I feel well into summer when I see this redness.

 

June 12

June 12, 2019

Saturday. P. M. – To Lupine Hill via Depot Field Brook.

For some time I have noticed the grass whitish and killed at top by worms (?).

The meadows are yellow with golden senecio.

Marsh speedwell (Veronica scutellata), lilac - tinted, rather pretty.

The mouse-ear forget me-not (Myosotis laxa) has now extended its racemes (?) very much, and hangs over the edge of the brook. It is one of the most interesting minute flowers. It is the more beautiful for being small and unpretending, for even flowers must be modest.

The blue flag (Iris versicolor). Its buds are a dark indigo-blue tip beyond the green calyx. It is rich but hardly delicate and simple enough; a very handsome sword-shaped leaf.

The blue-eyed grass is one of the most beautiful of flowers. It might have been famous from Proserpine down. It will bear to be praised by poets.

The blue flag, notwithstanding its rich furniture, its fringed recurved parasols over its anthers, and its variously streaked and colored petals, is loose and coarse in its habit.

How completely all character is expressed by flowers !

This is a little too showy and gaudy, like some women's bonnets. Yet it belongs to the meadow and ornaments it much.

The critchicrotches are going to seed.

I love the sweet-flag as well as the muskrat (?). Its tender inmost leaf is very palatable below.

Enothera pumila, dwarf tree-primrose. Ever it will be some obscure small and modest flower that will most please us.

Some of the ferns have branches wholly covered with fruit.

How difficult, if not impossible, to do the things we have done! as fishing and camping out. They seem to me a little fabulous now.

Boys are bathing at Hubbard's Bend, playing with a boat (I at the willows).

The color of their bodies in the sun at a distance is pleasing, the not often seen flesh-color. I hear the sound of their sport borne over the water.

As yet we have not man in nature.

What a singular fact for an angel visitant to this earth to carry back in his note-book, that men were forbidden to expose their bodies under the severest penalties ! A pale pink, which the sun would soon tan.

White men ! There are no white men to contrast with the red and the black; they are of such colors as the weaver gives them. I wonder that the dog knows his master when he goes in to bathe and does not stay by his clothes.

Small white-bellied (?) swallows in a row ( a dozen ) on the telegraph - wire over the water by the bridge. This perch is little enough departure from unobstructed air to suit them. Pluming themselves.

If you could furnish a perch aerial enough, even birds of paradise would alight.

Swallows have forked tails, and wings and tails are about the same length. They do not alight on trees, methinks, unless on dead and bare boughs, but stretch a wire over water and they perch on it.

This is among the phenomena that cluster about the telegraph.

Hedge-mustard.

(Turned into the lane beyond Dennis's.) 

Some fields are almost wholly covered with sheep's-sorrel, now turned red, — its valves (?). It helps thus agreeably to paint the earth, contrasting even at a distance with the greener fields, blue sky, and dark or downy clouds. It is red, marbled, watered, mottled, or waved with greenish, like waving grain, — three or four acres of it.

To the farmer or grazier it is a troublesome weed, but to the landscape-viewer an agreeable red tinge laid on by the painter. I feel well into summer when I see this redness.

It appears to be avoided by the cows.

The petals of the sidesaddle-flower, fully expanded, hang down. How complex it is, what with flowers and leaves! It is a wholesome and interesting plant to me, the leaf especially.

Rye that has sown itself and come up scatteringly in bunches is now nearly ripe.

They are beginning to cut rank grass on the village street.

I should say the summer began with the leafiness, umbrageous summer! 

The glory of Dennis's lupines is departed, and the white now shows in abundance beneath them.

So I cannot walk longer in those fields of Enna in which Proserpine amused herself gathering flowers.

The steam whistle at a distance sounds even like the hum of a bee in a flower.

So man's works fall into nature.

The flies hum at mid-afternoon, as if peevish and weary of the length of the days.

The river is shrunk to summer width; on the sides smooth whitish water, or rather it is the light from the pads; - in the middle, dark blue or slate, rippled.

The color of the earth at a distance where a wood has been cut off is a reddish brown.

Nature has put no large object on the face of New England so glaringly white as a white house.

The Ranunculus filiformis on the muddy shore of the river.

The locusts' blossoms in the graveyard fill the street with their sweet fragrance.

It is day, and we have more of that same light that the moon sent us, but not reflected now, but shining directly. The sun is a fuller moon.

