I observed the grass waving to-day for the first time.

 June 3. 

Tuesday.

Lectured in Worcester last Saturday, and walked to As- or Hasnebumskit Hill in Paxton the next day.

Said to be the highest land in Worcester County except Wachusett.

Met Mr. Blake, Brown, Chamberlin, Hinsdale, Miss Butman (?), Wyman, Conant.

Returned to Boston yesterday.

Conversed with John Downes, who is connected with the Coast Survey, is printing tables for astronomical, geodesic, and other uses.

He tells me that he once saw the common sucker in numbers piling up stones as big as his fist (like the piles which I have seen), taking them up or moving them with their mouths.

Dr. Harris suggests that the mountain cranberry which I saw at Ktaadn was the Vaccinium Vitis-Idæa, cow berry, because it was edible and not the Uva-Ursi, or bear-berry, which we have in Concord.

Saw the Uvularia perfoliata, perfoliate bellwort, in Worcester near the hill; an abundance of mountain laurel on the hills, now budded to blossom and the fresh lighter growth contrasting with the dark green; an abundance of very large checkerberries, or partridge berries, as Bigelow calls them, on Hasnebumskit.

Sugar maples about there.

A very extensive view, but the western view not so much wilder as I expected. 

See Barre, about fifteen miles off, and Rutland, etc., etc. Not so much forest as in our neighborhood; high, swelling hills, but less shade for the walker. The hills are green, the soil springier; and it is written that water is more easily obtained on the hill than in the valleys.

Saw a Scotch fir, the pine so valued for tar and naval uses in the north of Europe.

Mr. Chamberlin told me that there was no corporation in Worcester except the banks ( which I suspect may not be literally true ), and hence their freedom and independence. I think it likely there is a gas company to light the streets at least.

John Mactaggart finds the ice thickest not in the largest lakes in Canada, nor in the smallest, where the surrounding forests melt it.

He says that the surveyor of the boundary-line between England and United States on the Columbia River saw pine trees which would require sixteen feet in the blade to a cross-cut saw to do anything with them.

I examined to-day a large swamp white oak in Hubbard's meadow, which was blown down by the same storm which destroyed the lighthouse. At five feet from the ground it was nine and three fourths feet in circumference; the first branch at eleven and a half feet from ground; and it held its size up to twenty-three feet from the ground. Its whole height, measured on the ground, was eighty feet, and its breadth about sixty-six feet.

The roots on one side were turned up with the soil on them, making an object very conspicuous a great distance off, the highest root being eighteen feet from the ground and fourteen feet above centre of trunk. The roots, which were small and thickly interlaced, were from three to nine inches beneath the surface ( in other trees I saw them level with the surface ) and thence extended fifteen to eighteen inches in depth (i. e to this depth they occupied the ground). They were broken off at about eleven feet from the centre of the trunk and were there on an average one inch in diameter, the largest being three inches in diameter.The longest root was broken off at twenty feet from the centre, and was there three quarters of an inch in diameter.

The tree was rotten within. The lower side of the soil (what was originally the lower), which clothed the roots for nine feet from the centre of the tree, was white and clayey to appearance, and a sparrow was sitting on three eggs within the mass. Directly under where the massive trunk had stood, and within a foot of the surface, you could apparently strike in a spade and meet with no obstruction to a free cultivation.

There was no tap root to be seen. The roots were encircled with dark, nubby rings. The tree, which still had a portion of its roots in the ground and held to them by a sliver on the leeward side, was alive and had leaved out, though on many branches the leaves were shrivelled again.

Quercus bicolor of Bigelow, Q. Prinus discolor Mx. f.

June 3, 2016

I observed the grass waving to-day for the first time, the swift Camilla on it. It might have been noticed before. You might have seen it now for a week past on grain-fields.

Clover has blossomed.

I noticed the indigo-weed a week or two ago pushing up like asparagus.

Methinks it must be the small andromeda (?), that dull red mass of leaves in the swamp, mixed perchance with the rhodora, with its dry fruit like appendages, as well as the Andromeda paniculata, else called ligustrina, and the clethra.

It was the golden senecio (Senecio aureus) which I plucked a week ago in a meadow in Wayland. The earliest, methinks, of the aster and autumnal-looking yellow flowers. Its bruised stems enchanted me with their indescribable sweet odor, like I cannot think what.

The Phaseolus vulgaris includes several kinds of bush beans, of which those I raised were one.

