1 August 1853 – 7 August 1853

I think that that universal crowing of the chip-bird in the morning is no longer heard. Is it the Galiwm circezans which I have seen so long on Heywood Peak and elsewhere, with four broad leaves, low and branched? Put it early in June.

Heavy, long-continued, but warm rain in the night, raising the river already eight or nine inches and disturbing the meadow haymakers. John Legross brought me a quantity of red huckleberries yesterday. The less ripe are whitish. I suspect that these are the white huckleberries. Sundown. — To Nawshawtuct. The waxwork berries are yellowing. I am not sure but the bunches of the smooth sumach berries are handsomest when but partly turned, the crimson con- trasting with the green, the green berries showing a velvety crimson cheek. Geum Virginianum, white avens (June to August, Gray), still in bloom by the sassafras hedge, south side of hill, looks as if it might be a white cinquefoil, with small hook-prickled burs. Put it in June. Mulgedium out. The green fruit of the carrion-flower forms dense, firm, spherical umbels (?) at the end of stems five or six inches.long; . umbels two inches in diameter, formed, one of them, of eighty-four berries, size of peas, three to six sided, closely wedged together on peduncles three quarters of an inch long. The whole feels hard and solid in the hand.

To north part of Framingham, surveying near Hopestill Brown’s (in Sudbury). He said there was a tame deer in the wood, which he saw in his field the day before. Told me of an otter killing a dog and partly killing another. He sold lately a white pine tree about four feet [in] diameter at butt, which brought twenty-three dollars, not includ- ing what was used for fuel, and they sawed eighty feet in length of it. Saw the Solidago odora in the woods there, but not in bloom nearly; leaves full of pellucid dots and yielding, after being in my pocket all day, a very pleasant fragrance. Many farmers are now troubled to get their meadow-hay since the rise of the river. Sand cherries, probably a good while.

Rain last night and to-day again. Ground- nut. The low fields which have been mown now look very green again in consequence of the rain, as if it were a second spring. Aaron’s-rod, not yet. A sicyos in front of the Vose house, not quite, but probably somewhere now. Symphytum officinale still in bloom in front of C. Stow’s, over the fence. Polygonum Careyi, four feet high, gigantesque, bristly-glandu- lar, with swollen joints (poly-gonum), many branches from near ground.

Perfect dog-days. To-day is sultry, 7. e. hot and cloudy, the air full of mist and here and there misty clouds; and you find yourself perspiring much before you are aware of it. Farmers complain that they cannot make hay this weather. I cannot dry my red huckleberries. ‘The sun does not shine unobstructedly. A man mowing in the Great Meadows killed a great water adder (?) the other day, said to be four feet long and as big as a man’s wrist. It ran at him. They find them sometimes when they go to open their hay. I tried to see it this morning, but some boys had chopped it up and buried it. They said that they found a great many young ones in it. That probably accounts for its being so large round. The clintonia berries keep a long time without wrinkling in a tumbler of water. The mower on the river meadows, when [he] comes to open his hay these days, encounters some overgrown water adder full of young (?) and bold in defense of its progeny, and tells a tale when he comes home at night which causes a shudder to run through the vil- lage, — how it came at him, and he ran, and it pur- sued and overtook him, and he transfixed it with a pitchfork and laid it on a cock of hay, but it revived and came at him again. This is the story he tells in the shops at evening. The big snake is a sort of fabulous animal. It is always as big as a man’s arm and of indefinite length. Nobody knows exactly how deadly its bite, but nobody is known to have been bitten and recovered. Irishmen introduced into these meadows for the first time, on seeing a snake, a creature which they have seen only in pictures before, lay down their scythes and run as if it were the evil one himself, and cannot be induced to return to their work. They sigh for Ireland, where they say there is no venomous thing that can hurt you. Inula out (how long?), roadside just beyond Gar- field’s. Spikenard berries near Corner Spring just begin to turn. Collinsonia, not yet. Cohush berries not quite ripe. Pennyroyal in prime on Conantum. Aster corymbosus pretty plainly (a day or two) in the Miles Swamp or arboretum, — Aster dumosus, as I have called it also elsewhere.

More dog-days. The sun, now at 9 A. M., has not yet burst through the mists. It has been warmer weather for a week than for at least three weeks before, —nights when all windows were left open, though not so warm as in June. This morning a very heavy fog. The sun has not risen clear or even handsomely for some time, nor have we had a good sunset. P. M. — To J. Farmer’s Cliff. I see the sunflower’s broad disk now in gardens, probably a few days,—a true sun among flowers, monarch of August. Do not the flowers of August and September generally resemble suns and stars? — sun- flowers and asters and the single flowers of the golden- rod. I once saw one as big as a milk-pan, in which a mouse had its nest.

Sunday. P. M.— To Fair Haven Hill via Hubbard’s Grove. The krigia has bloomed again. The purple gerar- dia now fairly out, which I found almost out last Sun- day in another place. Elder-berries begin to be ripe, bending their stems. I also see Viburnum dentatum berries just beginning to turn on one side. Their turn- ing or ripening looks like decay, — a dark spot, — and so does the rarely ripe state of the naked viburnum - and the sweet; but we truly regard it as a ripening still, and not falsely a decaying as when we describe the tints of the autumnal foliage. I think that within a week I have heard the alder cricket, — a clearer and shriller sound from the leaves in low grounds, a clear shrilling out of a cool moist shade, an autumnal sound. The year is in the grasp of the crickets, and they are hurling it round swiftly on its axle. Some wasps (I am not sure there’s more than one) are building a nest in my room, of mud, these days, buzz- ing loudly while at work, but at no other time. Often and often I hear the cool twitter of the goldfinch passing over, —a sound one with that of the alder cricket, — and the bobolink’s link link. How much of spring there is brought back in a young bluebird’s plaintive peep! The tall buttercup lingers still and the houstonia, not to mention the marsh speedwell and the slender bellflower. Now for the herbs, — the various mints. The penny- royal is out abundantly on the hills. Ido not scent these things enough. Would it not be worth the while to devote a day to collecting the mountain mint, and another to the peppermint?