot this afternoon, and that peculiar stillness of summer noons now reigns in the woods. I observe and appreciate the shade, as it were the shadow of each particular leaf on the ground.

I think that this peculiar darkness of the shade, or of the foliage as seen between you and the sky, is not accounted for merely by saying that we have not yet got accustomed to clothed trees, but the leaves are rapidly acquiring a darker green, are more and more opaque, and, besides, the sky is lit with the intensest light. It reminds me of the thunder-cloud and the dark eyelash of summer. 

June 11, 2019

Great cumuli are slowly drifting in the intensely blue sky, with glowing white borders. 

The red-eye sings incessant, and the more indolent yellow-throat vireo, and the creeper, and perhaps the redstart? or else it is the parti-colored warbler. 

I perceive that scent from the young sweet-fern shoots and withered blossoms which made the first settlers of Concord to faint on their journey. 

Saw yesterday a great yellow butterfly with black marks. 

See under an apple tree, at entrance of Goose Pond Path from Walden road, a great fungus with hollow white stem, eight or nine inches high, whose black funereal top has melted this morning, leaving a black centre with thin white scales on it. 

All the cistuses are shut now that I see, and also the veiny-leaved hieracium with one leaf on its stem, not long open. 

I notice no white lily pads near the bathing-rock in Flint’s Pond. See a bream’s nest two and a quarter feet diameter, laboriously scooped out, and the surrounding bottom for a diameter of eight feet (! !) comparatively white and clean, while all beyond is mud and leaves, etc., and a very large green and cupreous bream with a centre, while half a dozen shiners are hovering about, apparently watching a chance to steal the spawn. 

A partridge with young in the Saw Mill Brook path. Could hardly tell what kind of creature it was at first, it made such a noise and fluttering amid the weeds and bushes. Finally ran off with its body flat and wings somewhat spread. 

Utricularia vulgaris very abundant in Everett’s Pool. 

A beautiful grass-green snake about fifteen inches long, light beneath, with a yellow space under the eyes along the edge of the upper jaw. 

The Rubus triflorus apparently out of bloom at Saw Mill, before the high blackberry has begun. 

Rice tells me he found a turtle dove’s nest on an apple tree near his farm in Sudbury two years ago, with white eggs; so thin a bottom you could see the eggs through.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 11, 1856

The locust in graveyard shows but few blossoms yet. See June 7, 1854 ("The locusts so full of pendulous white racemes five inches long, filling the air with their sweetness and resounding with the hum of humble and honey bees"); June 9, 1852 ("The locust in bloom"); June 10, 1853 ("The locust bloom is now perfect, filling the street with its sweetness."); June 12, 1852 ("The locusts' blossoms in the graveyard fill the street with their sweet fragrance.")

I observe and appreciate the shade, as it were the shadow of each particular leaf on the ground. See June 2, 1854 ("These virgin shades of the year . . . how full of promise!  I would fain be present at the birth of shadow. It takes place with the first expansion of the leaves.");  June 4, 1860  (" A grateful but thin shade . . .so open that we see the fluttering of each leaf in its shadow.”)

I think that this peculiar darkness of the shade . . . reminds me of the thunder-cloud and the dark eyelash of summer. See June 9. 1856 ("Now I notice where an elm is in the shadow of a cloud,—the black elm-tops and shadows of June. It is a dark eyelash which suggests a flashing eye beneath. It suggests houses that lie under the shade, the repose and siesta of summer noons, the thunder-cloud, bathing, and all that belongs to summer."); May 29, 1857 ("The sunniness contrasts with the shadows of the freshly expanded foliage, like the glances of an eye from under the dark eyelashes of June.") See also May 27, 1859 ("The dark river, now that shades are increased, is like the dark eye of a maiden.") and note to June 6, 1855 ("The dark eye and shade of June.”)