  

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 3, 1851

Lectured in Worcester last Saturday[May 31, 1851] See Thoreau's Lectures Before Walden, Lecture 32 (Thoreau read a  version of "Walking or the Wild" to a private audience)

John Downes tells me that he once saw the common sucker in numbers piling up stones as big as his fist (like the piles which I have seen), taking them up or moving them with their mouths. See. June 3, 1857 (" I feel the suckers' nests with my paddle, but do not see them on account of the depth of the river"); May 7, 1853 ("The stone heaps have been formed since I was here before, methinks about a month ag . . . i. e., piles several feet in diameter by a foot high have evidently been made (no doubt commonly on the ruins of old ones) within a month. The stones are less than the size of a hen's egg, down to a pebble;")

Saw the Uvularia perfoliata, perfoliate bellwort, in Worcester near the hill. See May 30, 1857 ("By the path near the northeast shore of Flint's Pond, just before reaching the wall by the brook, I . . .am surprised to find ... the Uvularia perfoliata, which I have not found hereabouts before. . . .. It is considerably past its prime “). Note: Thoreau’s only references to Concord occurrence of the perfoliate bellwort are tsecond-hand, August 22, 1857 and September 22, 1852 ~ Ray Angelo, Vascular Flora of Concord, Massachusetts

I observed the grass waving to-day for the first time. See May 19, 1860 ("[T]hey say of the 19th of April, '75, — that "the apple trees were in bloom and grass was waving in the fields,"); May 23, 1853 ("And buttercups and silvery cinquefoil, and the first apple blossoms, and waving grass beginning to be tinged with sorrel, introduce us to a different season ."); May 30, 1852 (A day for shadows, even of moving clouds, over fields in which the grass is beginning to wave."); June 9, 1852 ("The general leafiness, shadiness, and waving of grass and boughs in the breeze characterize the season.")

I noticed the indigo-weed a week or two ago pushing up like asparagus. See May 6, 1860 ("indigo-weed shoots six inches high"); July 17, 1852 ("Some fields are covered now with tufts or clumps of indigo- weed, yellow with blossoms, with a few dead leaves turned black here and there.")

It was the golden senecio (Senecio aureus). . .earliest, methinks, of the aster and autumnal-looking yellow flowers. See May 23, 1853 ("I am surprised by the dark orange-yellow of the senecio. At first we had the lighter, paler spring yellows of willows, dandelion, cinquefoil, then the darker and deeper yellow of the buttercup; and then this broad distinction between the buttercup and the senecio, as the seasons revolve toward July."); June 6, 1858 ("Golden senecio is not uncommon now"); 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")

Its bruised stems enchanted me with their indescribable sweet odor, like I cannot think what.  See March 4, 1854 (" In the meadow beyond I see everywhere the green and reddish radical leaves of the golden senecio, whose fragrance when bruised carries me back or forward to an incredible season. Who would believe that under the snow and ice lie still — or in midwinter — some green leaves which, bruised, yield the same odor that they do when their yellow blossoms spot the meadows in June? Nothing so realizes the summer to me now."); March 10 1853 ("the fragrance of the senecio, which is decidedly evergreen, which I have bruised, is very permanent and brings round the year again. It is a memorable sweet meadowy fragrance."); August 30, 1857 ("The flower of Cicuta maculata smells like the leaves of the golden senecio.")

The warblers begin to come in numbers with the leafing of the trees.

May 15 

Sunday. 

Observe Cornus florida involucres.

Sarsaparilla flower. 

Mary Vaux Walcott.

Pussy Willow (Salix discolor), 1920

Salix discolor seed, or down, begins to blow. 

A woodcock starts up with whistling sound. 

I have been struck of late with the prominence of the Viburnum nudum leaf in the swamps, reddish-brown and one inch over, a peculiarly large and mature-looking, firm-looking leaf. 

Swamp white oak leafed several days, but generally appears as in winter at a little distance. 

Salix lucida well out, how long? 

Nemopanthes flower, apparently a day or two. 

Now, when the warblers begin to come in numbers with the leafing of the trees, the woods are so open that you can easily see them. They are scarce and silent in a cool and windy day, or found only in sheltered places. 

I see an oak shoot (or sprout) already grown ten inches, when the buds of oaks and of most trees are but just burst generally. You are surprised to see such a sudden and rapid development when you had but just begun to think of renewed life, not yet of growth. Very properly these are called shoots. 

This plant has, perhaps, in four or five days accomplished one fourth part [of] its whole summer's growth. (So on the 4th of June I notice the shoots of the white pine, five to nine inches long, arranged raywise about the terminal one and the end of their branches, having in about a fortnight accomplished one quarter to one third their whole summer growth. Thus they may be properly said to shoot when their season comes, and then stand to harden and mature before the winter.)

