22 August 1853 – 28 August 1853

Monday. P. M.— Up Assabet to Yellow Rocket Shore. A still afternoon with a prospect of a shower in the west. The immediate edge of the river is for the most part respected by the mowers, and many wild plants there escape from year to year, being too coarse for hay. The prevailing flowers now along the river are the mikania, polygonums, trumpet-weed, cardinal, arrow- head, Chelone glabra, and here and there vernonia. The button-bush is out of bloom and its balls browning. On the steep hillside where the Leaning Hemlocks grow slanted over the river and from year to year falling ‘into it, I am surprised to see that many are leaning and falling up the hill, owing to a slide which has carried their roots forward toward the water. I hear the mut- tering of thunder and the first drops dimple the river. I hear but few notes of birds these days; no singing, but merely a few hurried notes or screams or twittering or peeping. I will enumerate such as I hear or see this still louring and showery afternoon. A hurried anxious note from a robin. Heard perhaps half a dozen after- ward. They flit now, accompanied by their young. A sharp, loud che-wink from a ground-robin. A goldfinch twitters over; several more heard afterward. A blue jay screams, and one or two fly over, showing to advantage their handsome forms, especially their regular tails, wedge-formed. Surprised to hear a very faint bobolink in the air; the link, link, once or twice later. A yellow- bird flew over the river. Swallows twittering, but flying high, — the chimney swallows and what I take to be the bank ditto. Scared up a green bittern from an oak by the riverside. Hear a peawai whose note is more like singing — as if it were still incubating — than any other. Some of the warble of the golden robin. A king- fisher, with his white collar, darted across the river and alighted on an oak. A peetweet flew along the shore and uttered its peculiar note. ‘Their wings appear double as they fly by you, while their bill is cumbrously carried pointing downward in front. The chipping of a song sparrow occasionally heard amid the bushes. A single duck scared up. And two nighthawks flying high over the river. At twilight many bats after the showers. These birds were heard or seen in the course of three or four hours on the river, but there were not sounds enough to disturb the general stillness.

6 a.M.— To Nawshawtuct. A very clear but cool morning, all white light. The feverwort berries are yellowing and yellowed; bar- berries have begun to redden, and the prinos, — some of the last quite red. The Spiranthes gracilis, with its leafless stalk, is very common now on grassy hillsides. August has been thus far dog-days, rain, oppressive sultry heat, and now beginning fall weather. P. M. —.Clematis Brook via Conantum. Neottia or rather Spiranthes cernua, a few days, bank by Hubbard’s. meadow, by oak beyond ivy pass. This low, with long lanceolate leaves, and in low ground compared with the taller gracilis. More and larger by meadow path beyond swimming-place. Have we the latifolia ? The gracilis has its crystalline white flowers arranged in a dense spiral cone like the thread of a screw, standing out nearly at right angles with the stem, curved downward a little. . Squirrels have commenced on hazelnuts. Observing the blackness of the foliage, especially be- tween me and the light, I am reminded that it begins in the spring, the dewy dawn of the year, with a silvery hoary downiness, changing to a yellowish or light green, — the saffron-robed morn, — then to a pure, spotless, glossy green with light under sides reflecting the light, — the forenoon, — and now the dark green, or early afternoon, when shadows begin to increase, and next it will turn yellow or red, — the sunset sky, — and finally sere brown and black, when the night of the year sets in. Carrion-berries just begin to be ripe. Potato-fields are full of Roman wormwood now. I am braced and encouraged by the rank growth of this aromatic plant, concealing the potato vines which are already nearly half decayed. By path from meadow through Hub- bard’s rear wood and sprout-lands. The now purple naked viburnum berries — numerous drooping cymes of purple berries — are now very handsome seen against the green leaves in sprout-lands. I see to-day — and may add to yesterday’s list—the blue heron launch off from an oak by the river and flap or sail away with lumbering flight; also kingbirds and crows. ‘The red- eye may be heard faintly in the morning.

