A Book of the Seasons: August 16 (locust days, botanizing and birding mid-August the note of the wood pewee at sunset)

 

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

August 16.

Am surprised to find 

cassia so obvious 

and so abundant. 

And the spearmint

so intoxicates me that

I am bewildered.

By the discovery of one new plant 

all bounds seem to be infinitely removed. 

August 16, 1856

A blue heron with 

its great undulating wings

 and leisurely flight.

 August 16, 1858

August 16, 2020

These are locust days. August 16, 1852

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

Loud is their song, drowning many others, but men appear not to distinguish it, though it pervades their ears as the dust their eyes. August 16, 1852

Hear it raining again early when I awake, as it did yesterday, still and steady, as if the season were troubled with a diabetes. August 16, 1858

River about ten and a half inches above summer level. August 16, 1860

Raise the river two feet above summer level and let it be running off, and you can hardly swim against it. August 16, 1856

It has fallen about fifteen inches from the height. August 16, 1856

The river is exceedingly fair this afternoon, and there are few handsomer reaches than that by the leaning oak, the deep place, where the willows make a perfect shore. August 16, 1852

By the leaning oak,

the deep place where the willows

make a perfect shore.

August 16, 1852

According to [Minott], the Holt is at the “diving ash,” where is some of the deepest water in the river. August 16, 1858)

A three-ribbed goldenrod on railroad causeway, two to three feet high, abundantly out before Solidago nemoralis. August 16, 1858

Desmodium paniculatum in the wood-path northeast of Flint's Pond.August 16, 1853

Its flowers turn blue-green in drying. August 16, 1853

Apparently the Canada plum began to be ripe about the 10th. August 16, 1860

 Hyriophyllam ainbiguum, apparently var. larnosain, except that it is not nearly lindar-leafed but pectinate, well out how long? August 16, 1857

Thalictrum Comuti is now generally done. August 16, 1858

Galeopsis tetrahit, common hemp-nettle, in roadside by Keyes's. How long? Flower like hedge-nettle. August 16, 1852

Apios tuberosa, ground-nut, a day or two. August 16, 1852

I must look for the rudbeckia which Bradford says he found yesterday behind Joe Clark's. August 16, 1852

Agrinzonia Eupatoria, small-flowered (yellow) plant with hispid fruit, two or three feet high, Turnpike, at Tuttle's peat meadow.   August 16, 1851

The Polygonum orientale, probably some days, by Turnpike Bridge, a very rich rose-color large flowers, distinguished by its salver-shaped upper sheaths. August 16, 1853

It is a color as rich, I think, as that of the cardinal-flower. August 16, 1853

The hardhack commonly grows in low meadow-pastures which are uneven with grassy clods or hummocks, such as the almshouse pasture by Cardinal Ditch. August 16, 1858

I am surprised to find that where of late years there have been so many cardinal-flowers, there are now very few. August 16, 1858

So much does a plant fluctuate from season to season. August 16, 1858

Here I found nearly white ones once. August 16, 1858

White morning-glory up the Assabet. August 16, 1856

Almost all flowers and animals may be found white. August 16, 1858

Channing tells me that he saw a white bobolink in a large flock of them to-day. August 16, 1858

As in a large number of cardinal-flowers you may find a white one, so in a large flock of bobolinks, also, it seems, you may find a white one. August 16, 1858 

Hemp (Cannabis sativa), said by Gray to have been introduced; not named by Bigelow. Is it not a native? August 16, 1851

[Minott] used to love to hear the goldfinches sing on the hemp which grew near his gate. August 16, 1858 

I hear these birds on my way thither, between two and three o’clock:

• goldfinches twitter over;
• the song sparrow sings several times;
•  hear a low warble from bluebirds, with apparently their young,
• the link of many bobolinks (and see large flocks on the fences and weeds; they are largish-looking birds with yellow throats);
• a large flock of red-wings goes tchucking over;
• a lark twitters;
• crows caw;
• a robin peeps;
• kingbirds twitter, as ever. August 16, 1858

 Started a woodcock in the woods. August 16, 1853

Also saw a large telltale, I think yellow-shanks, whose note I at first mistook for a jay's, giving the alarm to some partridges. August 16, 1853

In my boating of late I have several times scared up a couple of summer ducks of this year, bred in our meadows. August 16, 1858

They allowed me to come quite near, and helped to people the-river. August 16, 1858

I have not seen them for some days. August 16, 1858

August 16, 2017

Goodwin shot them, and Mrs., who never sailed on the river, ate them. August 16, 1858

Of course, she knows not what she did. August 16, 1858

What if I should eat her canary? Thus we share each other’s sins as well as burdens.