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 15, 1859

Now, when the warblers begin to come in numbers with the leafing of the trees, the woods are so open that you can easily see them. See May 15, 1860 ("Deciduous woods now swarm with migrating warblers, especially about swamps.”) See also April 19, 1854 ("Within a few days the warblers have begun to come. They are of every hue. Nature made them to show her colors with. There are as many as there are colors and shades."); May 7, 1852 ("For now, before the leaves, they begin to people the trees in this warm weather. The first wave of summer from the south.”); May 11, 1853 (" How many little birds of the warbler family are busy now about the opening buds . . .  They are almost as much a part of the tree as its blossoms and leaves. They come and give it voice."); May 18, 1856 ("The swamp is all alive with warblers about the hoary expanding buds of oaks, maples, etc., and amid the pine and spruce."); May 18, 1857 ("The swamp is all alive with warblers . . . They fill the air with their little tshree tshree sprayey notes")May 23, 1857 ("This is the time and place to hear the new-arriving warblers, the first fine days after the May storm. When the leaves generally are just fairly expanding,"); May 28, 1855 ("I have seen within three or four days two or three new warblers “) 

I see an oak shoot (or sprout) already grown ten inches. See May 26, 1854 ("Some young red oaks have already grown eighteen inches, i. e. within a fortnight, before their leaves have two-thirds expanded. They have accomplished more than half their year's growth, as if,. . . now burst forth like a stream which has been dammed. They are properly called shoots.”); May 25, 1853 ("Many do most of their growing for the year in a week or two at this season. They shoot - they spring - and the rest of the Year they harden and mature,. . .”); June 30, 1854 ("Young oak shoots have grown from one and a half to three or four feet, but now in some cases appear to be checked and formed a large bud.”)

So on the 4th of June I notice the shoots of the white pine, five to nine inches long. See May 19, 1854 ("The white pine shoots are now two or three inches long generally, — upright light marks on the body of dark green.”); May 28, 1855 (“White pine and pitch pine shoots from two to five inches long.”);July 4, 1860 ("The white pine shoot which on the 19th of June had grown sixteen and a quarter inches and on the 27th twenty and three quarters is now twenty-three and an eighth inches long.”)

The warblers begin

to come in numbers with the

leafing of the trees.

There are now but few bright leaves to be seen.

October 28

Cattle coming down from up country. 

P. M. — Up Assabet to Cedar Swamp. 

Here is an Indian-summer day. Not so warm, indeed, as the 19th and 20th, but warm enough for pleasure. 

The majority of the white maples are bare, but others are still thickly leaved the leaves being a greenish yellow. It appears, then, that they hold their leaves longer than our other maples, or most trees. The majority of them do not acquire a bright tint at all, and, though interesting for their early summer blush, their autumnal colors are not remarkable. 

The dogwood on the island is perhaps in its prime, — a distinct scarlet, with half of the leaves green in this case. Apparently none have fallen. I see yet also some Cornus sericea bushes with leaves turned a clear dark but dull red, rather handsome. 

Some large red oaks are still as bright as ever, and that is here a brownish yellow, with leaves partly withered; and some are already quite bare.

Swamp white oak withers apparently with the white. Some of both are still partly greenish, while others of both are bare. 

How handsome the great red oak acorns now! I stand under the tree on Emerson’s lot. They are still falling. I heard one fall into the water as I approached, and thought that a musquash had plunged. They strew the ground and the bottom of the river thickly, and while I stand here I hear one strike the boughs with force as it comes down, and drop into the water. The part that was covered by the cup is whitish-woolly. How munificent is Nature to create this profusion of wild fruit, as it were merely to gratify our eyes! Though inedible they are more wholesome to my immortal part, and stand by me longer, than the fruits which I eat. If they had been plums or chestnuts I should have eaten them on the spot and probably forgotten them. They would have afforded only a momentary gratification, but being acorns, I remember, and as it were feed on, them still. They are untasted fruits forever in store for me. I know not of their flavor as yet. That is postponed to some still unimagined winter evening. These which we admire but do not eat are nuts of the gods. When time is no more we shall crack them. I cannot help liking them better than horse-chestnuts, which are of a similar color, not only because they are of a much handsomer form, but because they are indigenous. What hale, plump fellows they are! They can afford not to be useful to me, nor to know me or be known by me. They go their way, I go mine, and it turns out that sometimes I go after them. 

The hemlock is in the midst of its fall, and the leaves strew the ground like grain. They are inconspicuous on the tree.

The Populus grandidentata leaves are not all fallen yet. This, then, is late to lose its leaves, later, rather, than the sugar maple. Its leaves are large and conspicuous on the ground, and from their freshness make a great show there. It is later to fall than the tremuliformic, as it was later to bloom. 

I now begin to notice the evergreen ferns, when the others are all withered or fallen. 

The black willows have been bare some time. 

Panicled andromeda and winterberry are about bare. 

Pitch pines are falling; and white cedars are apparently in the midst of their fall, turning a pale brown and strewing the ground. 

There are now but few bright leaves to be seen, 'viz.

3  Pitch pine (though most is faded on the trees).
2  Larch.
1  Scarlet oak.
4  Populus grandidentata (thin-leaved).
6  A few yellow leaves on young willows, coniferous ones and S. sericea especially, still holding on to the extremity of the twigs.
8  Some crimson Viburnum nudum (thin-leaved).
9  Meadow-sweet.
10  Some Viburnum dentatum, greenish purple (thin leaved, not conspicuous).
5  Some small white birch tops.
5  High blueberry (more common than last).
7  Some silky cornel.
14  Flowering dogwood.
11  Gooseberry.
12  Common wild rose, yellow inclining to scarlet.
12  Rosa Carolina (clear dark red) and sweet-briar.
13  Staghorn sumach, in cool places and shaded.