Another cool, autumn-like morning, also quite foggy. Rains a little in the forenoon and cloudy the rest of the day. P. M. — To Saw Mill Brook via Trillium Woods. A cool breeze blows this cloudy afternoon, and I wear a thicker coat. The mulgedium by railroad is seven feet high, with great panicles of a regular, somewhat elliptic-lanceo- late (?) form, two and a half feet long by ten inches. The Prinos levigatus berries begin to redden. The farmers are beginning to clear out their ditches now. Blue-stemmed goldenrod, apparently a few days in some places. The goldenrods which I have observed in bloom this year are (I do not remember the order ex- actly): (1) stricta, (2) lanceolata, (3) arguta (? ), (4) nemo- ralis, (5) bicolor, (6) odora, (7) altissima, (8) ulmifolia (? ), (9) cesia. The 4th is the prevailing one and much the most abundant now. The Ist perhaps next, though it may be getting old. The altissima (7th) certainly next. It is just beginning to be abundant. Its tops a foot or more broad, with numerous recurved racemes on every 1853} GOLDENRODS AND ASTERS 397 side, with yellow and yellowing triangular points. It is the most conspicuous of all. The bicolor (5th) next, though not conspicuous. The 3d, 8th, 2d, and 6th perhaps never abundant. The cesia (9th) just begun. The asters and diplopappi are about in this order: (1) Radula, (2) D. cornifolius (?), (3) A. corymbosus,' (4) patens, (5) levis, (6) dwmosus (?), (7) miser, (8) ma- crophyllus, (9) D. wmbellatus, (10) A. acuminatus, (11) puniceus. The patens (4), of various forms, some lilac, is the prevailing blue or bluish one now, middle- sized and very abundant on dry hillsides and by wood- paths; the /evis next. The Ist, or Radula, is not abun- dant. (These three are all the distinctly blue ones yet.) The dumosus is the prevailing white one, very abun- dant; miser mixed with it. D. wmbellatus is conspicuous enough in some places (low grounds), and A. puniceus beginning to be so. But D. cornifolius, A. corymbosus, macrophyllus, and acuminatus are confined to particular localities. Dumosus and patens (and perhaps levis, not common enough) are the prevailing asters now. The common large osmunda (?) is already consider- ably imbrowned, but the odorous dicksonia (? ), which, like most ferns, blossoms later, is quite fresh. This thin, flat, beautiful fern it is which I see green under the snow.” I am inclined to call it the lace fern. (Peaches fairly begun.) It is a triangular web of fine lace-work surpassing all the works of art.

Warmer to-day. Surveying Tuttle’s farm. From the extreme eastern side of his farm, looking up the valley of the Mill Brook, in which direction it is about two miles to anything that can be called high ground (say at E. Wood’s), I was surprised to see the whole outline and greater part of the base of Wachusett, though you stand in‘a low meadow. It is because of the great distance of the hills westward. It is a fuller view of this mountain than many of our hills afford. Seen through this lower stratum, the mountain is a very dark blue. I am struck by the rank growth of weeds at this season. Passing over Tuttle’s farm, only one field re- moved from the Turnpike, where various kinds of tall, rank weeds are rampant, half concealing the lusty crops, — low ground which has only been cultivated twice before, where turnips and alge (?) contend for places, fire-weeds (senecio), thoroughwort, Ewpatoriwm purpureum, and giant asters, etc., suggest a vigor in the soil, an Ohio fertility, which I was not prepared for, which on the sandy turnpike I had not suspected, — it seemed to me that I had not enough frequented and considered the products, perchance, of these fertile grounds which the farmers have enriched. He is con- tinually selecting a virgin soil and adding the contents of his barn-yards to it.

Saturday. P. M.— To Walden. Topping corn now reveals the yellowing pumpkins. Dangle-berries very large in shady copses now; seem to love wet weather; have lost their bloom. Aster undulatus. The decurrent gnaphalium has not long shown yellow. Perhaps I made it blossom a little too early. September is at hand; the first month (after the summer heat) with a burr to it, month of early frosts; but December will be tenfold rougher. January relents for a season at the time of its thaw, and hence that liquid 7 in its name.

Sunday. P. M. — To Clifis. See many sparrows in flocks with a white feather in tail! ‘The smooth sumach leaves are fast reddening. The berries of the dwarf sumach are not a brilliant crimson, but as yet, at least, a dull sort of dusty or mealy crimson. As they are later, so their leaves are more fresh and green than those of the smooth species. The acorns show now on the shrub oaks. A cool, white, autumnal evening.