Who knows how much lighter day there may be?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 12, 1852

The meadows are yellow with golden senecio. See June 9, 1853 ("The meadows are now yellow with the golden senecio, a more orange yellow, mingled with the light glossy yellow of the buttercup."); June 10, 1854 ("The meadows now begin to be yellow with senecio.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Golden Senecio

It is one of the most interesting minute flowers. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Mouse-ear forget-me-not (Myosotis laxa small-flowered forget- me- not)

The blue-eyed grass is one of the most beautiful of flowers . . .It will bear to be praised by poets.  See June 15, 1851 ("The blue-eyed grass, wellnamed, looks up to heaven."); A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Blue-Eyed Grass

The critchicrotches are going to seed. I love the sweet-flag as well as the muskrat (?). Its tender inmost leaf is very palatable below. See May 23, 1860 ("Critchicrotches some two or three days; now tender to eat . How agreeable and surprising the peculiar fragrance of the sweet flag when bruised! That this plant alone should have extracted this odor surely for so many ages each summer from the moist earth!");   May 27, 1852 ("The fruit of the sweet flag is now just fit to eat, and reminds me of childhood, — the critchicrotches. They would help sustain a famished traveller. The inmost tender leaf, also, near the base, is quite palatable, as children know. I love it as well as muskrats (?)."); July 20, 1852. "Dug open a muskrat's gallery ... there was half a critchicrotch in it." May 29 1854  (Critchicrotches have been edible some time in some places. It must be a kind of water milfoil, whose leaves I now see variously divided under water, and some nearly two feet long. ") See also Critchicrotches · iNaturalist ("It turns out Thoreau is referring to the fruit of Acorus calamus. This wetland plant goes by dozens of common names . . . sweet flag, calamus, beewort, bitter pepper root, gladdon, myrtle grass, myrtle sedge, pine root, rat root, sea sedge, sweet cane, sweet cinnamon, sweet grass, sweet myrtle, sweet root, sweet rush, and sweet sedge. . . . I continue to be amazed at how often I can observe the same plant or animal on the exact same date as Thoreau observes it.") and Journal IV 74, 92, 240, V 155, VI 307, VII 387.

Sheep's-sorrel, now turned red, helps thus agreeably to paint the earth, contrasting even at a distance with the greener fields, blue sky, and dark or downy clouds. See June 12, 1859 ("I am struck with the beauty of the sorrel now. . . . What a wholesome red! . . . There is hardly a more agreeable sight at this season."); June 12, 1854 ("Clover now reddens the fields."); See also June 11, 1853 ("In the sorrel-fields, also, what lately was the ruddy, rosy cheek of health, now that the sorrel is ripening and dying, has become the tanned and imbrowned cheek of manhood."); May 22, 1854 ("The sorrel beginning to redden the fields with ruddy health, — all these things make earth now a paradise. How many times I have been surprised thus, on turning about on this very spot, at the fairness of the earth!"); June 5, 1853 ("The distant fields are seen, reddened with sorrel, and the meadows wet green, full of fresh grass, and the trees in their first beautiful, bright, untarnished and unspotted green."); June 6, 1857(“A year is made up of a certain series and number of sensations and thoughts which have their language in nature. Now I am ice, now I am sorrel. Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind.”)

The petals of the sidesaddle-flower, fully expanded, hang down. See note to June 12, 1856 ("Sidesaddle flower numerously out now.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Pitcher Plant

I should say the summer began with the leafiness, umbrageous summer! See May 27, 1853 ("A new season has commenced - summer - leafy June.”); June 1, 1853 ("Summer begins now about a week past, with the expanded leaves, the shade and warm weather");June 4, 1860 (''The leafy season has fairly commenced."); June 6, 1855 ("The dark eye and shade of June”); June 9, 1852 (The general leafiness, shadiness, and waving of grass and boughs in the breeze characterize the season")

Nature has put no large object on the face of New England so glaringly white as a white house. See June 24, 1852 ("I have not heard that white clouds, like white houses, made any one's eyes ache.");  November 25, 1853 ("The white houses of the village, also, are remarkably distinct and bare and brought very near."); November 29, 1858 ("[After a snowfall ] White houses no longer stand out and stare in the landscape.")

The locusts' blossoms in the graveyard fill the street with their sweet fragrance.  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 11, 1856 ("The locust in graveyard shows but few blossoms yet.")

This is the first truly lively summer Sunday.

May 22. 

May 22, 2015

Sunday. 

To Nobscot with W. E. C. 

This is the third windy day following the two days’rain. A washing day, such as we always have at this season, methinks. 

The grass has sprung up as by magic since the rains. The birds are heard through the pleasant dashing wind, which enlivens everything. It is clear June, the first day of summer. 

