Log Search Results

  P. M.—To Hubbard’s Close Swamp.

  The vetch just out by Turnpike,—dark violet-purple. Horse-radish fully out (some time). The great ferns are already two or three feet high in Hubbard’s shady swamp. The clintonia is abundant there along by the foot of the hill, and in its prime. Look there for its berries. Commonly four leaves there, with an obtuse point,—the lady’s-slipper leaf not so rich, dark green and smooth, having several channels. The bullfrog now begins to be heard at night regularly; has taken the place of the hylodes.

  Brown speaks of a great brown moth,—probably emperor moth,—which came out in Worcester a few days ago. I see under the window, half dead, a large sphinx-like moth which apparently flew last night. The surface of the still water nowadays with a kind of lint, looking like dust at a little distance. Is it the down of the leaves blown off? In many places it reaches quite across the river. It is interesting to distinguish the different surfaces,—here broken into waves and sparkling with light, there, where covered with this linty dust or film, merely undulating without breaking, and there quite smooth and stagnant . . .

  P.M.—To Walden.

  Now is the time [to] observe the leaves, so fair in color and so perfect in form. I stood over a sprig of choke-cherry, with fair and perfect glossy green obovate and serrate leaves, in the woods this P.M., as if it were a rare flower . . .

  Ellen Emerson finds the Viola pubescens scarce to-day . . . (Journal, 7:404-406).

  The early potentilla is now erect in the June grass. Salix tristis is going to seed, showing some cotton . . .

  One thing that chiefly distinguishes this season from three weeks ago is that fine serene undertone or earthsong as we go by sunny banks and hillsides, the creak of crickets, which affects our thoughts so favorably, imparting its own serenity. It is time now to bring our philosophy out of doors. Our thoughts pillow themselves unconsciously in the troughs of this serene, rippling sea of sound . . .

  Near the upper edge of the wood, I heard, as I had done in ascending, a very peculiar lively and interesting strain from some bird, which note was new to me. At the same time I caught sight of a bird with a very conspicuous deep-orange throat and otherwise dark, with some streaks along the head. This may have been the Blackburnian warbler . . .

  For last expedition to Monadnock, vide September, 1852 . . .

  Cornus alternifolia well out . . . (Journal, 12:199).

  One asks me to-day when it is that the leaves are fully expanded, so that the trees and woods look dark and heavy with leaves . . .