22 August 1859 – 28 August 1859

Monday. The circles of the blue vervain flowers, now risen near to the top, show how far ad- vanced the season is. The savory-leaved aster (Diplopappus linaritfolius) out; how long? Saw the Aster corymbosus on the 19th. Have seen where squirrels have eaten, 2. e. stripped, many white pine cones, for a week past, though quite green. That young pitch pine whose buds the crossbills (?) plucked has put out shoots close by them, but they are rather feeble and late. Riding to the factory, I see the leaves of corn, planted thick for fodder, so rolled by the drought that I mis- took one row in grass for some kind of rush or else reed, small and terete. At the factory, where they were at work on the dam, they showed large and peculiar insects which they were digging up amid the gravel and water of the dam, nearly two inches long and half an inch wide, with six legs, two large shield-like plates on the forward part of the body, — under which they apparently worked their way through wet sand, — and two large claws, some- what lobster-like, forward. The abdomen long, of many rings, and fringed with a kind of bristles on each side.

P. M.— To Laurel Glen to see the effect of the frost of the 17th (and perhaps 18th). As for autumnal tints, the Smilacina racemosa is yellowed, spotted brown in streaks, and half withered; also two-leaved Solomon’s-seal is partly yellowed and withered. Birches have been much yellowed for some time; also young wild cherry and hazel, and some horse- chestnuts and larches on the street. The scarlet lower leaves of the choke-berry and some brakes are the handsomest autumnal tints which I see to-day. 1859) PLANTS TOUCHED BY FROST 291 At Laurel Glen, these plants were touched by frost, in the lowest places, viz., the very small white oaks and hickories; dogsbane very generally; ferns generally, — especially Aspidium Thelypteris (?), the revolute one at bottom of hollow, — including some brakes; some little chinquapin oaks and chestnuts; some small thorns and blueberry (Vaccinium vacillans shoots); aspen, large and tender leaves and shoots; even red maple; many hazel shoots; geraniums; indigo-weed; lespedeza (the many-headed) and desmodium (one of the erect ones); a very little of the lowest locust leaves. These were very small plants and low, and commonly the most recent and tender growth. The bitten part, often the whole, was dry and shrivelled brown or darker. In the river meadows the blue-eyed grass was very generally cut off and is now conspicuously black, — I find but one in bloom, — also small flowering ferns. The cranberries (not vines) are extensively frost-bitten and spoiled. In Moore’s Swamp the potatoes were extensively killed, the greenest or tenderest vines. One says that the driest part suffered the most. They had not nearly got ripe. One man had his squash vines killed.’

Copious rain at last, in the night and during the day. A. M. — Mountain-ash berries partly turned. Again see, I think, purple finch eating them. I see, after the rain, when the leaves are rustling and glistening in the cooler breeze and clear air, quite a flock of (apparently) Fringilla socialis in the garden.

The dust is laid, the streets washed, the leaves — the first ripe crop — fallen, owing to yester- day’s copious rain. It is clearer weather, and the creak of the crickets is more distinct, just as the air is clearer. The trees look greener and fresher, not only because their leaves are washed and erected, but because they have for the most part shed their yellow and sere leaves. The front-rank polygonum is now perhaps in its prime. Where it forms an island in the river it is sur- mounted in the middle or highest part by the P. hydropt- perovdes. P. M. — To Fair Haven Hill. Elder-berries have fairly begun to be ripe, as also the Cornus sericea berries, and the dull-reddish leaves of the last begin to be conspicuous. The creak of the mole cricket has a very afternoon sound. Potato vines are generally browning and rank. Roman wormwood prevails over them; also erechthites, in new and boggy ground, and butterweed. These lusty natives prevail in spite of the weeding hoe, and take possession of the field at last. Potato vines have taken a veil of wormwood. ‘The barn-yard grass and various panics (sanguinale, capillare, and bottle-grass) now come forward with a rush and take possession of the cultivated fields, partly abandoned for the present by the farmer and gardener. How singular that the Polygonum aviculare should grow so commonly and densely about back doors where the earth 1s trodden, bordering on paths! Hence properly called door-grass. I am not aware that it prevails in any other places. The pontederia leaves are already slightly imbrowned, though the flowers are still abundant. The river is a little cooled by yesterday’s rain, and considerable heart-leaf (the leaves mainly) is washed up. I begin to think of a thicker coat and appreciate the warmth of the sun. I see sun-sparkles on the river, such as I have not seen for a long time. At any rate, they surprise me. There may be cool veins in the air now, any day. Now for dangle-berries. Also Viburnum nudum fruit has begun.