Numbered in the order of their importance, most being either very thin-leaved now, or rare.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 28, 1858

The majority of the white maples are bare, but others are still thickly leaved. See note to October 14, 1858 ("The white maples are now apparently in their autumnal dress”)

The dogwood on the island is perhaps in its prime, — a distinct scarlet, with half of the leaves green in this case. See June 8, 1858 (“ Cornus florida at Island well out, say the 3d.”); August 30, 1854 (“Dogwood leaves have fairly begun to turn”); October 12, 1858 (“The C. florida at Island shows some scarlet tints, but it is not much exposed.”)

 I see yet also some Cornus sericea bushes with leaves turned a clear dark but dull red, rather handsome. See  October 9, 1858 (“Some Cornus sericea looks quite greenish yet.”); October 12, 1858 (“The Cornus sericea begins to fall, though some of it is green”); October 17, 1858 (“The Cornus sericea is a very dark crimson, though it has lost some leaves.”)


How handsome the great red oak acorns now! See October 12, 1858 (“Acorns, red and white (especially the first), appear to be fallen or falling. They are so fair and plump and glossy that I love to handle them, and am loath to throw away what I have in my hand.”); September 30, 1854 ("The conventional acorn of art is of course of no particular species, but the artist might find it worth his while to study Nature’s varieties again.”)

The hemlock is in the midst of its fall, and the leaves strew the ground like grain. See  October 8, 1857 (“Hemlock leaves are copiously falling. They cover the hillside like some wild grain. ”); October 16, 1857 (“Hemlock leaves are falling now faster than ever, and the trees are more parti-colored. The falling leaves look pale-yellow on the trees, but become reddish on the ground.”); November 11, 1855 (“At the Hemlocks I see a narrow reddish line of hemlock leaves . .. mathematically level. This chronicles the hemlock fall, which I had not noticed, we have so few trees, and also the river’s rise”)

The Populus grandidentata leaves are not all fallen yet.  See November 5, 1858 ("A few Populus grandidentata leaves are still left on"); November 10, 1858 ("There are still a few leaves on the large Populus tremuliformis, but they will be all gone in a day or two. They have turned quite yellow.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,the Big-toothed Aspen (Populus grandidentata)t

I now begin to notice the evergreen ferns. See October 23, 1857 ("The ferns which I can see on the bank, apparently all evergreens, are polypody at rock, marginal shield fern, terminal shield fern, and (I think it is) Aspidium spinulosum,. . .The above-named evergreen ferns are so much the more conspicuous on that pale-brown ground. They stand out all at once and are seen to be evergreen; their character appears.”). See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Evergreen Ferns, Part One: Maidenhair and Ebony Spleenwort; Part Two: Aspidium spinulosum & Aspidium cristatum;

Part Three: Polypody, Marginal Shield Fern, Terminal Sheild Fern

There are now but few bright leaves to be seen. See October 23, 1857(“I can find no bright leaves now in the woods.”)

When others wither

I now begin  to notice 

the evergreen ferns.

Goodwin says he heard a stake-driver several days ago.

April 25.

P. M. — To Assabet. 

Approaching the Island, I hear the phe phe, phe phe, phe phe, phe phe, phe, the sharp whistling note, of a fish hawk, and, looking round, see him just afterward launching away from one of the swamp white oaks southwest of the Island. 

There is about half a second between each note, and he utters them either while perched or while flying. He shows a great proportion of wing and some white on back. The wings are much curved. He sails along some eighty feet above the water’s edge, looking for fish, and alights again quite near. 

I see him an hour afterward about the same spot. 

See a barn swallow. Also see one myrtle-bird, and Goodwin says he heard a stake-driver several days ago.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 25, 1858

Approaching the Island, I hear the phe phe, phe phe, phe phe, phe phe, phe, the sharp whistling note, of a fish hawk, and, looking round, see him just afterward launching away from one of the swamp white oaks. See April 28, 1858 (“ I see the fish hawk again . . . This bird goes fishing slowly down one side of the river and up again on the other, forty to sixty feet high, continually poising itself almost or quite stationary, with its head to the northwest wind and looking down, flapping its wings enough to keep its place, some times stationary for about a minute. It is not shy. This boisterous weather is the time to see it. ”) Compare April 15, 1855 ("Half a mile further we see another fish hawk upon a dead limb midway up a swamp white oak over the water. . . When he launches off, he utters a clear whistling note, — phe phe, phe phe, phe phe, — somewhat like that of a telltale, but more round and less shrill and rapid, and another, perhaps his mate, fifty rods off, joins him. "); April 16, 1856 ("As I walk along the bank of the Assabet, I hear the yeep yeep yeep yeeep yeeep yeep, or perhaps peop, of a fish hawk, repeated quite fast, but not so shrill and whistling as I think I have heard it, and directly I see his long curved wings undulating over Pinxter Swamp, now flooded.”) See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Osprey (Fish Hawk)