The lady who watches admiringly the matador shares his deed. August 16, 1858

They belonged to me, as much as to any one, when they were alive, but it was considered of more importance that Mrs. should taste the flavor of them dead than that I should enjoy the beauty of them alive. August 16, 1858

Talked with Minott, who sits in his wood-shed, having, as I notice, several seats there for visitors, —one a block on the sawhorse, another a patchwork mat on a wheelbarrow, etc., etc. August 16, 1858

His half-grown chickens, which roost overhead, perch on his shoulder or knee. August 16, 1858

He tells me some of his hunting stories again. August 16, 1858

He always lays a good deal of stress on the kind of gun he used, as if he had bought a new one every year, when probably he never had more than two or three in his life. August 16, 1858

In this case it was a “half-stocked” one, a little “cocking-piece,” and whenever he finished his game he used the word “gavel,” I think in this way, “gave him gavel,” i. e. made him bite the dust, or settled him. August 16, 1858

Speaking of foxes, he said: “As soon as the nights get to be cool, if you step outdoors at nine or ten o’clock when all is still, you’ll hear them bark out on the flat behind the houses, half a mile off, or sometimes whistle through their noses. August 16, 1858.  

I find the dog's-bane (Apocynum androsoemifolium) bark not the nearly so strong as that of the A. cannabinum. August 16, 1856

Amaranthus hypochondriacus, how long? August 16, 1856

Myriophyllum ambiguum, apparently var. limosum, except that it is not nearly linear-leafed but pectinate, well out how long? August 16, 1857

Diplopappus linariifolius, apparently several days. August 16, 1856

Ambrosia pollen now begins to yellow my clothes. August 16, 1856

Chenopodium hybridum, a tall rank weed, five feet at least, dark-green, with a heavy (poisonous?) odor compared to that of stramonium; great maple(?)- shaped leaves. August 16, 1856

How deadly this peculiar heavy odor! August 16, 1856

Cynoglossum officinale, a long time, mostly gone to seed, at Bull's Path and north roadside below Leppleman's. August 16, 1856

Its great radical leaves made me think of smooth mullein. August 16, 1856

The flower has a very peculiar, rather sickening odor; Sophia thought like a warm apple pie just from the oven (I did not perceive this). August 16, 1856

A pretty flower, however. August 16, 1856

I thoughtlessly put a handful of the nutlets into my pocket with my handkerchief. August 16, 1856

But it took me a long time to pick them out my handkerchief when I got home, and I pulled out many threads in the process. August 16, 1856

At roadside opposite Leighton's, just this side his barn, Monarda fistulosa, wild bergamot, nearly done, with terminal whorls and fragrance mixed of balm and summer savory. August 16, 1856

The petioles are not ciliated like those on Strawberry Hill road. August 16, 1856

Am surprised to find the cassia so obvious and abundant. August 16, 1856

Can see it yellowing the field twenty-five rods off, from top of hill. August 16, 1856

It is perhaps the prevailing shrub over several acres of moist rocky meadow pasture on the brook; grows in bunches, three to five feet high (from the ground this year), in the neighborhood of alders, hardhack, elecampane, etc. August 16, 1856

The lower flowers are turning white and going to seed, — pods already three inches long, — a few upper not yet opened. August 16, 1856

It resounds with the hum of bumblebees. August 16, 1856

It is branched above, some of the half-naked (of leaves) racemes twenty inches long by five or six wide. August 16, 1856

Leaves alternate, of six or eight pairs of leafets and often an odd one at base, locust-like. August 16, 1856

Looked as if they had shut up in the night. August 16, 1856

Mrs. Pratt says they do. August 16, 1856

E. Hoar says she has known it here since she was a child. August 16, 1856

Some elecampane with the cassia is six feet high, and blades of lower leaves twenty inches by seven or nine. August 16, 1856

The cynoglossum by roadside opposite, and, by side of tan-yard, the apparently true Mentha viridis, or spearmint, growing very rankly in a dense bed, some four feet high, spikes rather dense, one to one and a half inches long, stem often reddish, leaves nearly sessile. Say August 1st at least. August 16, 1856

What a variety of old garden herbs — mints, etc. — are naturalized along an old settled road, like this to Boston which the British travelled! And then there is the site, apparently, of an old garden by the tan-yard, where the spearmint grows so rankly. August 16, 1856

I am intoxicated with the fragrance. August 16, 1856

All the roadside is the site of an old garden where fragrant herbs have become naturalized, — hounds-tongue, bergamot, spearmint, elecampane, etc. August 16, 1856

I see even the tiger lily, with its bulbs, growing by the roadside far from houses (near Leighton's graveyard). August 16, 1856

Though I find only one new plant (the cassia), yet old acquaintances grow so rankly, and the spearmint intoxicates me so, that I am bewildered, as it were by a variety of new things. August 16, 1856

An infinite novelty. August 16, 1856

I think I have found many new plants, and am surprised when I can reckon but one. August 16, 1856

A little distance from my ordinary walk and a little variety in the growth or luxuriance will produce this illusion. August 16, 1856

By the discovery of one new plant all bounds seem to be infinitely removed. August 16, 1856

I find more and other plants than I counted on. August 16, 1856

Amphicarpaea some time; pods seven eighths of an inch long. August 16, 1856

Mimvlus ringens four feet high, and chelone six feet high! August 16, 1856

Am frequently surprised to find how imperfectly water-plants are known. August 16, 1856

Even good shore botanists are out of their element on the water. August 16, 1856

I would suggest to young botanists to get not only a botany-box but a boat, and know the water-plants not so much from the shore as from the water side. August 16, 1856

Know the water-plants 

not so much from the shore as 

from the water side. 

