There are various ways in which you can tell if a watermelon is ripe

August 27

. .. I think that some summer squashes had turned yellow in our yard a fortnight or more ago . There are various ways in which you can tell if a watermelon is ripe . If you have had your eye on the patch much from the first , and so know which formed first , you may presume that these will ripen soonest ; or else you may incline to those which lie nearest the centre of the hill or root , as the oldest . Next the dull dead color and want of bloom are as good signs as any . Some look green and livid and have a very fog or mildew of bloom on them , like a fungus . These are as green as a leek through and through , and you'll find yourself in a pickle if you open one . Others have a dead dark green- ness , the circulations being less rapid in their cuticles and their blooming period passed , and these you may safely bet on . If the vine is quite green and lively , the death of the quirl at the root of the stem is almost a sure sign . For fear we should not discover it before , this is placed for a sign that there is redness and ripeness ( if not mealiness ) within . Of two otherwise similar , take that which yields the lowest tone when struck with your knuckles , i . e . , which is hollowest . The old or ripe ones sing base ; the young , tenor or falsetto . Some use the violent method of pressing to hear if they crack within , but this is not to be allowed . Above all no tapping on the vine is to be tolerated , suggestive of a greediness which defeats its own purpose . It is very childish . One man told me that he could n't raise melons because his children would cut them all up . I thought that he convicted himself out of his own mouth , and was not fit to be the ruler of a country according to Confucius ' . . .

See Late Blackberries

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 27, 1859

All our life is a persistent dreaming awake. See November 12, 1859 ("I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?"); October 29, 1857 ("There are some things of which I cannot at once tell whether I have dreamed them or they are real"); August 8, 1852 ("When the play - it may be the tragedy of life - is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.") May 24, 1851 ("I frequently awake with an atmosphere about me as if my unremembered dreams had been divine, as if my spirit had journeyed to its native place”).

I often see yarrow with a delicate pink tint. See July 5, 1856 ("Pink-colored yarrow.")

The children have done bringing huckleberries to sell for nearly a week. See July 13, 1852 ("It is impossible to say what day — almost what week — the huckleberries begin to be ripe, unless you are acquainted with, and daily visit, every huckleberry bush in the town"); August 4, 1852 (“Most huckleberries and blueberries and low blackberries are in their prime now.”); August 4, 1854 ("On this hill (Smith's) the bushes are black with huckleberries. ...Now in their prime. Some glossy black, some dull black, some blue; and patches of Vaccinium vacillans inter mixed."); August 4. 1856 ("This favorable moist weather has expanded some of the huckleberries to the size of bullets"); August 28, 1856 ("Huckleberries are about given up")

Perfectly fresh and large low blackberries, peculiarly sweet and soft, in the shade of the pines at Thrush Alley,-- so much sweeter, tenderer, and larger. See July 31, 1856 (“How thick the berries — low blackberries, Vaccinium vacillans, and huckleberries — on the side of Fair Haven Hill! ”) August 4, 1852 (“Most huckleberries and blueberries and low blackberries are in their prime now.”); August 19, 1856 ("What countless varieties of low blackberries! Here, in this open pine grove, I pluck some large fresh and very sweet ones when they are mostly gone without. So they are continued a little longer to us"); August 28, 1856 (“low blackberries done, high blackberries still to be had.”); 

Elder-berry clusters swell and become heavy and therefore droop, bending the bushes down, just in proportion as they ripen. See   August 22, 1852 ("The elder bushes are weighed down with fruit partially turned, and are still in bloom at the extremities of their twigs."); August 23, 1856  ("Elder-berries, now looking purple, are weighing down the bushes along fences by their abundance."); August 29, 1854 ("The cymes of elder-berries, black with fruit, are now conspicuous.")

The children have done 

bringing huckleberries to sell 

for nearly a week.

No such gust since spring.

September 28. 

September 28, 2017

I planted six seeds sent from the Patent Office and labelled, I think, “Poitrine jaune grosse” (large yellow pumpkin (or squash?)). Two came up, and one bore a squash which weighs 123 1/2 lbs. the other bore four,    1 weighing  72 3/4
                 2d    “          54 
                 3d    “          37 3/4
                4th    “          21 3/4
                                  309 3/4

Who would have believed that there was 310 pounds of poitrine jaune grosse in that corner of our garden? Yet that little seed found it. Other seeds would find something else every year for successive ages, until the crop more than filled our whole garden; which suggests that the various fruits are the product of the same elements differently combined, and those elements are in continual revolution around the globe. This poitrine found here the air of France, and measurably its soil too.

Looking down from Nawshawtuct this afternoon, the white maples on the Assabet and below have a singular light glaucous look, almost hoary, as if curled and showing the under sides of the leaves, and they contrast with the fresh green pines and hemlocks.

The swamp white oaks present some of the same crisped whitish appearance. 