A little more rain last night. What were those insects, some winged, with short backs and say half an inch long, others wingless and shorter, like little coils of brass wire (so marked), in dense droves together on trees and fences, — apparently harmless, — especially a week or ten days ago? I was telling Jonas Potter of my lameness yesterday, whereat he says that he “broke” both his feet when he was young, — I imagined how they looked through his wrinkled cowhides, — and he did not get over it for four years, nay, even now he sometimes felt pains in them before a storm. All our life, 2. e. the living part of it, is a persistent dreaming awake. ‘The boy does not camp in his father’s yard. That would not be adventurous enough, there are too many sights and sounds to disturb the illusion; so he marches off twenty or thirty miles and there pitches his tent, where stranger inhabitants are tamely sleeping in their beds just like his father at home, and camps in their yard, perchance. But then he dreams uninterruptedly that he is anywhere but where he is. I often see yarrow with a delicate pink tint, very dis- tinct from the common pure-white ones. What is often called poverty, but which is a simpler and truer relation to nature, gives a peculiar relish to life, just as to be kept short gives us an appetite for food. Vilfa vagineflora (?) well out. The first notice I have that grapes are ripening is by the rich scent at evening from my own native vine against the house, when I go to the pump, though I thought there were none on it. The children have done bringing huckleberries to sell for nearly a week. They are suspected to have berries [sic] in them. On the 23d I gathered perfectly fresh and large low blackberries, peculiarly sweet and soft, in the shade of the pines at Thrush Alley, long after they are done in open fields. They seem like a different variety from the common, they are so much sweeter, tenderer, and larger. They do not grow densely but sparingly, now resting on the ground in the shade of their leaves, per- fectly ripe. These that have ripened slowly and pe~ fectly in the shade are the sweetest and tenderest, have the least of the bramble berry about them. ; Elder-berry clusters swell and become heavy and therefore droop, bending the bushes down, just in pro- portion as they ripen. Hence you see the green cymes perfectly erect, the half-ripe drooping, and the perfectly ripe hanging straight down on the same bush.

P.M. — To Walden. A cool day; wind northwest. Need a half-thick coat. Thus gradually we withdraw into winter quarters. It is a Clear, flashing air, and the shorn fields now look bright and yellowish and cool, tinkled and twittered over by bobolinks, goldfinches, sparrows, etc. You feel the less inclined to bathing this weather, and bathe from principle, when boys, who bathe for fun, omit it. Thick fogs these mornings. We have had little or no dog-days this year, it has been so dry. Pumpkins begin to be yellow. White cornel berries mostly fallen. The arrowhead is still a common flower and an important one. I see some very handsome ones in Cardinal Ditch, whose corollas are an inch and a half in diameter. The greater part, however, have gone to seed. The flowers I see at present are autumn flowers, such as have risen above the stubble in shorn fields since it was cut, whose tops have commonly been clipped by the scythe or the cow; or the late flowers, as asters and goldenrods, which grow in neglected fields and along ditches and hedgerows. The rhexia in Ebby Hubbard’s field is considerably past prime, and it is its reddish chalices which show most at a distance now. I should have looked ten days ago. Still it is handsome with its large yellow anthers against clear purple petals. It grows there in large patches with hardhack. I hear that some of the villagers were aroused from their sleep before light by the groans or bellowings of a bullock which an unskillful butcher was slaughter- ing at the slaughter-house. What morning or Memno- nian music was that to ring through the quiet village? What did that clarion sing of ? What a comment on our village life! Song of the dying bullock! But no doubt those who heard it inquired, as usual, of the butcher the next day, “What have you got to-day?” “Sirloin, good beefsteak, rattleran,”’ etc. I saw a month or more ago where pine-needles which had fallen (old ones) stood erect on low leaves of the forest floor, having stuck in, or passed through, them. They stuck up as a fork which falls from the table. Yet you would not think that they fell with sufficient force. The fruit of the sweet-gale is yellowing.