August 16, 1856

Minott says that the meadow-grass will be good for nothing after the late overflow, when it goes down.

The water has steamed the grass. August 16, 1856

I see the rue all turned yellow by it prematurely. August 16, 1856

Down river in boat with George Bradford. August 16, 1852. 

With Russell to Fair Haven by boat. August 16, 1854

At the steam mill sand-bank is the distinct shadow of our shadows, — first on the water, then the double one on the bank bottom to bottom, one being upside down, — three in all, — one on water, two on land or bushes. August 16, 1854

At steam-mill sand-bank

the shadow of our shadows –

one is upside down.

August 16, 1854

Bathing at Merrick's old place, am surprised to find how swift the current. August 16, 1856

Goodwin has come again to fish, with three poles, hoping to catch some more of those large eels. August 16, 1858

A blue heron, with its great undulating wings, prominent cutwater, and leisurely flight, goes over southwest, cutting off the bend of the river west of our house. August 16, 1858. 

Goodwin says he saw one two or three days ago, and also that he saw some black ducks. August 16, 1858

A muskrat is swimming up the stream, betrayed by two long diverging ripples, or ripple-lines, two or three rods long each, and inclosing about seventy-five degrees, methinks. August 16, 1858.  

The rat generally dives just before reaching the shore and is not seen again, probably entering some burrow in the bank. August 16, 1858

Am surprised to see that the snapping turtle which I found floating dead June 16th, and placed to rot in the cleft of a rock, has been all cleaned, so that there is no smell of carrion. August 16, 1858

The scales have nearly all fallen off, and the sternum fallen apart, and the bony frame of the back is loose and dropping to pieces, as if it were many years old. August 16, 1858

It is a wonderful piece of dovetailing, the ends of the ribs (which are narrow and rib-like) set into sockets in the middle of the marginal bones, whose joints are in each case between the ribs. August 16, 1858

There are many large fish-bones within the shell. August 16, 1858

Was it killed by the fish it swallowed? The bones not being dispersed, I suppose it was cleaned by insects. August 16, 1858

Very bad weather of late for pressing plants. August 16, 1856

My plants in press are in a sad condition; mildew has invaded them during the late damp weather, even those that were nearly dry. August 16, 1856

Give me the dry heat of July. August 16, 1856

Even growing leaves out of doors are spotted with fungi now, much more than mine in press. August 16, 1856

Yesterday also in the Marlborough woods, perceived everywhere that offensive mustiness of decaying fungi. August 16, 1853

How earthy old people become, — mouldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth.

There is no foretaste of immortality in it. August 16, 1853

They remind me of earthworms and mole crickets. August 16, 1853

I notice that when a frog, a Rana halecina, jumps, it drops water at the same instant, as a turtle often when touched as she is preparing to lay. August 16, 1858

I see many frogs jump from the side of the railroad causeway toward the ditch at its base, and each drops some water. August 16, 1858

They apparently have this supply of water with them in warm and dry weather, at least when they leave the water, and, returning to it, leave it behind as of no further use. August 16, 1858

At sunset paddled to Hill. August 16, 1858

At sunset, the glow being confined to the north, it tinges the rails on the causeway lake-color, but behind they are a dead dark blue. August 16, 1852

At sunset I hear a low short warble from a golden robin, and the notes of the wood pewee. August 16, 1858.

August 16, 2014

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau:

Wild Senna

the Bobolink

  the Blue Heron

 the Goldfinch

   the Eastern Wood-Pewee

The Golden Robin

  the Musquash

The Fox  

A The Luxury of  Bathing

 August Moods

*****

April 29, 1854 ("Off the Cliffs, I meet a blue heron flying slowly down stream. He flaps slowly and heavily, his long, level, straight and sharp bill projecting forward, then his keel-like neck doubled up, and finally his legs thrust out straight behind.");
May 31, 1853 ("The fact that a rare and beautiful flower which we never saw. . . may be found in our immediate neighborhood, is very suggestive. . . The boundaries of the actual are no more fixed and rigid than the elasticity of our imaginations")
July 11, 1857 ("Apocynum cannabinum, with its small white flowers and narrow sepals")
July 28, 1859 ("The sweet and plaintive note of the pewee is now prominent, since most other birds are more hushed. I hear young families of them answering each other from a considerable distance, especially about the river.");

July 29, 1859 ("The water milfoil (the ambiguum var. nutans), otherwise not seen, shows itself. This is observed only at lowest water.")
July 30, 1856 (“Rudbeckia laciniata, perhaps a week.”)

August 1, 1857 ("Small Apocynum cannabinum on the rocks .")
August 5, 1856 ("At the Assabet stone bridge, apparently freshly in flower, . . . apparently the Apocynum cannabinum var. hypericifolium (?).”)
August 6, 1858 (“The note of the wood pewee is now more prominent, while birds generally are silent.

 August 8, 1852 ("No man ever makes a discovery, even an observation of the least importance, but he is advertised of the fact by a joy that surprises him")

August 9, 1856 ("Again I am surprised to see the Apocynum cannabinum close to the rock at the Island.")
August 9, 1856 ("The notes of the wood pewee and warbling vireo are more prominent of late, and of the goldfinch twittering over.”)

