24 May 1852 – 30 May 1852

The cooing of a dove reminded me of an owl this morning. Counted just fifty violets (pedata) in a little bunch, three and a half by five inches, and as many buds, there being six plants close together; on the hill where Billington climbed a tree. A calabash at Pilgrim Hall nearly two feet high, in the form of a jar, showed what these fruits were made for. Nature’s jars and vases. Holbrook says the Bufo Americanus is the most com- mon in America and is our representative of the Bujo communis of Europe; apaks of its trill; deposits its spawn in pools. Found in College Yard Trifolium procumbens, or yellow clover. Concord. — Celandine in blossom, and horse-chest- nut.

Tuesday. P. M. — To Saw Mill Brook and Flint’s Pond. The Rhodora Canadensis is not yet out of blossom, and its leaves are not expanded. It is important for its contrast with the surrounding green, —so much high- colored blossom. The Pyrus arbutifolia now. The ferns are grown up large, and some are in fruit, a dark or blackish fruit part way down the stem, with a strong scent, — quite a rich-looking fruit, of small dark-green- ish globules clustered together. The female red maples bearing keys are later to put forth leaves. The catkins of the willows on the Turnpike, now fallen, cover the water. The water has subsided so that the pads le on the surface. The chinquapin shrub oak is blossoming. The pincushion galls appear on the oak. The oak ap- ples are forming. Those galls first named, a sparkling frosted cotton, are very beautiful. The veronica is everywhere in bloom, in the grass by the roadside. It is blossom week with the apples. The shad-blossoms are gone. Apple trees on distant hillsides look like whitish rocks, or like a snow imperfectly covering the ground, or like the reindeer mosses. The sarsaparilla in bloom; and trientalis, its white star. Some call bluets innocence. The reddish buds of the Pyrus arbutzfolia are handsomer than the flower. What a sunny yellow in the early cinquefoil, which now spots the grass! The red oak sprouts have grown ten inches before their leaves are expanded. Some late willows have fresh green catkins now. Clustered Solomon’s-seal. Polygo- natum pubescens ready to bloom. Is that an aralia near the brook? Medeola or cucumber-root in bud, with its two-storied whorl of leaves. The trilliums (7. cernuum, wake-robin) in bloom, and the geraniums show great leaves. Mosquitoes have come. (They say there are none in Plymouth village.) Consider the fugacious fra- grance of many flowers. The dark striped flowers of the arums now, some whitish. Cress in flower. The vera- trums by this brook have run up so high they make a tropical scenery on the edge of the water, like young palms. Yellow butterflies one at a time. The large yellow woods violet (V. pubescens) by this brook now out. The Rana palustris, or pickerel frog, is abundant in the meadows. I hear the first troonk of a bull- frog. The fringed polygala (P. paucifolia), flowering wintergreen. What bird was that whose wild note I heard at Goose Pond to-night? A loon or a bittern? First nighthawks squeak and boom. Grasshoppers appear.

Wednesday. Surveying the Brooks farm. The early thalictrum has been in bloom some time. Perceive the rank smell of brakes. Observe the yellow bark of the barberry. ; When the cows and bullocks were lively in the pas- ture. about my compass, Bigelow said the grubs were working in their backs. He had that morning taken out three or four from the back of a young bull he has. They have black heads, which appear and are three quarters of an inch long; are natural to the crea- ture; lie right in the meat, and when they begin to squirm, then the cattle toss their tails and are lively. Great corporations are the cattle, and their vermin are large. This is a new version of the cestrus,—a sudden stampede among the steers when the grubs squirm in their backs!! He had also seen the grub in their tails. They are occupied as parts of the earth. The air is full of the odor of apple blossoms, yet the air is fresh as from the salt water. The meadow smells sweet as you go along low places in the road at sundown. To-night I hear many crickets. They have commenced their song. They bring in the summer. Walking home from surveying. — The fields are just beginning to be reddened with sorrel. I hear the pea- wal, the tender note. Is it not the small pewee? Chan- ning says he has seen a red clover blossom and heard a stake-driver. Lousewort (Pedicularis Canadensis), very badly named. Pipes (Equisetum uliginosum) in blos- som. The Geranium maculatum(?). One of the large flowering ferns,—part way up the stalk, —(Osmunda ?); and an early Thalictrum (dioicum ?). The meadows are full of saxifrage.