I see that E. Wood has sent a couple of Irishmen, with axe and bush-whack, to cut off the natural hedges of sumach, Roxbury waxwork, grapes, etc., which have sprung up by the walls on this hill farm, in order that his cows may get a little more green. And they have cut down two or three of the very rare celtis trees, not found anywhere else in town. The Lord deliver us from these vandalic proprietors! The botanist and lover of nature has, perchance, discovered some rare tree which has sprung up by a farmer's wall-side to adorn and bless it, sole representative of its kind in these parts. Strangers send for a seed or a sprig from a distance, but, walking there again, he finds that the farmer has sent a raw Irishman, a hireling just arrived on these shores, who was never there before, — and, we trust, will never be let loose there again, – who knows not whether he is hacking at the upas tree or the Tree of Knowledge, with axe and stub-scythe to exterminate it, and he will know it no more forever. What is trespassing? This Hessian, the day after he was landed, was whirled twenty miles into the interior to do this deed of vandalism on our favorite hedge. I would as soon admit a living mud turtle into my herbarium. 

If some are prosecuted for abusing children, others deserve to be prosecuted for maltreating the face of nature committed to their care. 

Had one of those sudden cool gusts, which filled the air with dust from the road, shook the houses, and caused the elms to labor and drop many leaves, early in afternoon. No such gust since spring.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 28, 1857

They have cut down two or three of the very rare celtis trees, not found anywhere else in town. The Lord deliver us from these vandalic proprietors! . . . If some are prosecuted for abusing children, others deserve to be prosecuted for maltreating the face of nature committed to their care. See  October 16, 1860 (" I have come up here this afternoon to see the dense white pine lot beyond the pond, . . .To my surprise and chagrin, I find that the fellow who calls himself its owner has burned it all over and sowed winter-rye here.. . .He needs to have a guardian placed over him. A forest-warden should be appointed by the town. Overseers of poor husbandmen.");

No such gust since spring. See September 28 1852 ("What have these high and roaring winds to do with the fall?")

September 28.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, September 28

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Scarlet berry season.

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

Standing by Peter's well, the white maples by the bank of the river a mile off now give a rosaceous tinge to the edge of the meadow.

September 10.

Thursday. P. M. — To Cardinal Ditch and Peter’s.

Cardinal-flower, nearly done. 

Beach plum, almost ripe. 

Squash vines on the Great Fields, generally killed and blackened by frost (though not so much in our garden), revealing the yellow fruit, perhaps prematurely. 

Standing by Peter's well, the white maples by the bank of the river a mile off now give a rosaceous tinge to the edge of the meadow. 

I see lambkill ready to bloom a second time. Saw it out on the 20th; how long?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 10, 1857

Cardinal Ditch / Cardinal-flower, nearly done. See August 27, 1856 (“The cardinals in this ditch make a splendid show now”). Also September 14, 1856 (“The flowering of the ditches. ”)

Standing by Peter's well, the white maples by the bank of the river a mile off . . . See March 31, 1856 ("To Peter’s -- I see the scarlet tops of white maples nearly a mile off, down the river, the lusty shoots of last year.”); August 15, 1858 ("The smaller white maples are very generally turned a dull red, and their long row, seen against the fresh green of Ball’s Hill, is very surprising")' September 8, 1858 ("I perceive the dark-crimson leaves, quite crisp, of the white maple on the meadows, recently fallen.")  Compare April 28, 1855 ("The red maples, now in bloom, are quite handsome at a distance over the flooded meadow beyond Peter’s. The abundant wholesome gray of the trunks and stems beneath surmounted by the red or scarlet crescents.”); May 1, 1855 ("The maples of Potter’s Swamp, seen now nearly half a mile off against the russet or reddish hillside, are a very dull scarlet, like Spanish brown.”)

A rosaceous tinge

by the bank of the river –

maples a mile off.

Cannabis sativa, apparently out.

August 11.

To Contantum.

The mountain-ash berries are turning. We had a ripe watermelon on the 7th. I see the great yellow flowers of the squash amid the potatoes in the garden, one of the largest yellow flowers we have. How fat and rich! Of course it is long since they blossomed. Green corn begins.

The autumnal ring of the alder locust. White lilies are not very numerous now.

The skunk-cabbage leaves are fallen and decaying, and their fruit is black. Their fall is earlier than that of other plants.

I am attracted by the clear dark-green leaves of the fever-bush. The rum cherry is ripe.

The Collinsonia Canadensis just begun. The great trumpet-weeds now fairly out. Sumach berries now generally red. Some naked viburnum berries are red. The sweet viburnum turning.

The larger skull-cap is quite an important and interesting flower.

Platanthera blephariglottis, white fringed orchis.

This side of Hubbard's Meadow Bridge, Lespedeza hirta (hairy), Cannabis sativa, apparently out.

Aster corymbosus, path beyond Corner Spring and in Miles Swamp.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 11, 1852

Cannabis sativa, apparently out. See August 4, 1854 ("Cannabis sativa")

Platanthera blephariglottis, white fringed orchis. See August 8, 1858 ("I find at Ledum Swamp, near the pool, the white fringed orchis, quite abundant but past prime, only a few, yet quite fresh. It seems to belong to this sphagnous swamp and is some fifteen to twenty inches high, quite conspicuous, its white spike, amid the prevailing green. The leaves are narrow, half folded, and almost insignificant. It loves, then, these cold bogs.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The White Fringed Orchis

Aster corymbosus, path beyond Corner Spring and in Miles Swamp. See August 9, 1856 ("What I have called Aster corymbosus out a day, above Hemlocks. . . .")

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

 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021