August 10, 1854 ("The tinkling notes of goldfinches and bobolinks which we hear nowadays are of one character and peculiar to the season. ")

August 11, 1856 ("Mr. Bradford . . .gives me a sprig of Cassia Marilandica,wild senna, found by Minot Pratt just below Leighton's by the road side.")

August12, 1858 (". It is surprising how young birds, especially sparrows of all kinds, abound now, and bobolinks and wood pewees and kingbirds")
August 12, 1858 ("The note of the wood pewee is a prominent and common one now. You see old and young together."). 
August 12, 1853 ("See the blue herons opposite Fair Haven Hill, as if they had bred here")

August 12, 1854 (" I see goldfinches nowadays on the lanceolate thistles, apparently after the seeds")
 August 13, 1854 (" I see where the pasture thistles have apparently been picked to pieces (for their seeds? by the goldfinch?), and the seedless down strews the ground"")

August 14, 1858 (" The Canada thistle down is now begun to fly, and I see the goldfinch upon it. ")
 August 14, 1858 ("The goldfinch, a prevailing note, with variations into a fine song. . . . The more characteristic notes would appear to be the wood pewee’s and the goldfinch’s, ")
August 14, 1858 ("The wood pewee, with its young, peculiarly common and prominent. . . These might be called the pewee-days.")

August 14,1859 ("If you would know the depth of the water on these few shoalest places of Musketaquid, ask the blue heron that wades and fishes there")
August 14, 1853 ("there are countless great fungi of various forms and colors, the produce of the warm rains and muggy weather . . . and for most of my walk the air is tainted with a musty, carrion like odor, in some places very offensive")

August 14, 1853 (" I hear no wood thrushes for a week. The pea-wai still, and sometimes the golden robin.") 

August 14,1859("A blue heron standing in very shallow water amid the weeds of the bar and pluming itself.")

August 15, 1854 ("On the top of the Hill I see the goldfinch eating the seeds of the Canada thistle. I rarely approach a bed of them or other thistles nowadays but I hear the cool twitter of the goldfinch about it")

August 15, 1854 ("I rarely approach a bed . . . thistles nowadays but I hear the cool twitter of the goldfinch about it.")
August 15, 1852 ("See a blue heron on the meadow.")

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.")

August 15, 1852 ("I see a dense, compact flock of bobolinks going off in the air over a field. They cover the rails and alders, and go rustling off with a brassy, tinkling note as I approach, revealing their yellow breasts and bellies.")

August 15, 1852 ("I see large flocks of bobolinks on the Union Turnpike

August 15, 1854 (" I see a dense, compact flock of bobolinks going off in the air over a field. They cover the rails and alders, and go rustling off with a brassy, tinkling note as I approach, revealing their yellow breasts and bellies. This is an autumnal sight, that small flock of grown birds in the afternoon sky.")
August 15, 1860 ("See a blue heron.")

August 17, 1851("I see a goldfinch go twittering through the still, louring day, and am reminded of the peeping flocks which will soon herald the thoughtful season.")

August 18, 1852 ("Rudbeckia laciniata, sunflower-like tall cone-flower, behind Joe Clark's.")
August 18, 1854 ("The bobolinks alight on the wool-grass.")
August 18, 1858 (“Almost every bush along this brook is now alive with these birds.”)

August 18, 1856 ("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! ")
August 18, 1860 ("The note of the wood pewee sounds prominent of late.")
August 18, 1858 (“One appeared to answer the other, and sometimes they both sung together, — even as if the old were teaching her young. It was not the usual spring note of this bird, but a simple, clear pe-e-eet, rising steadily with one impulse to the end.”)

August 18, 1854 ("The bobolinks alight on the wool-grass. Do they eat its seeds? ")
August 18, 1858 (" Miss Caroline Pratt saw the white bobolink yesterday where Channng saw it the day before, in the midst of a large flock. I go by the place this afternoon and see very large flocks of them, certainly several hundreds in all, and one has a little white on his back, but I do not see the white one. ")
 August 19, 1853 ("Flocks of bobolinks go tinkling along about the low willows, and swallows twitter, and a kingbird hovers almost stationary in the air, a foot above the water. "")

August 19, 1858 ("The blue heron has within a week reappeared in our meadows. ")

August 20, 1854 ("Saw a wood pewee . . .It often utters a continuous pe-e-e.")

August 20, 1854 ("5.15 a. m. — To Hill. I hear a gold robin, also faint song of common robin. Wood pewee (fresh); red-wing blackbird with fragmentary trill; bobolinks (the males apparently darker and by themselves); kingbirds; nuthatch heard; yellow-throated vireo, heard and saw, on hickories (have I lately mistaken this for red-eye ?); goldfinch; slate- colored hawk (with white rump and black wing-tips)")
August 22, 1853 ("Surprised to hear a very faint bobolink in the air; the link, link, once or twice later.")
August 21, 1853 ("Methinks I have not heard a robin sing morning or evening of late, but the peawai still ")
August 22, 1858 ("See one or two blue herons every day now")

August 22, 1853 ("Hear a peawai whose note is more like singing — as if it were still incubating — than any other.")