At Corner Spring. A wet day. The veery sings nevertheless. The road is white with the apple blossoms fallen off, as with snowflakes. ‘The dogwood is coming out. Ladies’-slip- pers out. They perfume the air. Ranunculus recurva- tus, hooked crowfoot, by the spring. Prunus maritima, beach plum, by Hubbard’s. Dwarf cornel. Smilacina racemosa, Clustered Solomon’s-seal. The nodding tril- lium has a faint, rich scent; the Convallaria bifolia a strong but not very pleasant scent. Ranunculus acris, or tall crowfoot, before the first buttercup shows much. Viola lanceolata, white. (I did not distinguish it before.) My early willow is either the swamp willow or the bog willow of Bigelow. The Salix nigra, or black willow, of Gray, in bloom. Myosotis laxa, water mouse-ear, by Depot Field Brook. 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(?). The smooth speedwell, the minute pale-blue striated flower by the roadsides and in the short sod of fields, common now. I hear but few toads and peepers now. The sweetness which appears to be wafted from the meadow (I am on the Corner cause- way) is indescribably captivating, Sabean odors, such as voyageurs tell of when approaching a coast. Can it be the grape so early? I think not. May it be the mint in the meadow, just left bare by the receding waters? It appears to come from the ditch by the roadside. Methinks the tree-toad croaks more this wet weather. The tall crowfoot out. The fringed polygala near the Corner Spring is a delicate flower, with very fresh tender green leaves and red-purple blossoms; beautiful from the contrast of its clear red-purple flowers with its clear green leaves. The cuckoo. Caught a wood frog (Rana sylvatica), the color of a dead leaf. He croaked as I held him, perfectly frog-like. A humblebee is on my bunch of flowers laid down.

White thorn and yellow Bethlehem-star ([ypoxis erecta).

Fogs this and yesterday morning. I hear the quails nowadays while surveying. Barberry in bloom, wild pinks, and blue-eyed grass.

Sunday. Now is the summer come. A breezy, washing day. A day for shadows, even of mov- ing clouds, over fields in which the grass is beginning to wave. Senecio in bloom. A bird’s nest in grass, with coffee-colored eggs. Cinquefoil and houstonia cover the ground, mixed with the grass and contrasting with each other. Strong lights and shades now. Wild cherry on the low shrubs, but not yet the trees, a rummy scent. Violets everywhere spot the meadows, some more pur- ple, some more lilac. The tall pipe-grass (Equisetum uliginosum). The Drosera rotundifolia now glistens with its dew at midday, a beautiful object closely examined. The dwarf andromeda is about out of bloom. Its new shoots from the side of the old stem are an inch or more long. The little leaves appear to be gradually falling off, after all. See again if they do not all fall off in the summer. Distinguished the Viola palmata in Hubbard’s meadow, near the sidesaddle-flowers, which last are just beginning to blossom. The last are quite showy flowers when the wind turns them so as to show their under sides. It is a day of shadows, the leaves have so grown, and of wind, —a washing day,—and the shadows of the clouds are observed flitting over the landscape. I do not yet observe a difference between the two kinds of Pyrus arbutijolia, if, indeed, I have compared the two, z.e. my early black and later red-fruited, which last holds on all winter. The fruit of the amelanchier is as big as small peas. I have not noticed any other berry so large yet. The anemones appear to be nearly gone. Yellow lilies are abundant. The bulbous arethusa, the most splendid, rich, and high-colored flower thus far, methinks, all flower and color, almost without leaves, and looking much larger than it is, and more conspicu- ous on account of its intense color. A flower of mark. It appeared two or three times as large as reality when it flashed upon me from the meadow. Bigelow calls it a “crystalline purple.” (Saw some the 6th of June, but no longer fresh.) ' What kind of blackberry did I find in blossom in Hubbard’s Swamp? Passed a cow that had just dropped her calf in the meadow. The sumach (glabra) is well under weigh now. The yellow water ranunculus by the Corner causeway. There are young robins in nests. ‘To what sparrow belong the coffee-colored eggs in Hubbard’s field by the brook ? White cohush in bloom; also Smilacina stellata. The branches or branchlets of the maidenhair fern are so disposed as to form two thirds of a cup around the stem. The flowers of the sassafras have not such a fra- grance as I perceived last year. High blueberry flowers are quite conspicuous. ‘The bass leaf is now large and handsome. The geranium is a delicate flower and be- longs especially to shady places under trees and shrubs, — better if about springs, —in by-nooks, so modest. The early gnaphaliums are gone to seed, having run ? [In this case, as not infrequently happened, Thoreau was evi- dently writing up his Journal — or copying his pencilled field-notes into it — some days after the event.] up seven or ten inches. The field plantain, which I saw in Plymouth a week ago, abundant there. The narrow- leaved cotton-grass. The Equisetum sylvaticum, or wood horse-tail in the meadows. The lupine, which I saw almost in blossom a week ago at Plymouth, I hear is in blossom here. The river is my own highway, the only wild and unfenced part of the world hereabouts. How much of the world is widow’s thirds, with a hired man to take negligent care of it! The apple trees are about out of blossom. It is but a week they last. Israel Rice thinks the first half of June is not com- monly so warm as May, and that the reason is that vegetation is so advanced that the earth is shaded and protected from the sun by the grass also, so that it is delayed in being warmed by the summer sun.