The rye, which, when I last looked, was one foot high, is now three feet high and waving and tossing its heads in the wind. We ride by these bluish-green waving rye fields in the woods, as if an Indian juggler had made them spring up in a night. Why, the sickle and cradle will soon be taken up. Though I walk every day I am never prepared for this magical growth of the rye. I am advanced by whole months, as it were, into summer. 

Sorrel reddens the fields. Cows are preparing the milk for June butter. 

Already the falling apple blossoms fill the air and spot the roads and fields, and some are already turned dark with decay on the ground. 

With this warmth and wind the air is full of haze, such as we have not had before. 

The lilac is scented at every house. 

The wood pewee’s warm note is heard. 

We ride through warm, sandy shrub oak roads, where the Viola pedata blues the edge of the path, and the sand cherry and the choke-cherry whiten it. The crickets now first are generally heard. Houstonias whiten the fields and are now in their prime. The thorn bushes are full of bloom. 

Observed a large sassafras tree in bloom, – a rich lemon (?) yellow. 

Left our horse at the Howe tavern. The oldest date on the sign is “ D. H. 1716. ” An old woman, who had been a servant in the family and said she was ninety-one, said this was the first house built on the spot. 

Went on to Nobscot. Very warm in the woods, — and hear the hoarse note of the tanager and the sweet pe-a-wai, — but pleasantly breezy on the bare hilltops. Can’t see the mountains. 

Found an abundance of the Viola Muhlenbergii (debilis of Bigelow), a stalked violet, pale blue and bearded. 

The krigia out, a redder, more July, yellow than the dandelion; also a yellow Bethlehem-star and ribwort; and the mountain cranberry still here and there in blossom, though for the most part small berries formed. 

An abundance of saxifrage going to seed, and in their midst two or three looking densely white like the pearly everlasting — round dense white heads, apparently an abortion, an abnormal state, without stamens, etc., which I cannot find described. 

The pastures on this hill and its spurs are sprinkled profusely with thorny pyramidal apple scrubs, very thick and stubborn, first planted by the cows, then browsed by them and kept down stubborn and thorny for years, till, as they spread, their centre is protected and beyond reach and shoots up into a tree, giving a wine-glass form to the whole; and finally perchance the bottom disappears and cows come in to stand in the shade and rub against and redden the trunk. They must make fine dark shadows, these shrubs, when the sun is low; perfectly pyramidal, they are now, many of them. You see the cow-dung every where now with a hundred little trees springing up in it. Thus the cows create their own shade and food. 

This hill, Nobscot, is the summit of the island (?) or cape between the Assabet and Musketaquid — per haps the best point from which to view the Concord River valley. The Wayland hills bound it on the east; Berlin, Bolton, [and] Harvard hills on the west. The Sudbury meadows, seen here and there in distance, are of a peculiar bluish green. 

This is the first truly lively summer Sunday, what with lilacs, warm weather, waving rye, slight dusty sandy roads in some places, falling apple blossoms, etc., etc., and the wood pewee. 

The country people walk so quietly to church, and at five o’clock the farmer stands reading the newspaper while his cows go through the bars. 

I ought perhaps to have measured the great white oak by Howe’s. 

A remarkably thick white pine wood this side of Willis’s Pond ! !

...

Our quince blossomed yesterday. 

Saw many low blackberries in bloom to-day

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 22, 1853

The wood pewee’s warm note is heard. See May 22, 1854 ("I hear also pe-a-wee pe-a-wee, and then occasionally pee-yu, the first syllable in a different and higher key emphasized, — all very sweet and naive and innocent") See also May 17, 1853 ("I hear the wood pewee, — pe-a-wai. The heat of yesterday has brought him on."); May 17, 1854 ("Hear the wood pewee, the warm weather sound."). And see A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Wood-Pewee

Already the falling apple blossoms fill the air and spot the roads and fields. See May 17, 1853 ("The air filled with the sweetness of apple blossoms ( this is blossom week )"); May 20, 1854 ("Methinks we always have at this time those washing winds as now, when the choke-berry is in bloom, — bright and breezy days blowing off some apple blossoms”); May 25, 1852 (It is blossom week with the apples.”); May 27 1852 ("The road is white with the apple blossoms fallen off, as with snowflakes.”); June 1, 1855 ("A very windy day, . . . scattering the remaining apple blossoms.”)