August 25, 1852 ("I hear no birds sing these days, only . . . the mew of a catbird, the link link of a bobolink, or the twitter of a goldfinch, all faint and rare.")

August 24, 1858 ("Edward Hoar brings Cassia Chamoecrista from Greenport, L. I., which must have been out a good while. ")

August 26, 1857 ("B[adford]. has found Cassia Chamoacrista by the side of the back road between Lincoln and Waltham, about two miles this side of Waltham.")

August 31, 1852 ("I observe, on the willows on the east shore, the shadow of my boat and self and oars, upside down...”)
September 10, 1854 ("Last year, for the last three weeks of August, the woods were filled with the strong musty scent of decaying fungi, but this year I have seen very few fungi and have not noticed that odor at all .")
September 12 1852 ("the Polygonum orientale, prince's-feather, in E. Hosmer's grounds.")
September 14, 1854 ("A flock of thirteen tell tales, great yellow-legs, start up with their shrill whistle from the midst of the great Sudbury meadow, and away they sail in a flock.").
October 18, 1853 ("Returning late, we see a double shadow of ourselves and boat, one, the true, quite black, the other directly above it and very faint, on the willows and high bank.")
November 1, 1854 ("Just before a clear sundown, close to the shore on the east side I see a second fainter shadow of the boat, sail, myself, and paddle, etc., directly above and upon the first on the bank . . . I discovered that it was the reflected sun which cast a higher shadow like the true one. As I moved to the west side, the upper shadow rose, grew larger and less perceptible; and at last when I was so near the west shore that I could not see the reflected sun, it disappeared; but then there appeared one upside down in its place!")
December 11, 1855 ("It is only necessary to behold thus the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance.”)

January 23, 1858 ("It is a peculiar sound, quite unlike any other woodland sound that I know . . . What a smothered, ragged, feeble, and unmusical sound is the bark of the fox!.")

                                                                                                               

 

August 16, 2021

If you make the least correct 

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

 August 15.<<<<<      August 16   >>>>>  August 17 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 16

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 ©  2009-2022

tinyurl.com/HDT16AUGUST 

Preface to Autumn

August 20. 

Edward Hoar has found in his garden two or three specimens of what appears to be the Veronica Bumbaumii, which blossomed at least a month ago. Yet I should say the pods were turgid, and, though obcordate enough, I do not know in what sense they are “obcordate-triangular.” 

He found a Viburnum dentatum with leaves somewhat narrower than common and wedge shaped at base. He has also the Rudbeckia speciosa, cultivated in a Concord garden. 

Flannery tells me that at about four o’clock this morning he saw white frost on the grass in the low ground near Holbrook’s meadow. Up early enough to see a frost in August! 

P. M. — To Poplar Hill and the Great Fields. 

It is still cool weather with a northwest wind. 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. 

August 20, 2018

The grass and foliage and landscape generally are of a more thought-inspiring color, suggest what some perchance would call a pleasing melancholy. In some meadows, as I look southwesterly, the aftermath looks a bright yellowish-green in patches. 

Both willows and poplars have leaves of a light color, at least beneath, contrasting with most other trees.

Generally there has been no drought this year. Nothing in the landscape suggests it. Yet no doubt these leaves are, compared with themselves six or eight weeks ago, as usual, “horny and dry,” as one remarks by my side. 

You see them digging potatoes, with cart and barrels, in the fields on all hands, before they are fairly ripe, for fear of rot or a fall in the price, and I see the empty barrels coming back from market already. 

Polygonum dumetorum, how long?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 20, 1858

There is more shadow in the landscape than a week ago, methinks, and the creak of the cricket sounds cool and steady. See August 20, 1853 ("I am struck by . . .  the darkness and heaviness of the shade."); August 20, 1851 ("The song of the crickets . . . fails not in its season"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Cricket in August

The grass and foliage and landscape generally are of a more thought-inspiring color suggest what some perchance would call a pleasing melancholy. See August 18, 1856 ("I hear the steady shrilling of . . . the alder cricket, clear, loud, and autumnal, a season sound . . . It reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time, suggests a pleasing, thoughtful melancholy,"); August 18, 1851 ("It plainly makes men sad to think. Hence pensiveness is akin to sadness"); see also August 17, 1851 ("I feel as if this coolness would do me good. If it only makes my life more pensive! Why should pensiveness be akin to sadness? There is a certain fertile sadness which I would not avoid, but rather earnestly seek. It is positively joyful to me.") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Moods and Seasons of the Mind.

In some meadows, as I look southwesterly, the aftermath looks a bright yellowish-green in patches.See July 24, 1852 ("There is a short, fresh green on the shorn fields, the aftermath. When the first crop of grass is off, and the aftermath springs, the year has passed its culmination."); July 24, 1860 ("Many a field where the grass has been cut shows now a fresh and very lit-up light green as you look toward the sun."); July 28, 1852 ("There is a yellowish light now from a low, tufted, yellowish, broad-leaved grass, in fields that have been mown."); August 7, 1852 ("At this season we have gentle rain-storms, making the aftermath green . . . as if it were a second spring."); August 10, 1854 ("As I go along the railroad, I observe the darker green of early-mown fields."); August 17, 1858 ("The aftermath on early mown fields is a very beautiful green. "); August 21, 1851 ("Mowing to some extent improves the landscape to the eye of the walker. The aftermath, so fresh and green, begins now to recall the spring to my mind")

This weather is a preface to autumn. See August 20, 1853 ("This day, too, has that autumnal character")

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

 

More shadow in the 

landscape than a week ago –

preface to autumn.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau. Preface to Autumn

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

The warmth of the sun is just beginning to be appreciated again on the advent of cooler days.