The red-eye sings incessant. See June 11, 1852 ("The red-eye sings now in the woods, perhaps more than any other bird. “);  June 12, 1853 ("The red-eyed vireo is the bird most commonly heard in the woods.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Red-eyed Vireo

The more indolent yellow-throat vireo.   See May 19, 1856 ("A yellow-throated vireo . . . singing indolently, ullia — eelya, and sometimes varied to eelyee.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Yellow-throated Vireo

Saw yesterday a great yellow butterfly with black marks. See June 3, 1859 ("A large yellow butterfly . . . three and a half to four inches in expanse. Pale-yellow, the front wings crossed by three or four black bars; rear, or outer edge, of all wings widely bordered with black, and some yellow behind it; a short black tail to each hind one, with two blue spots in front of two red-brown ones on the tail"); June 14, 1860 ("I see near at hand two of those large yellow (and black) butterflies . . . a small and slender swallow tail with reddish brown and blue at the tail; body black above and yellow along the sides. (C. says it is the Papilio Turnus of Say.)")

All the cistuses are shut now that I see. See May 30, 1853 ("The cistus out, probably yesterday, a simple and delicate flower, its stamens all swept to one side. It upholds a delicate saffron-golden (?) basin about nine inches from the ground."); June 3, 1854 ("The cistus is well out on the Cliffs; maybe several days."); June 7, 1855 ("Cistus, apparently yesterday, open.")

The veiny-leaved hieracium with one leaf on its stem, not long open. See  June 15, 1851 ("The Hieracium venosum, veiny-leaved hawkweed, with its yellow blossoms in the woodland path.");   August 21, 1851 ("I have now found all the hawkweeds. Singular these genera of plants, plants manifestly related yet distinct. They suggest a history to nature, a natural history in a new sense. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Hawkweeds (hieracium)

A partridge with young in the Saw Mill Brook path. See June 14, 1858 ("Young partridges, when?"); June 27, 1852 ("I meet the partridge with her brood in the woods . . . She spreads her tail into a fan and beats the ground with her wings fearlessly within a few feet of me, to attract my attention while her young disperse.") See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge

A beautiful grass-green snake about fifteen inches long, light beneath, with a yellow space under the eyes along the edge of the upper jaw. See May 19, 1860 (“See a green snake, a very vivid yellow green, of the same color with the tender foliage at present, and as if his colors had been heightened by the rain.”); May 9, 1852 ("See a green snake, twenty or more inches long, on a bush, hanging over a twig with its head held forward six inches into the air, without support and motionless.”)  

The Rubus triflorus apparently out of bloom at Saw Mill.  See May 21, 1856  ("Rubus triflorus abundantly out at the Saw Mill Brook; how long?"); June 30, 1854  ("Rubus triflorus berries, some time, — the earliest fruit of a rubus.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Raspberry

June 11. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 11

This hot afternoon

the stillness of summer noons 

in the shady woods.

Cumuli drifting

    in the intensely blue sky –

glowing white borders.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Great cumuli slowly drifting

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-560611

The depth of the snow.

January 29

P. M. — Measure the snow in the same places measured the 16th and 23d, having had, except yesterday, fair weather and no thaw.

As I measured oftener west than east of railroad, the snow is probably about fourteen on a level in open fields now, or quite as deep as at any time this winter. Yet it has apparently been settling a little the last six days. In the woods, apparently, it has also been settling, but it is not so deep there as on the 16th, because it settled rapidly soon after that date. It is deeper east of railroad, evidently because it lies behind it like a wall, though I measure from six to ten or twelve rods off on that side. Since the 13th there has been at no time less than one foot on a level in open fields. 

It is interesting to see near the sources, even of small streams or brooks, which now flow through an open country, perhaps shrunken in their volume, the traces of ancient mills, which have devoured the primitive forest, the earthen dams and old sluiceways, and ditches and banks for obtaining a supply of water. These relics of a more primitive period are still frequent in our midst. Such, too, probably, has been the history of the most thickly settled and cleared countries of Europe. The saw-miller is neighbor and successor to the Indian. 

January 29, 2026

It is observable that not only the moose and the wolf disappear before the civilized man, but even many species of insects, such as the black fly and the almost microscopic “no-see-em.” 