Found an abundance of the Viola Muhlenbergii (debilis of Bigelow), a stalked violet, pale blue and bearded. See May 22, 1856 ("To Viola Muhlenbergii, which is abundantly out; how long? A small pale-blue flower growing in dense bunches, but in spots a little drier than the V. cucullata and blanda.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Violets

The pastures on this hill and its spurs are sprinkled profusely with thorny pyramidal apple scrubs, very thick and stubborn, first planted by the cows, then browsed by them and kept down stubborn and thorny for years, till, as they spread, their centre is protected and beyond reach and shoots up into a tree. See October 28, 1857 ("I see some shrubs which cattle have browsed for twenty years, keeping them down and compelling them to spread, until at last they are so broad they become their own fence and some interior shoot darts upward and bears its fruit. ")

The glory of November is in its silvery, sparkling lights.

November 20

P. M. - To Ministerial Swamp. 

I have seen more gray squirrels of late (as well as musquash); I think not merely because the trees are bare but because they are stirring about more, — nutting, etc. 

Martial Miles tells me of a snapping turtle caught in the river at Waltham, about October 1st, he thinks, which weighed fifty-five pounds (?). He saw it. There were two fighting. 

He says that a marsh hawk had his nest in his meadow several years, and though he shot the female three times, the male with but little delay returned with a new mate. He often watched these birds, and saw that the female could tell when the male was coming a long way off. He thought that he fed her and the young all together (?). She would utter a scream when she perceived him, and, rising into the_air (before or after the scream ?), she turned over with her talons uppermost, while he passed some three rods above, and caught without fail the prey which he let drop, and then carried it to her young. He had seen her do this many times, and always without failing. 

The common milkweed (Asclepias Cornuti) and some thistles still discounting. 

I go across the great Tony Wheeler pasture. It is a cool but pleasant November afternoon. 

The glory of November is in its silvery, sparkling lights. I think it is peculiar among the months for the amount [of] sparkling white light reflected from a myriad of surfaces. The air is so clear, and there are so many bare, polished, bleached or hoary surfaces to reflect the light. Few things are more exhilarating, if it is only moderately cold, than to walk over bare pastures and see the abundant sheeny light like a universal halo, reflected from the russet and bleached earth. The earth shines perhaps more than in spring, for the reflecting surfaces are less dimmed now. It is not a red but a white light. 

In the woods and about swamps, as Ministerial, also, there are several kinds of twigs, this year’s shoots of shrubs, which have a slight down or hairiness, hardly perceptible in ordinary lights though held in the hand, but which, seen toward the sun, reflect a cheering silvery light. Such are not only the sweet-fern, but the hazel in a less degree, alder twigs, and even the short huckleberry twigs, also lespedeza stems. It is as if they were covered with a myriad fine spiculae which reflect a dazzling white light, exceedingly warming to the spirits and imagination. This gives a character of snug warmth and cheerfulness to the swamp, as if it were a place where the sun consorted with rabbits and partridges. Each individual hair on every such shoot above the swamp is bathed in glowing sunlight and is directly conversant with the day god. 

The cinnamon-brown of withered pinweeds (how long?) colors whole fields. It may be put with the now paler brown'of hardhack heads and the now darker brown of the dicksonia fern by walls.

I notice this afternoon that the pasture white oaks have commonly a few leaves left on the lower limbs and also next the trunk. 

Winter rye is another conspicuous green amid the withered grass fields. 

The rubuses are particularly hardy to retain their leaves. Not only low blackberry and high blackberry leaves linger still fresh, but the Rubus hispidus leaves last all winter like an evergreen. The great round-leaved pyrola, dwarf cornel, checkerberry, and lambkill have a lake or purplish tinge on the under side at present, and these last two are red or purplish above. It is singular that a blush should suffuse the under side of the thick leaved pyrola while it is still quite green above. 

When walnut husks have fairly opened, showing the white shells within, — the trees being either quite bare or with a few withered leaves at present, — a slight jar with the foot on the limbs causes them to rattle down in a perfect shower, and on bare, grass-grown pasture ground it is very easy picking them up. 

As I returned over Conantum summit yesterday, just before sunset, and was admiring the various rich browns of the shrub oak plain across the river, which seemed to me more wholesome and remarkable, as more permanent, than their late brilliant colors, I was surprised to see a broad halo travelling with me and always opposite the sun to me, at least a quarter of a mile off and some three rods wide, on the shrub oaks. 

 

Quaker colors

The rare wholesome and permanent beauty of withered oak leaves of various hues of brown mottling a hillside, especially seen when the sun is low, — Quaker colors, sober ornaments, beauty that quite satisfies the eye. The richness and variety are the same as before, the colors different, more incorruptible and lasting. 