September 21. 

Monday. P. M. – To Corallorhiza Rock. and Tobacco-pipe Wood, northeast of Spruce Swamp. 

Peaches are now in their prime. 

Came through that thick white pine wood on the east of the spruce swamp. This is a very dense white pine grove, consisting of tall and slender trees which have been thinned, yet they are on an average only from three to six feet asunder. Perhaps half have been cut. It is a characteristic white pine grove, and I have seen many such. The trees are some ten inches in diameter, larger or smaller, and about fifty feet high. They are bare for thirty-five or forty feet up, — which is equal to at least twenty-five years of their growth, or with only a few dead twigs high up. Their green crowded tops are mere oval spear-heads in shape and almost in proportionate size, four to eight feet wide, – not enough, you would think, to keep the tree alive, still less to draw it upward. In a dark day the wood is not only thick but dark with the boles of the trees. 

Under this dense shade, the red-carpeted ground is almost bare of vegetation and is dark at noon. There grow Goodyera pubescens and repens, Corallorhiza multiflora (going to seed), white cohosh berries, Pyrola secunda, and, on the low west side and also the east side, an abundance of tobacco-pipe, which has begun to turn black at the tip of the petals and leaves. 

The Solidago casia is very common and fresh in copses, perhaps the prevailing solidago now in woods. 

Rudbeckia laciniata done, probably some time. 

The warmth of the sun is just beginning to be appreciated again on the advent of cooler days. 

Measured the large white willow north the road near Hildreth's. At a foot and a half from the ground it is fourteen feet in circumference; at five feet, the smallest place, it is twelve feet in circumference. It was once still larger, for it has lost large branches.[Cut down in '59.]

H. D. Thoereau, Journal, September 21, 1857


Corallorhiza Rock. See August 29, 1857 ("Nearby, north [of Indian Rock, west of the swamp], is a rocky ridge, on the east slope of which the Corallorhiza multiflora is very abundant.")

Corallorhiza multiflora [spotted coral root] (going to seed)... See note to August 13, 1857

Under this dense shade, the red-carpeted ground is almost bare of vegetation and is dark at noon. There grow Goodyera pubescens and repens See August 20, 1857 ("The Goodyera repens grows behind the spring where I used to sit, amid the dead pine leaves") and note to August 27, 1856 (“Goodyera pubescens, rattlesnake-plantain, is apparently a little past its prime. It is very abundant on Clintonia Swamp hillside. . .”)

An abundance of tobacco-pipe, which has begun to turn black . . . See July 24, 1856 ("Tobacco-pipe much blackened, out a long time.")

The Solidago casia is very common and fresh in copses, perhaps the prevailing solidago now in woods. See October 8, 1856 ("S. casia, much the worse for the wear, but freshest of any [goldenrod] seen.")

The warmth of the sun is just beginning to be appreciated again on the advent of cooler days. See  September 18, 1860 ("This is a beautiful day, warm but not too warm, a harvest day . . ."If you are not happy to-day you will hardly be so to-morrow.”); August 29, 1854 ("I enjoy the warmth of the sun now that the air is cool, and Nature seems really more genial. ")

At the cleft rock by the hill just west of this swamp.

September 4.
P. M. – To Bateman’s Pond. 

Rudbeckia laciniata (?) by Dodge's Brook, north of the road; how long? 

Cornus sericea berries begin to ripen. 

The leaves of the light-colored spruce in the spruce swamp are erect like the white! 

Penetrating through the thicket of that swamp, I see a great many very straight and slender upright shoots, the slenderest and tallest that I ever saw. They are the Prinos laevigatus. I cut one and brought it home in a ring around my neck, — it was flexible enough for that, — and found it to be seven and a half feet long and quite straight, eleven fortieths of an inch in diameter at the ground and three fortieths  diameter at the other end, only the last foot or so of this year's growth. It had a light-grayish bark, rough dotted. Generally they were five or six feet high and not bigger than a pipe-stem anywhere. This comes of its growing in dense dark swamps, where it makes a good part of the underwood. 

At the cleft rock by the hill just west of this swamp, — call it Cornel Rock, – I found apparently Aspidium cristatum (?), q. v. 

That is an interesting spot. There is the handsomest and most perfect Cornus circinata there that I know, now apparently its fruit in prime, hardly light-blue but delicate bluish-white. It is the richest-looking of the cornels, with its large round leaf and showy cymes; a slender bush seven or eight feet high. 

There is quite a collection of rare plants there, – petty morel, Thalictrum dioicum, witch hazel, etc., Rhus radicans, maple-leaved viburnum, polypody, Polygonum dumetorum, anychia. There was a strawberry vine falling over the perpendicular face of the rock, - or more than perpendicular, — which hung down dangling in the air five feet, not yet reaching the bottom, with leaves at intervals of fifteen inches. Various rocks scattered about in these woods rising just to the surface with smooth rounded surfaces, showing a fine stratification on its edges. 