Stake-Driver

Goodwin says he heard a stake-driver [the American Bittern]. See March 22, 1855 ("The river has skimmed over a rod in breadth along the sides. See a heavy-flapping, bittern-like bird flying northeast. It was small for a fish hawk. Can it be the stake-driver ? or a gull? "); April 24, 1854 ("A.M. — Up railroad. . . . As I stand still listening on the frosty sleepers at Wood's crossing by the lupines, I hear the loud and distinct pump-a-gor of a stake-driver. Thus he announces himself."); May 9, 1857 ("Hear stake-driver."); May 12, 1855 (“We sit about half an hour, and it is surprising what various distinct sounds we hear there deep in the wood, as if the aisles of the wood were so many ear trumpets,-- the cawing of crows, the peeping of hylas in the swamp and perhaps the croaking of a tree-toad, the oven-bird, the yorrick of Wilson’s thrush, a distant stake-driver, the night-warbler and black and white creeper, the lowing of cows, the late supper horn, the voices of boys, the singing of girls, -- not all together but separately, distinctly, and musically, from where the partridge and the red-tailed hawk and the screech owl sit on their nests.”) May 20, 1856 ("See and hear a stake-driver in the swamp. It took one short pull at its pump and stopped."); June 11, 1860 ("Just as we are shoving away from this isle, I hear a sound just like a small dog barking hoarsely, and, looking up, see it was made by a bittern (Ardea minor), a pair of which flap over the meadows and probably nest in some tussock thereabouts."); June 15, 1857 ("as I passed a swamp, a bittern boomed."); July 22, 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."); August 5, 1854 (Near Lee's (returning), see a large bittern, pursued by small birds, alight on the shorn meadow near the pickerel-weeds, but, though I row to the spot, he effectually conceals himself.); August 13, 1852 ("Saw the head and neck of a great bittern projecting above the meadow-grass, exactly like the point of a stump, only I knew there could be no stump there.")August 22, 1854 ("See a blue heron — apparently a young bird, of a brownish blue — fly up from one of these pools, and a stake-driver from another, and also see their great tracks on the mud, and the feathers they had shed,"); August 31, 1855 ("Passed in boat within fifteen feet of a great bittern, standing perfectly still in the water by the riverside, with the point of its bill directly up, as if it knew that from the color of its throat, etc., it was much less likely to be detected in that position, near weeds."); September 20, 1851 ("I scare up the great bittern in meadow by the Heywood Brook near the ivy. He rises buoyantly as he flies against the wind, and sweeps south over the willow with outstretched neck, surveying."); September 20, 1855 ("The great bittern, as it flies off from near the rail road bridge, filthily drops its dirt and utters a low hoarse kwa kwa; then runs and hides in the grass, and I land and search within ten feet of it before it rises. "); September 25, 1855 ("Scare up the usual great bittern above the railroad bridge, whose hoarse qua qua, as it flies heavily off, a pickerel-fisher on the bank imitates.");; October 26, 1858 ("[Minott] says that some call the stake-driver “'belcher squelcher,” and some, “wollerkertoot. ” I used to call them “pump-er-gor’. ” Some say “slug-toot.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, American Bittern (the Stake-Diver)

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

His notes fall with the apple blossoms in the orchard.

clintonea borealis June 1, 2017
(avesong)

June 1 

P. M. — To Hill. 

The weather has been less reliable for a few weeks past than at any other season of the year. Though fair in the forenoon, it may rain in the afternoon, and the continuance of the showers surpasses all expectation. After several days of rain a fair day may succeed, and you close your eyes at night on a starlit sky, but you awake unexpectedly to a steady rain in the morning. 

June 1, 2017 (avesong)

The morus at the Lee house is apparently the same with that at Howe's and Pratt's, and the berries are now three quarters of an inch long. I see no staminate blossoms. It must have been out several days. It is undoubtedly the Morus rubra, our only native one, for the nigra has lobed leaves and is a smaller tree, rare, and not quite hardy enough to do well in New England, they say.

The second thorn on Hill will evidently open tomorrow. It is altogether smooth while the first has downy peduncles, and its sepals are about entire while those of the first are cut-fringed. That largest and earliest thorn is now in full bloom, and I notice that its an apple tree, which has a blue tinge (or, earlier, rosaceous). This thorn has pink anthers, seen close at hand. The leaves are very evenly distributed amid the bloom. 

I see a swamp white fully and abundantly out, apparently a day or two; so the chestnut oak (which begins to shed pollen in house June 2d; its young reddish leaves resemble the young Q. Chinquapin, and its bloom, and apparently it opens with it in similar places) may be put apparently with the white oak. But it grows in a rather late place. 

P. arbutifolia var. erythrocarpa in house; perhaps a day or two earlier in some places. 

A red-wing's nest, four eggs, low in a tuft of sedge in an open meadow. What Champollion can translate the hieroglyphics on these eggs? It is always writing of the same character, though much diversified. While the bird picks up the material and lays the egg, who determines the style of the marking? 