Sprague Of Cohasset states to the Natural History Society, September 1st, ’58, that the light under the tail of the common glow-worm “remained for 15 minutes after death.” 

Who are bad neighbors? They who suffer their neighbors’ cattle to go at large because they don’t want their ill will, -- are afraid to anger them. They are abettors of the ill-doers. 

Who are the religious? They who do not differ much from mankind generally, except that they are more conservative and timid and useless, but who in their conversation and correspondence talk about kindness of Heavenly Father. Instead of going bravely about their business, trusting God ever, they do like him who says “Good sir” to the one he fears, or whistles to the dog that is rushing at him. And because they take His name in vain so often they presume that they are better than you. Oh, their religion is a rotten squash.

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

The glory of November is in its silvery, sparkling lights reflected from a myriad of surfaces. See October 25, 1858 ("The light reflected from the parallel twigs of birches recently bare, etc., like the gleam from gossamer lines. This is another Novemberish phenomenon. Call these November Lights. Hers is a cool, silvery light.");  November 2, 1853( "We come home in the autumn twilight . . . — clear white light, which penetrates the woods”);  November 10, 1858 (""This a November phenomenon, — the silvery light reflected from a myriad of downy surfaces . . . A cool and silvery light is the prevailing one;); ; November 17, 1858 (“We are interested at this season by the manifold ways in which the light is reflected to us . . . “November Lights" would be a theme for me.”); November 18, 1857 ("The sunlight is a peculiarly thin and clear yellow, falling on the pale-brown bleaching herbage of the fields at this season. There is no redness in it. This is November sunlight."); November 28, 1856 ("The sunlight reflected from the many ascending twigs . . . It is a true November phenomenon.")

The common milkweed (Asclepias Cornuti) and some thistles still discounting. See  October 23, 1852 ("The milkweed (Syriaca) now rapidly discounting. The lanceolate pods having opened, the seeds spring out on the least jar, or when dried by the sun, and form a little fluctuating white silky mass or tuft, each held by the extremities of the fine threads, until a stronger puff of wind sets them free"); see also September 21, 1856 ("Asclepias Cornuti discounting."); October 19, 1856 ("The Asclepias Cornuti pods are now apparently in the midst of discounting.");  October 25, 1858 ("Near the end of the causeway, milkweed is copiously discounting.");

The rare wholesome and permanent beauty of withered oak leaves of various hues of brown mottling a hillside. . . Quaker colors.  See October 25, 1858 ("Now, too, for the different shades of brown, especially in sprout-lands. I see [three] kinds of oaks now, — the whitish brown of the white oak, the yellowish brown of the black oak, and the red or purplish brown [of the scarlet oak] (if it can be called brown at all . . . but perhaps that may be called a lighter, yellowish brown, and so distinguished from the black in color. It has more life in it now than the white and black, not withered so much. These browns are very pure and wholesome colors");   November 29, 1857 ("I am struck by the singularly wholesome colors of the withered oak leaves, especially the shrub oak,. . . clear reddish-brown (sometimes paler or yellowish brown), its whitish under sides contrasting with it in a very cheerful manner . . .Then there is the now rich, dark brown of the black oak’s large and somewhat curled leaf on sprouts, with its lighter, almost yellowish, brown under side. Then the salmonish hue of white oak leaves, with the under sides less distinctly lighter."); December 21, 1856 ("The red oak leaves look thinner and flatter, and therefore perhaps show the lobes more, than those of the black. The white oak leaves are the palest and most shrivelled, the lightest, perhaps a shade of buff, but they are of various shades, some pretty dark with a salmon tinge. The swamp white oak leaves . . .are very much like the shrub oak . . . Both remarkable for their thick, leathery, sound leaves, uninjured by insects, and their very light downy under sides. The black oak leaves are the darkest brown, with clear or deep yellowish-brown undersides . . .The scarlet oak leaves, which are very numerous still, are of a ruddy color, having much blood in their cheeks. They are all winter the reddest on the hillsides . . .The red oak leaves are a little lighter brown than the black oak, less yellowish beneath.") See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Colors of March-- Brown Season

Who are bad neighbors? They who suffer their neighbors’ cattle to go at large are abettors of the ill-doers. See October 12, 1858 ("This town has made a law recently against cattle going at large, and assigned a penalty of five dollars. I am troubled by an Irish neighbor’s cow and horse, and have threatened to have them put in the pound. But a lawyer tells me that these town laws are hard to put through, there are so many quibbles. He never knew the complainant to get his case if the defendant were a-mind to contend. However, the cattle were kept out several days, till a Sunday came, and then they were all in my grounds again, as I heard, but all my neighbors tell me that I cannot have them impounded on that day. Indeed, I observe that very many of my neighbors do for this reason regularly turn their cattle loose on Sundays.")