How imperfect a notion have we commonly of what was the actual condition of the place where we dwell, three centuries ago!

For the most part the farmers have not been able to get into the woods for the last fortnight or more, on account of the snow, and some who had not got up their wood before are now put to their trumps, for though it may not be more than eighteen inches deep on a level in sprout-lands, the crust cuts the legs of the cattle, and the occasional drifts are impassable.

Sometimes, with two yoke of oxen and a horse attached to the sled, the farmer attempts to break his way into his lot, one driving while another walks before with a shovel, treading and making a path for the horse, but they must take off the cattle at last and turn the sled with their hands. 

Miss Minott has been obliged to have some of her locusts about the house cut down. She remembers when the whole top of the elm north of the road close to Dr. Heywood’s broke off, —when she was a little girl. It must have been there before 1800.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 29, 1856

The snow is probably about fourteen on a level in open fields now, or quite as deep as at any time this winter.   See February 12, 1856 ("From January 6th to January 13th, not less than a foot of snow on a level in open land, and from January 13th to February 7th, not less than sixteen inches on a level at any one time in open land, and still there is fourteen on a level. That is, for twenty-five days the snow was sixteen inches deep in open land!!”)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 29

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 ©  2009-2023

An olive-sided flycatcher?

May 15

May 15.  P. M. —To Beck Stow’s. 

Suddenly very warm. 

Hear a hummingbird in the garden. Pear blossomed, -- some perhaps yesterday. Locust, black and scarlet oak, and some buttonwoods leaf. 

A yellow butterfly. 

I hear from the top of a pitch pine in the swamp that loud, clear, familiar whistle which I have sometimes wrongly referred to the wood pewee,  whip-ter-phe-ee. Is it the whip-tom-kelly note which Soane and Wilson gave to the red-eye, but which Nuttall says he never heard from it? Some times ter-phee-e. This is repeated at considerable intervals, the bird sitting quite still a long time. I saw it dart out once, catch an insect, and return to its perch muscicapa-like.  As near as I could see it had a white throat, was whitish, streaked with dark, beneath, darker tail and wings, and maybe olivaceous shoulders; bright yellow within bill. Probably M. Cooperi.

Andromeda calyculata begins to leaf -- separate twigs from blossoming ones. Andromeda Polifolia just open.

Buck-bean, apparently in three days (in house the 18th). 

The 13th, saw large water-bugs (Gyrinus) crawled up high on rocks. 

Watch a pine warbler on a pitch pine, slowly and faithfully searching it creeper-like. It encounters a black and white creeper on the same tree; they fly at each other, and the latter leaves, apparently driven off by the first. This warbler shuts its bill each time to produce its peculiar note. 

Rhodora will apparently open in two or three days. 

See and hear for a moment a small warbler-like bird in Nemopanthes Swamp which sings somewhat like tchut a-worieter-worieter-worieter-woo. 

The greater part of the large sugar maples on the Common leaf. Large red maples generally are late to leaf. 

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, May 15, 1855

A white throat, was whitish, streaked with dark, beneath, darker tail and wings, and maybe olivaceous shoulders; bright yellow within bill. Probably M. Cooperi. See  June 5, 1856. ("The Muscicapa Cooperi sings pe pe pe’, sitting on the top of a pine, and shows white rump”); June 8, 1856 ("At Cedar Swamp, saw the pe-pe catching flies like a wood pewee, darting from its perch on a dead cedar twig from time to time and returning to it. ...black crown with some crest, yellowish (?) bill, gray-brown back, black tail, two faint whitish bars on wings, a dirty cream-white throat, and a gray or ash white breast and beneath, whitest in middle"); June 10, 1855 ("Nuttall thus describes the Muscicapa Cooperi, olive sided flycatche  or pe - pe . . . head darker, without discolored spot ; sides olive grey; lateral space beneath the wing white; lower mandible purplish horn color; tail nearly even and extending but little beyond the closed wings. ” No white on tail") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Olive-sided flycatcher or pe-pe