When you approach, away dashes the dark mother, betraying her nest, and then chatters her anxiety from a neighboring bush, where she is soon joined by the red-shouldered male, who comes scolding over your head, chattering and uttering a sharp phe phee-e. 

I hear the note of a bobolink concealed in the top of an apple tree behind me. Though this bird's full strain is ordinarily somewhat trivial, this one appears to be meditating a strain as yet unheard in meadow or orchard. Paulo majora canamus. He is just touching the strings of his theorbo, his glassichord, his water organ, and one or two notes globe themselves and fall in liquid bubbles from his teeming throat. It is as if he touched his harp within a vase of liquid melody, and when he lifted it out, the notes fell like bubbles from the trembling strings. 

Methinks they are the most liquidly sweet and melodious sounds I ever heard.  They are refreshing to my ear as the first distant tinkling and gurgling of a rill to a thirsty man. Oh, never advance farther in your art, never let us hear your full strain, sir. But away he launches, and the meadow is all bespattered with melody. His notes fall with the apple blossoms in the orchard. The very divinest part of his strain dropping from his overflowing breast singultim, in globes of melody. It is the foretaste of such strains as never fell on mortal ears, to hear which we should rush to our doors and contribute all that we possess and are. Or it seemed as if in that vase full of melody some notes sphered themselves, and from time to time bubbled up to the surface and were with difficulty repressed.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 1, 1857

The chestnut oak . . . its young reddish leaves resemble the young Q. Chinquapin and its bloom, and apparently it opens with it in similar places. See May 25, 1852 ("The chinquapin shrub oak is blossoming.")

A red-wing's nest, four eggs, . . .who determines the style of the marking? See May 20, 1853 ("Probably a red-wing blackbird's nest, of grass, hung between two button-bushes; whitish eggs with irregular black marks"); May 25, 1855 ("Red-wing’s nest with four eggs — white, very faintly tinged with (perhaps) green and curiously and neatly marked with brown-black spots and lines on the large end.”); June 11, 1855 ("What a difference between one red-wing blackbird’s egg and another’s! C. finds one long as a robin’s, but narrow, with large black spots on larger end and on side, on or between the bushes by riverside; another much shorter, with a large black spot on the side. Both pale-blue ground."); June 12, 1855  ("At mouth of Mill Brook, a red-wing’s nest tied on to that thick, high grass and some low willow, eighteen inches from ground, with four eggs variously marked, full of young.”) ; June 28, 1855 ('Two red-wings’ nests, four eggs and three —one without any black marks.")

What Champollion can translate the hieroglyphics on these eggs? Jean-François Champollion was a French scholar, philologist and orientalist, known primarily as the decipherer of Egyptian hieroglyphs and a founding figure in the field of egyptology. Wikipedia

I hear the note of a bobolink concealed in the top of an apple tree behind me . . . It is the foretaste of such strains as never fell on mortal ears, to hear which we should rush to our doors and contribute all that we possess and are. See May 10, 1853 (“All at once a strain that sounds like old times and recalls a hundred associations. Not at once do I remember that a year has elapsed since I heard it, and then the idea of the bobolink is formed in my mind.”); May 16, 1854 ("The earth is all fragrant as one flower. And bobolinks tinkle in the air. Nature now is perfectly genial to man.”); and note to May 12, 1856 (“We hear the first bobolink. . . How much life the note of the bobolink imparts to the meadow! ”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Bobolink

His notes fall with the apple blossoms in the orchard. See May 21. 1853 ("And while I hear the bobolink strain dying away in the distance through the maples, I can [ sic ] the falling apple blossoms which I do not see, as if they were his falling notes.")

June 1, 2017

I found another caterpillar on the ice.

February 11. 

Wednesday. 

The meadows, flooded by the thaw of the last half of last week and Sunday, are now frozen hard enough to bear, and it is excellent skating. 

Near the other swamp white oak on Shattuck's piece I found another caterpillar on the ice. From its position I thought it possible that it had been washed from its winter quarters by the freshet, and so left on top of the ice. It was not frozen in, and may have been blown from the oak. 

It was of a different species from that of January 8th, about one and one tenth inches long, with but little fuzziness, black with three longitudinal buff stripes, the two lateral quite pale, and a black head; the foremost feet black, the others lighter-colored. 

It was frozen quite stiffly, as many tested, being curled up like the other, and I did not dare to bend it hard for fear of breaking it, even after I took it out in the house. But being placed on the mantelpiece it soon became relaxed, and in fifteen minutes began to crawl.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 11, 1857

It was of a different species from that of January 8th. . .See January 8, 1857 ("I picked up on the bare ice of the river, opposite the oak in Shattuck's land, on a small space blown bare of snow, a fuzzy caterpillar, black at the two ends and red-brown in the middle, rolled into a ball . . .”)