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

The withered oak leaves 

of various hues of brown

 mottling a hillside.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau. The glory of November 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

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

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

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-581120

On a rounded rock there, covered with fresh-fallen pine-needles, amid the woods, whence I see Wachusett.

October 19. 

P. M. — To Conantum. 

The fall, now and for some weeks, is the time for flocks of sparrows of various kinds flitting from bush to bush and tree to tree — and both bushes and trees are thinly leaved or bare — and from one seared meadow to another. They are mingled together, and their notes, even, being faint, are, as well as their colors and motions, much alike. The sparrow youth are on the wing. They are still further concealed by their resemblance in color to the gray twigs and stems, which are now beginning to be bare. I have not noticed any kind of blackbird for a long time. 

The most prominent of the few lingering solidagos which I have noticed since the 8th is the S. caesia, though that is very scarce indeed now, hardly survives at all. 

Of the asters which I have noticed since that date, the A. undulatus is, perhaps, the only one of which you can find a respectable specimen. I see one so fresh that there is a bumblebee on it. 

Of lingering flowers which I have noticed during the last three or four days (vide list under 16th), not including fringed gentian and witch-hazel, the freshest, and at same time commonest, is the yarrow. 

I noticed, two or three days ago, after one of those frosty mornings, half an hour before sunset of a clear and pleasant day, a swarm, — were they not of winter gnats ? — between me and the sun like so many motes, seven or eight feet from the ground, by the side of a young cherry tree in the yard. The swarm was some three feet in diameter and seemed to have been revealed by the level rays of the sun. Each insect was acting its part in a ceaseless dance, rising and falling a few inches while the swarm kept its place. Is not this a forerunner of winter?

I go across Hubbard's land and find that I must go round the corners of two or three new winter-rye fields, which show very green by contrast with the seared grass. 

I sit on the old Conantum door-step, where the wind rattles the loose clapboards above my head, though for the most part only the horizontal rows of wrought nails are left to show where the clap boards have been. It is affecting to behold a peach and apple orchard just come to maturity by the side of this house, which was planted since this house was an uninhabited ruin, as if the first step would have been to pull down the house. 

See quite a flock of myrtle-birds, — which I might carelessly have mistaken for slate-colored snowbirds, — flitting about on the rocky hillside under Conantum Cliff. They show about three white or light-colored spots when they fly, commonly no bright yellow, though some are pretty bright. They perch on the side of the dead mulleins, on rocks, on the ground, and directly dart off apparently in pursuit of some insect. I hear no note from them. They are thus near or on the ground, then, not as in spring. 

Both the white and black ash are quite bare, and some of the elms there. The bass has lost, apparently, more than half its leaves. 

The Botrychium lunarioides, now shedding its pale whitish dust when struck by the foot, but apparently generally a little past its maturity, is quite common in the pasture near the wall where I sat to watch the eagle. At first you notice only the stipe, four to seven or eight inches high, like a narrow hand partly closed, for the small (now dull-purplish) frond unites with it below the surface. 

Walking through the reddened huckleberry bushes, whose leaves are fast falling, I notice the birds' nests already filling with withered leaves. 

Witch-hazel in bloom
October 19, 2018

Witch-hazel is in prime, or probably a little past, though some buds are not yet open. Their leaves are all gone. They form large clumps on the hillside there, even thirty to fifty stems from one to two or three inches in diameter and the highest twelve feet high, falling over on every side. The now imbrowned ferns around indicate the moist soil which they like. 

I have often noticed the inquisitiveness of birds, as the other day of a sparrow, whose motions I should not have supposed to have any reference to me, if I had not watched it from first to last. 

I stood on the edge of a pine and birch wood. It flitted from seven or eight rods distant to a pine within a rod of me, where it hopped about stealthily and chirped awhile, then flew as many rods the other side and hopped about there a spell, then back to the pine again, as near me as it dared, and again to its first position, very restless all the while. Generally I should have supposed that there was more than one bird, or that it was altogether accidental, — that the chipping of this sparrow eight or ten rods [away] had no reference to me, — for I could see nothing peculiar about it. 

But when I brought my glass to bear on it, I found that it was almost steadily eying me and was all alive with excitement.

Pokeweed has been killed by the severe frosts of the last three or four days. 