The sides of Cornus florida Ravine at Bateman’s Pond are a good place for ferns. There is a Woodsia Ilvensis, a new one to Concord. Petty morel in the ravine, and large cardinal-flowers. 

I see prenanthes radical leaf turned pale-yellow. Arum berries ripe. 

Already, long before sunset, I feel the dew falling in that cold calla swamp.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 4, 1857

Rudbeckia laciniata (?) by Dodge's Brook, north of the road. . . See July 30, 1856 (“Rudbeckia laciniata, perhaps a week.”); August 18, 1852 (“Rudbeckia laciniata, sunflower-like tall cone-flower, behind Joe Clark's”).

Cornus sericea berries begin to ripen. See August 31, 1856 (“The Cornus sericea, with its berries just turning, is generally a dull purple now . . . “); August 28, 1856 ("The bright china-colored blue berries of the Cornus sericea begin to show themselves along the river, . . ..”)

The Prinos laevigatus. See June 23, 1856 ("Prinos laevigatus common and just begun to bloom behind R’s house.”)  Smooth winterberry holly (Ilex laevigata) is a deciduous shrub which resembles the closely related common winterberry (Ilex verticillate).. It grows up to 4 m high, with oval leaves which are finely toothed along the edges and shiny on their upper surface (the common winterberry has dull leaves). There are separate male and female flowers, usually on separate plants, in the leaf axils. The staminate flowers occur singly or two together and are borne on long stalks, while the pistillate flowers are solitary and on shorter stalks. See also September 4, 1856  "The fever-bush is conspicuously flower-budded.”) and note to October 2, 1856 (“The prinos berries are in their prime.”)

There is the handsomest and most perfect Cornus circinata there [the bog south of Bateman’s Pond] that I know. . .See September 6, 1856  [at Brattleboro] (“Cornus circinata berries, very light blue or bluish-white. ”)

Cornus florida Ravine at Bateman’s Pond . . .See May 18, 1857 (“ There is a large tree [Cornus florida] on the further side the ravine near Bateman's Pond and another by some beeches on the rocky hillside a quarter of a mile northeast.”)

There is quite a collection of rare plants there . . . Arum berries ripe. . . .Already, long before sunset, I feel the dew falling in that cold calla swamp. See September 4, 1856 ("Splendid scarlet arum berries there now in prime .”); September 2, 1853 ("The dense oval bunches of arum berries now startle the walker in swamps. They are a brilliant vermilion on a rich ground . . .”); June 7, 1857 (“Pratt has got the Calla palustris, in prime. . .from the bog near Bateman's Pond”);  June 24, 1857 ("I think that this is a cold swamp, i. e. it is springy and shady, and the water feels more than usually cold to my feet.”); June 9, 1857 (“The calla is generally past prime and going to seed.  . . .The water in this Calla Swamp feels cold to my feet, and perhaps this is a peculiarity of it; on the north side a hill. . . .”)

Looked for the black duck's nest.

June 23. 

June 23, 2017

Skinner, the harness-maker, tells me that he found a black duck's nest Sunday before the last, i. e. the 14th, with perhaps a dozen eggs in it, a mere hollow on the top of a tussock, four or five feet within a clump of bushes forming an islet (in the spring) in Hubbard's great meadow. He scared up the duck when within a few feet. 

Pratt says he knows of a black walnut at Hunt's on Ponkawtasset. 

P. M. — Looked for the black duck's nest, but could find no trace of it. Probably the duck led her young to the river as soon as hatched. What with gunners, dogs, pickerel, bullfrogs, hawks, etc., it is a wonder if any of them escape. 

Small rudbeckia, i. e. hirta, at Hubbard's Bath.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 23, 1857

Small rudbeckia, i. e. hirta . . . See June 20, 1856 ("Rudbeckia hirta budded.”); July 31, 1856 (“Measured a Rudbeckia hirta flower; more than three inches and three eighths in diameter.”)

A black duck's nest a mere hollow on the top of a tussock, four or five feet within a clump of bushes forming an islet . See June 24, 1857 ("Melvin thinks there cannot be many black ducks' nests in the town, else his dog would find them"); June 4, 1856 (“found, on a hummock in the open swamp, in the midst of bushes, at the foot of a pitch pine, a nest about ten inches over, made of dry sedge and moss. I think it must have been a duck’s nest.”);

All the secrets of the river bottom are revealed.

July 30. P. M. — To Rudbeckia laciniata via Assabet. 

Amaranthus hybridus and albus, both some days at least; first apparently longest. 

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

Bad hay weather. 

The streams are raised by the showers of yesterday and day before, and I see the farmers turning their black-looking hay in the flooded meadows with a fork. 

The water is suddenly clear, as if clarified by the white of an egg or lime. I think it must be because the light is reflected downward from the overarching dog-day sky.  It assists me very much as I go looking for the ceratophyllum, potamogetons, etc. 