It was frozen quite stiffly but being placed on the mantelpiece it soon became relaxed, and in fifteen minutes began to crawl.See February 12, 1857 ("The caterpillar, which I placed last night on the snow beneath the thermometer, is frozen stiff again, this time not being curled up, the temperature being -6° now. Yet, being placed on the mantelpiece, it thaws and begins to crawl in five or ten minutes"); February 14, 1857 ("Numerous caterpillars are now crawling about on the ice and snow, the thermometer in the shade north of house standing 42°. So it appears that they must often thaw in the course of the winter, and find nothing to eat.”)

That grand old poem called Winter is round again

December 7

Sunday. P. M. — Take my first skate to Fair Haven Pond. 

It takes my feet a few moments to get used to the skates. I see the track of one skater who has preceded me this morning. This is the first skating. I keep mostly to the smooth ice about a rod wide next the shore commonly, where there was an overflow a day or two ago. There is not the slightest overflow to-day, and yet it is warm (thermometer at 25 at 4.30 p. m.). It must be that the river is falling. 

Now I go shaking over hobbly places, now shoot over a bridge of ice only a foot wide between the water and the shore at a bend, — Hubbard Bath, — always so at first there. Now I suddenly see the trembling surface of water where I thought were black spots of ice only around me. 

The river is rather low, so that I cannot keep the river above the Clamshell Bend. I am confined to a very narrow edging of ice in the meadow, gliding with unexpected ease through withered sedge, but slipping sometimes on a twig; again taking to the snow to reach the next ice, but this rests my feet; straddling the bare black willows, winding between the button-bushes, and following narrow threadings of ice amid the sedge, which bring me out to clear fields unexpectedly. 

Occasionally I am obliged to take a few strokes over black and thin-looking ice, where the neighboring bank is springy, and am slow to acquire confidence in it, but, returning, how bold I am! 

Where the meadow seemed only sedge and snow, I find a complete ice connection. 

At Cardinal Shore, as usual, there is a great crescent of hobbly ice, where, two or three days ago, the northwest wind drove the waves back up-stream and broke up the edge of the ice. This crescent is eight or ten rods wide and twice as many long, and consists of cakes of ice from a few inches to half a dozen feet in diameter, with each a raised edge all around, where apparently the floating sludge has been caught and accumulated. (Occasionally the raised edge is six inches high!) This is mottled black and white, and is not yet safe. It is like skating over so many rails, or the edges of saws. 

Now I glide over a field of white air-cells close to the surface, with coverings no thicker than egg-shells, cutting through with a sharp crackling sound. There are many of those singular spider-shaped dark places amid the white ice, where the surface water has run through some days ago. 

As I enter on Fair Haven Pond, I see already three pickerel-fishers retreating from it, drawing a sled through the Baker Farm, and see where they have been fishing, by the shining chips of ice about the holes. 

Others were here even yesterday, as it appears. The pond must have been frozen by the 4th at least. 

Some fisherman or other is ready with his reels and bait as soon as the ice will bear, whether it be Saturday or Sunday. Theirs, too, is a sort of devotion, though it be called hard names by the preacher, who perhaps could not endure the cold and wet any day. Perhaps he dines off their pickerel on Monday at the hotel. 

The ice appears to be but three or four inches thick. 

That grand old poem called Winter is round again without any connivance of mine. As I sit under Lee's Cliff, where the snow is melted, amid sere pennyroyal and frost-bitten catnep, I look over my shoulder upon an arctic scene. 

I see with surprise the pond a dumb white surface of ice speckled with snow, just as so many winters before, where so lately were lapsing waves or smooth reflecting water. 

I see the holes which the pickerel-fisher has made, and I see him, too, retreating over the hills, drawing his sled behind him. The water is already skimmed over again there. I hear, too, the familiar belching voice of the pond. 

It seemed as if winter had come without any interval since midsummer, and I was prepared to see it flit away by the time I again looked over my shoulder. It was as if I had dreamed it. 

But I see that the farmers have had time to gather their harvests as usual, and the seasons have revolved as slowly as in the first autumn of my life. 

The winters come now as fast as snowflakes. It is wonderful that old men do not lose their reckoning. It was summer, and now again it is winter. Nature loves this rhyme so well that she never tires of repeating it. 

So sweet and wholesome is the winter, so simple and moderate, so satisfactory and perfect, that her children will never weary of it. What a poem! an epic in blank verse, enriched with a million tinkling rhymes. It is solid beauty. 

It has been subjected to the vicissitudes of millions of years of the gods, and not a single superfluous ornament remains. The severest and coldest of the immortal critics have shot their arrows at and pruned it till it cannot be amended. 

The swamp white oak leaves are like the shrub oak in having two colors above and beneath. They are considerably curled, so as to show their silvery lining, though firm. Hardy and handsome, with a fair silver winter lining. 