The Asclepias Cornuti pods are now apparently in the midst of discounting. They point at various I angles with the stem like a flourish. The pretty brown fishes have loosened and lifted their scales somewhat, are bristling a little. Or, further advanced, the outer part of the down of the upper seeds is blown loose, while they are still retained by the ends  of the middle portion in loops  attached to the core. These white tufts, ready to burst and take to flight on the least jar, show afar as big as your fist. There they dangle and flutter, till they are quite dry and the wind rises. Others again are open and empty, except of the brown core, and you see what a delicate smooth white (slightly cream-colored) lining this casket has. 

The hypericums — the whole plant — have now generally been killed by the frost. 

A large pasture thistle bud close to the ground amid its leaves, as in spring. 

Among the dirty woolly heads of plants now gone to seed, I notice for the first time the peculiar matted, woolly top of the tall anemone, rising above some red-leaved huckleberries. I am surprised to see to what length and breadth one of these little compact conical heads has puffed out. Here are five which have flown and matted together into a mass four or five inches long, perpendicularly, by two wide, full of seeds with their wool. 

I return by the west side of Lee's Cliff hill, and sit on a rounded rock there, covered with fresh-fallen pine-needles, amid the woods, whence I see Wachusett. 

Wachusett from Fair Haven Hill, August 2, 1852

How little unevenness and elevation is required for Nature's effects! An elevation one thousand or fifteen hundred feet above the plain is seen from all eminences and level open plains, as from over the opening made by a pond, within thirty miles. Nature is not obliged to lift her mountains very high in the horizon, after all, to make them visible and interesting. 

The rich sunny yellow of the old pitch pine needles, just ready to fall, contrasting with the new and unmixed masses above, makes a very pleasing impression, as I look down into the hollows this side of Lee's Cliff. 

I noticed the small woodpecker several days ago.

H. D. Thoreau , Journal, October 19, 1856

The most prominent of the few lingering solidagos . . .  is the S. caesia, though that is very scarce indeed now. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Blue-stemmed Goldenrod (solidago caesia)

I see one [A. undulatus] so fresh that there is a bumblebee on it. See October 2, 1859  ("The Aster undulatus and Solidago coesia and often puberula are particularly prominent now, looking late and bright, attracting bees, etc."): October 4, 1853 ("Bumblebees are on the Aster undulatus, and gnats are dancing in the air."); October 6, 1858 (“The Aster undulatus is now very fair and interesting. Generally a tall and slender plant with a very long panicle of middle-sized lilac or paler purple flowers, bent over to one side the path."); October 12, 1856 ("It is interesting to see how some of the few flowers which still linger are frequented by bees and other insects."); October 25, 1858 ("The Aster undulatus is now a dark purple (its leaves), with brighter purple or crimson under sides."); November 3, 1858 ("Aster undulatus is still freshly in bloom"); November 7, 1858 ("Aster undulatus and several goldenrods, at least, may be found yet." See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Bees

It is affecting to behold a peach and apple orchard just come to maturity by the side of this house, which was planted since this house was an uninhabited ruin.  See February 19, 1855 ("Conant was cutting up an old pear tree which had blown down by his old house on Conantum. This and others still standing. . . were set anciently with reference to a house which stood in the little peach orchard near by.”) See also May 20, 1857 ("Peach trees are revealed along fences where they were quite unobserved before.")

Witch-hazel is in prime . . . Their leaves are all gone. See October 19, 1859 ("Many witch-hazel nuts are not yet open. The bushes just bare"); See also October 9, 1851("The witch-hazel here is in full blossom on this magical hillside, while its broad yellow leaves are falling. Some bushes are completely bare of leaves, and leather-colored they strew the ground."); October 11, 1858 ("Witch-hazel in full bloom, which has lost its leaves! ");  October 20, 1852 ("The witch-hazel is bare of all but flowers") And also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Witch-Hazel

Whence I see Wachusett . . . from all eminences and level open plains. See October 19, 1854 ("To Westminster by cars; thence on foot to Wachusett Mountain, four miles to Foster’s, and two miles thence to mountain-top by road."); October 20, 1854 ("Soon after sunrise I saw the pyramidal shadow of the mountain reaching quite across the State") See also November 30, 1852 ("From Pine Hill, Wachusett is seen over Walden. The country seems to slope up from the west end of Walden to the mountain."); August 25, 1853 ("Looking up the valley of the Mill Brook . . . I was surprised to see the whole outline and greater part of the base of Wachusett, though you stand in a low meadow."); December 27, 1853 ("Wachusett looks like a right whale over our bow, plowing the continent, with his flukes well down"); And also September 12, 1851 ("It is worth the while to see the mountains in the horizon once a day."); March 31, 1853 ("It is affecting to see a distant mountain-top,. . . still as blue and ethereal to your eyes as is your memory of it.'). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Mountains in the Horizon

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

On a rounded rock

covered with fresh pine-needles

I see Wachusett.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, On a rounded rock there, covered with fresh-fallen pine-needles

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-561019

Red lady’s-slippers over the red pine leaves on the forest floor,

June 5 

Thursday. P. M. — To Indian Ditch. 