All the secrets of the river bottom are revealed. I look down into sunny depths which before were dark. The wonderful clearness of the water, enabling you to explore the river bottom and many of its secrets now, exactly as if the water had been clarified. This is our compensation for a heaven concealed. 

The air is close and still. 

Some days ago, before this weather, I saw haymakers at work dressed simply in a straw hat, boots, shirt, and pantaloons, the shirt worn like a frock over their pants. The laborer cannot endure the contact with his clothes. 

I am struck with the splendid crimson-red under sides of the white lily pads where my boat has turned them, at my bath place near the Hemlocks. For these pads, i. e. the white ones, are but little eaten yet. 

Rudbeckia laciniata, perhaps a week. 

When I have just rowed about the Island a green bittern crosses in my rear with heavy flapping flight, its legs dangling, not observing me. It looks deep slate-blue above, yellow legs, whitish streak along throat and breast, and slowly plows the air with its prominent breast-bone, like the stake-driver.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 30, 1856

This is a perfect dog-day.  See July 31, 1859 (" It is emphatically one of the dog-days . . .fog and mist, which threatened no rain. A muggy but comfortable day.");  July 31, 1860 ("Decidedly dog-days, and a strong musty scent."); August 1, 1856 ("Since July 30th, inclusive, we have had perfect dog-days without interruption."); See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Locust Days, Dogdayish Days

The water is suddenly clear . . . This is our compensation for a heaven concealed. See July 30, 1859 ("This dog-day weather I can see the bottom where five and a half feet deep . . . I see the fishes moving leisurely about amid the weeds, their affairs revealed") See also July 18, 1854 ("I do not know why the water should be so remarkably clear and the sun shine through to the bottom of the river, making it so plain.“);   July 27, 1860 ("The water has begun to be clear and sunny, revealing the fishes and countless minnows of all sizes and colors”); July 28, 1859 ("The season has now arrived when I begin to see further into the water”) and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Season of Sunny Water

I saw haymakers at work dressed simply in a straw hat, boots, shirt, and pantaloons. See July 30, 1853 ("In every meadow you see far or near the lumbering hay-cart with its mountainous load and the rakers and mowers in white shirts."); See also August 3, 1859 ("It being remote from public view, some of them work in their shirts or half naked.");  August 5, 1854 ("Almost every meadow or section of a meadow has its band of half a dozen mowers and rakers, either bending to their manly work with regular and graceful motion."); August 18, 1854 ("Men in their white shirts look taller and larger than near at hand."); August 24, 1858 (""I distinguish men busily haying in gangs of four or five, revealed by their white shirts) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Haymaking

The splendid crimson-red under sides of the white lily pads . See June 29, 1852 ("The wind exposes the red under sides of the white lily pads. This is one of the aspects of the river now"); June 30, 1859 ("The pads blown up by it already show crimson, it is so strong, but this not a fall phenomenon yet.”); August 24, 1854 ("The bright crimson-red under sides of the great white lily pads, turned up by the wind").

Rudbeckia laciniata, perhaps a week. See July 30, 1854 ("I find the new rudbeckia in five distinct and distant parts of the town."); See also   August 6, 1853 ("The rudbeckia must have been out at least a week or more; half the buds have opened."); August 16, 1852 ("I must look for the rudbeckia which Bradford says he found yesterday behind Joe Clark's");  August 18, 1852 (“Rudbeckia laciniata, sunflower-like tall cone-flower, behind Joe Clark's”).; September 4, 1857 ("Rudbeckia laciniata by Dodge's Brook"); September 21, 1857 ("Rudbeckia laciniata done, probably some time.")

A green bittern. . .with heavy flapping flight, its legs dangling, . . . See May 6, 1852 ("A green bittern, a gawky bird.”); June 25, 1854 (A green bittern . . . awkwardly alighting on the trees and uttering its hoarse, zarry note,”); July 12, 1854 (“[A] green bittern wading in a shallow muddy place, with an awkward teetering, fluttering pace.”); May 16, 1855 ("A green bittern with its dark-green coat and crest, sitting watchful, goes off with a limping peetweet flight.”); July 29, 1859 ("Heard from a bittern, a peculiar hoarse, grating note, lazily uttered as it flew over the meadows. A bittern's croak: a sound perfectly becoming the bird, as far as possible from music."); July 31, 1859 ("The small green bitterns are especially numerous."); August 1, 1858 ("So the green bitterns are leaving the nest now"); August 2, 1856 ("A green bittern comes, noiselessly flapping, with stealthy and inquisitive looking to this side the stream and then that . . There is a sympathy between its sluggish flight and the sluggish flow of the stream,.— its slowly lapsing flight,"); August 24, 1860 (“[A] green bittern nearby standing erect on Monroe's boat. Finding that it is observed, it draws in its head and stoops to conceal itself. It allows me to approach so near, apparently being deceived by some tame ducks there. When it flies it seems to have no tail.”); August 31, 1858 ("At Goose Pond I scare up a small green bittern. It plods along low, a few feet over the surface, with limping flight, and alights on a slender water-killed stump, and voids its excrement just as it starts again, as if to lighten itself. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. The Green Bittern

July 30. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 30

A perfect dog-day.

Atmosphere thick, mildewy.

The sun is obscured.

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