Am pleased to see the holes where men have dug for money, since they remind me that some are dreaming still like children, though of impracticable things, — dreaming of finding money, and trying to put their dream in practice. It proves that men live Arabian nights and days still. I would they should have even that kind of faith than none at all. If any silly or abominable or superstitious practice ever prevailed among any savage race, just that may be repeated in the most civilized society to-day. 

You will see full-grown woods where the oaks and pines or birches are separated by right lines, growing in squares or other rectilinear figures, because different lots were cut at different times.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 7, 1856


Take my first skate to Fair Haven Pond. See  December 6, 1854 ("I see thick ice and boys skating all the way to Providence, but know not when it froze, I have been so busy writing my lecture.");  December 13, 1859 ("My first true winter walk is perhaps that which I take on the river, or where I cannot go in the summer. . . . Now that the river is frozen we have a sky under our feet also."); December 14, 1850 ("I walk on Loring's Pond to three or four islands there which I have never visited, not having a boat in the summer."); December 14. 1851 ("The boys have been skating for a week, but I have had no time to skate for surveying. I have hardly realized that there was ice, though I have walked over it about this business."): December 15, 1855 ("The boys have skated. a little within two or three days, but it has not been thick enough to bear a man yet."); December 19, 1854 (" Last night was so cold that the river closed up almost everywhere, and made good skating where there had been no ice to catch the snow of the night before."); December 20, 1854 ( P. M. — Skate to Fair Haven.”)

The winters come now as fast as snowflakes. It was summer, and now again it is winter. See July 19, 1851 ("Yesterday it was spring, and to-morrow it will be autumn. Where is the summer then?”) Compare January 24, 1858 ("Between winter and summer there is, to my mind, an immeasurable interval.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, As the Seasons Revolve

That grand old poem called Winter is round again . . . See December 5, 1856 ("I love the winter, with its imprisonment and its cold,");  December 8, 1850 ( "The dear privacy and retirement and solitude which winter makes possible!"); December 11, 1855 ("The winter, with its snow and ice, . . . is as it was designed and made to be."); December 20, 1854 ("It has been a glorious winter day, its elements so simple . . ."); December 21, 1855 ("A few simple colors now prevail.”)

You will see full-grown woods where the oaks and pines or birches are separated by right lines. See October 16, 1860 ("I observe at a distance an oak wood- lot some twenty years old, with a dense narrow edging of pitch pines . . . I understand it and read its history easily before I get to it.")

December 7. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, December 7

That grand old poem

called Winter is round again –

Nature loves this rhyme.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, That grand old poem called Winter

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

tinyurl.com/HDT561207

A family of screech owls

Eastern Screech Owl

July 10

Yesterday a heavy rain.

5 p. m. — Up Assabet.

As I bathe under the swamp white oaks at 6 p. m., hear a suppressed sound often repeated -- like perhaps the working of bees through a bung-hole -- which I already suspect to produced by owls. I am uncertain whether it is far or near.

Proceeding a dozen rods up-stream on the south side, toward where a catbird mews incessantly, I find myself suddenly within a rod of a gray screech owl sitting on an alder bough with horns erect, turning its head from side to side and up and down, and peering at me in that same ludicrously solemn and complacent way that I had noticed in one in captivity. 

Another more red, also horned, repeats the same warning sound or call to its young about the same distance off in another direction on an alder.

When they take flight they make some noise with their wings. With their short tails and squat figures they looked very clumsy -- all head and shoulders.

Hearing a fluttering under the alders I draw near and find a young owl a third smaller than the old, all gray without obvious horns --only four or five feet distant. It flits along two rods and I follow it. I see at least two or more young.

All this was close by that thick hemlock grove, and they perched on alders and an apple tree in the thicket there. These birds kept opening their eyes when I moved, as if to get clearer sight of me. The young were very quick to notice any motion of the old, and so betrayed their return by looking in that direction when they returned, though I had not heard it. Though they permitted me to come so near with so much noise, they noticed the coming and going of the old birds, even when I did not.

There were four or five owls in all. I have heard a somewhat similar note, further off and louder, in the night.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 10, 1856

I am uncertain whether it is far or near. See June 2, 1860 ("I soon hear its mournful scream. . . not loud now but, though within twenty or thirty rods, sounding a mile off.”) June 25, 1860 ("At evening up the Assabet hear four or five screech owls on different sides of the river, uttering those peculiar low screwing or working, ventriloquial sounds.”)

Peer[s] at me in that same ludicrously solemn and complacent way that I had noticed in one in captivity. See October 28, 1855("catch it in my hand. It is so surprised that it ... only glares at me in mute astonishment with eyes as big as saucers.”) and October 29, 1855 ("There he stood on the grass, at first bewildered, ... His attitude expressed astonishment more than anything.”)

I have heard a somewhat similar note, further off and louder, in the night. See September 23, 1855 ("I hear from my chamber a screech owl about Monroe’s house this bright moonlight night, — a loud, piercing scream, much like the whinny of a colt.)

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

Screech owl peers at me

that ludicrously solemn 

and complacent way.

 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A family of screech owls

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-560710