Achillea Millefolium. Black cherry, apparently yesterday. 

The Muscicapa Cooperi sings pe pe pe’, sitting on the top of a pine, and shows white rump (?), etc., unlike kingbird. 

Return by J. Hosmer Desert. 

Everywhere now in dry pitch pine woods stand the red lady’s-slippers over the red pine leaves on the forest floor, rejoicing in June, with their two broad curving green leaves, —some even in swamps. Uphold their rich, striped red, drooping sack. 

This while rye begins to wave richly in the fields. 

A brown thrasher’s nest with four eggs considerably developed, under a small white pine on the old north edge of the desert, lined with root-fibres. The bird utters its peculiar tchuck near by. 

Pitch pine out, the first noticed on low land, maybe a day or two. Froth on pitch pine. 

A blue jay’s nest on a white pine, eight feet from ground, next to the stem, of twigs lined with root-fibres; three fresh eggs, dark dull greenish, with dusky spots equally distributed all over, in Hosmer (?) pines twenty seven paces east of wall and fifty-seven from factory road by wall. Jay screams as usual. Sat till I got within ten feet at first.

A cuckoo’s nest with three light bluish-green eggs partly developed, short with rounded ends, nearly of a size; in the thicket up railroad this side high wood, in a black cherry that had been lopped three feet from ground, amid the thick sprouts; a nest of nearly average depth (?), of twigs lined with green leaves, pine needles, etc., and edged with some dry, branchy weeds. The bird stole off silently at first. Five rods south of railroad. 

I must call that cerastium of May 22d C. nutans (?), at least for the present, though I do not see grooves in stem. Oakes, in his catalogue in Thompson’s “History of Vermont,” says it is not found in New England out of that State. The pods of the common one also turn upward. It is about four flowered; no petals; pods, which have formed in tumbler, more than twice but not thrice as long as calyx, bent down nearly at right angles with peduncles and then curving upward. The common cerastium is in tufts, spreading, a darker green and much larger, hairy but not glutinous, pods but little longer than calyx (as yet) and upright.

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

The Muscicapa Cooperi sings pe pe pe’, sitting on the top of a pine. See May 15, 1855 ("I hear from the top of a pitch pine in the swamp that loud, clear, familiar whistle . . . 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 .”). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Olive-sided flycatcher or pe-pe

Everywhere now in dry pitch pine woods stand the red lady’s-slippers. See  June 5, 1850 ("When the lady’s-slipper and the wild pink have come out in sunny places on the hillsides, then the summer is begun according to the clock of the seasons.") See also note to May 30, 1856 (“The lady’s-slipper in pitch pine wood-side near J. Hosmer’s Desert, probably about the 27th.”) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Lady Slipper

Froth on pitch pine. See June 4, 1854 ("I now notice froth on the pitch and white pines.”); June 15, 1851("A white froth drips from the pitch pines, just at the base of the new shoots. It has no taste.”)

A blue jay’s nest on a white pine, See June 8, 1855 ("A jay’s nest with three young half fledged in a white pine, six feet high. . . made of coarse sticks.”); June 10, 1859 ("A blue jay's nest about four feet up a birch, quite exposed beneath the leafy branches. “) 

I must call that cerastium of May 22d C. nutans See  May 6, 1856 ("Cerastium out there under the bank"); May 22, 1856 ("A little clammy hairy cerastium (?) (like a Cerastium viscosum, slender and erect), about three inches high, will open in a day or two on the rock near the bass."); May 31, 1856 ("That little cerastium on the rock at the Island, noticed the 22d . . . seems to be the C. nutans (?), from size, erectness, and form of pods and leaves.”) 

A brown thrasher’s nest with four eggs considerably developed, under a small white pine See June 6, 1857 ("A brown thrasher's nest, with two eggs, on ground, near lower lentago wall and toward Bittern Cliff. ")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Brown Thrasher

Red lady’s-slippers, 

with two broad curving green leaves,

rejoicing in June.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Red lady’s-slippers

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-560605