Old Sam Nutting used to pinch off the first leaves of his melon

July 18. 

Minott says that old Sam Nutting used to pinch off the first leaves of his melon vines as soon as they had three or four leaves, because they only attracted the bugs, and he was quite successful. 

George Bradford says he finds in Salem striped maple and Sambucus pubens. He (and Tuckerman?) found the Utricularia resupinata once in Plymouth, and it seems to correspond with mine at Well Meadow.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 18, 1857

The Utricularia resupinata ...in Plymouth ... seems to correspond with mine at Well Meadow. See July 18, 1856 ("You see almost everywhere on the muddy river bottom . . . the Utricularia vulgaris, with its black or green bladders, and the two lesser utricularias in many places."): July 18, 1853 ("Three utricularias and perhaps the horned also common now. ")


George Bradford says he finds in Salem striped maple and Sambucus pubens. See June 16, 1856 (To Found in the Purgatory [in Sutton] the panicled elder(Sambucus pubens), partly gone to ribbed seed, but some in flower, new to me;... moose-wood or striped maple..."); September 5, 1856 ("About one mile from West Fitchburg depot, westward, I saw the panicled elderberries on the railroad but just beginning to redden, though it is said to ripen long before this.")

July 18. See A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 18

A Book of 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

Women and children are already picking hops in the fields, in the shade of large white sheets, like sails.

September 5. 

Friday. 

September 5.

To Brattleboro, Vt. 

Will not the prime of goldenrods and asters be just before the first severe frosts ? 

As I ride along in the cars, I think that the ferns, etc., are browned and crisped more than usual at this season, on account of the very wet weather. 

Found on reaching Fitchburg that there was an interval of three and a half hours between this and the Brattleboro train, and so walked on, on the track, with shouldered valise. Had observed that the Nashua River in Shirley was about one mile west of Groton Junction, if I should ever want to walk there. 

Observed by railroad, in Fitchburg, low slippery elm shrubs with great, rough, one-sided leaves. 

Solidago lanceolata past prime, a good deal. Aster puniceus in prime. 

About one mile from West Fitchburg depot, westward, I saw the panicled elderberries on the railroad but just beginning to redden, though it is said to ripen long before this. 

As I was walking through Westminster, I remembered that G. B. Emerson says that he saw a handsome clump of the Salix lucida on an island in Meeting-House Pond in this town, and, looking round, I saw a shrub of it by the railroad, about one mile west of West Fitchburg depot, and several times afterward within a mile or two. Also in the brook behind Mr. Alcott's house in Walpole, N. H. 

Took the cars again in Westminster. The scenery began to be mountainous and interesting in Royalston and Athol, but was more so in Erving. 

In Northfield first observed fields of broom-corn very common, Sorghum saccharatum, taller than corn. Alcott says they bend down the heads before they gather them, to fit them for brooms. 

Hereabouts women and children are already picking hops in the fields, in the shade of large white sheets, like sails.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 5, 1856

A wood thrush's nest on the steep moss and fern covered side of a rock

June 16 

Saw at the Natural History Rooms a shell labelled Haliotis splendens, apparently same with mine from Ricketson’s son, with holes and green reflections. 

To Purgatory in Sutton: by railroad to Wilkinsonville in the northeast corner of Sutton (thirty cents) and by buggy four or five miles to Purgatory in the south or southeast part of the town, some twelve miles from Worcester. 

The stream rising from the bottom of it must empty into the Blackstone, perhaps through the Mumford River. Sutton is much wooded. 

The woman at the last house told of an animal seen in the neighborhood last year. Well, she “had no doubt that there had been a bad animal about.” A Mr. Somebody, who could be relied on, between there and Sutton Centre, had been aroused by a noise early one morning, and, looking out, saw this animal near a wood-pile in his yard, as big as a good-sized dog. He soon made off, making nothing of the walls and fences, before he and his sons got their guns ready. They raised part of the town, a body of shoemakers, and surrounded a swamp into which it was supposed to have entered, but they did not dare to go into it. Also a strange large track was seen where it crossed the road. 

Found at the very bottom of this Purgatory, where it was dark and damp, on the steep moss and fern covered side of a rock which had fallen into it, a wood thrush’s nest. Scarcely a doubt of the bird, though I saw not its breast fairly. Heard the note around, and the eggs (one of which I have) correspond. Nest of fine moss from the rock (hypnum?), and lined with pine-needles; three eggs, fresh.

Found in the Purgatory the panicled elder (Sambucus pubens), partly gone to ribbed seed, but some in flower, new to me; Polygonum cilinode (?), not yet in flower; moose-wood or striped maple; and also, close by above, Actoea alba, out of bloom; and a chestnut oak common. Cow-wheat numerously out.

Heard around, from within the Purgatory, not only Wilson’s thrush, but evergreen forest note and tanager; and saw chip-squirrels within it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 16, 1856

[Purgatory is a 0.25-mile-long chasm between granite walls rising as high as 70 feet, once believed to have originated in the sudden release of dammed-up glacial meltwater near the end of the last Ice Age.  Today ice lingers in boulder caves into the early summer, however there is there is no evidence of water erosion in the chasm or on its walls.]

A wood thrush’s nest . . . of fine moss . . . lined with pine-needles; three eggs, fresh. See June 12, 1857 ("At Natural History Rooms . . . The wood thrush's is a slender egg , a little longer than a catbird's and uniform greenish-blue."); June 19, 1858  ("Storrow Higginson and other boys. . . showed me one of five eggs, far advanced, they found there [at Flint's Pond] in a nest some fourteen feet high in a slender maple sapling, placed between many upright shoots, many dry leaves outside. It is a slender clear-blue egg, more slender and pointed at the small end than the robin's . . . It is probably the wood thrush."); June 23, 1858 ("In the case of the hermit thrush, wood thrush, and tanager's [nests of June 19], each about fourteen feet high in slender saplings, you had to climb an adjacent tree in order to reach them."); July 31, 1858 ("Got the wood thrush’s nest of June 19th (now empty) . . . measures four and a half to five inches in diameter from outside to outside of the rim, and one and three quarters deep within . . .");  August 10, 1858 ("The wood thrush’s was a peculiarly woodland nest, made solely of such materials as that unfrequented grove afforded, the refuse of the wood or shore of the pond. There was no horsehair, no twine nor paper nor other relics of art in it.")

The panicled elder (Sambucus pubens), partly gone to ribbed seed, but some in flower, new to me. See  September 5, 1856 ("About one mile from West Fitchburg depot, westward, I saw the panicled elderberries on the railroad but just beginning to redden, though it is said to ripen long before this."); July 18, 1857 ("George Bradford says he finds in Salem striped maple and Sambucus pubens."); November 3, 1858 (" I see at the very northwest end of the White Cedar Swamp a little elder, still quite leafy and green, near the path on the edge of the swamp. Its leafets are commonly nine, and the lower two or more are commonly divided. This seemed peculiarly downy beneath, even “sub-pubescent,” as Bigelow describes the Sambucus pubens to be. Compare it with the common")

June 16. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 16

The steep side of a rock -

a wood thrush’s nest lined with

pine-needles; three eggs. 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, 

On the steep moss and fern covered side of a rock

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-560616