15 August 1853 – 21 August 1853

P. M. — To Flint’s Pond with Mr. Conway. Started a woodcock in the woods. Also saw a large telltale, I think yellow-shanks, whose note I at first mis- took for a jay’s, giving the alarm to some partridges. The Polygonum ortentale, probably some days, by Turnpike Bridge, a very rich rose-color large flowers, distinguished by its salver-shaped upper sheaths. It is a color as rich, I think, as that of the cardinal-flower. Desmodium paniculatum in the wood-path northeast of Flint’s Pond. . Its flowers turn blue-green in drying. Yesterday also in the Marlborough woods, perceived everywhere that offensive mustiness of decaying fungi. How earthy old people become, — mouldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in it. They remind me of earthworms and mole crickets.’

Rain in forenoon. The high blackberries are now in their prime; the richest berry we have. ‘That wild black currant by Union Turnpike ripe (in gardens some time). The knapweed now conspicuous, like a small thistle. Did I set it down too early? Rain, rain, rain again! Good for grass and apples; said to be bad for potatoes, mak- ing them rot; makes the fruit now ripening decay, — apples, etc.

Rain again. P. M. — To Great Fields. Many leaves of the cultivated cherry are turned yel- low, and a very few leaves of the elm have fallen, — the dead or prematurely ripe. The abundant and re- peated rains since this month came in have made the last fortnight and more seem like a rainy season in the tropics, —warm, still copious rains falling straight down, contrasting with the cold, driving spring rains. Now again I am caught in a heavy shower in Moore’s pitch pines on edge of Great Fields, and am obliged to stand crouching under my umbrella till the drops turn to streams, which find their way through my umbrella, and the path up the hillside is all afloat, a succession of puddles at different levels, each bounded by a ridge of dead pine-needles. An Irishman, getting out stumps and roots in Moore’s Swamp, at first squatted behind a wood-pile, but, being wet to his skin, now stands up and moves about for warmth. Melons crack open before they are sweet. Is not that variety of the ambro- sia going to seed by Brown’s bars in Sleepy Hollow the heterophylla ? 1 with short, pyramidal purplish spikes and dark-green entire lanceolate leaves above. What means this sense of lateness that so comes over one now, — as if the rest of the year were down-hill, and if we had not performed anything before, we should not now? The season of flowers or of promise may be said to be over, and now is the season of fruits; but where is our fruit? The night of the year is approach- ing. What have we done with our talent? All nature prompts and reproves us. How early in the year it begins to be late! The sound of the crickets, even in the spring, makes our hearts beat with its awful reproof, while it encourages with its seasonable warning. It matters not by how little we have fallen behind; it seems irretrievably late. The year is full of warnings of its shortness, as is life. The sound of so many insects and the sight of so many flowers affect us so, — the creak of the cricket and the sight of the prunella and autumnal dandelion. They say, “For the night cometh in which no man may work.”

Friday. 9 a. M.— To Sudbury by boat with W. E. C. Cooler weather. Last Sunday we were sweltering here and one hundred died of the heat in New York; to-day they have fires in this village. After more rain, with wind in the night, it is now clearing up cool. There is a broad, clear crescent of blue in the west, slowly increasing, and an agreeable autumnal coolness, both under the high, withdrawn clouds and the edges of the woods, and a considerable wind wafts us along with our one sail and two umbrellas, sitting in thick coats. I was going to sit and write or mope all day in the house, but it seems wise to cultivate animal spirits, to embark in enterprises which employ and recreate the whole body. Let the divine spirits hke the huntsman with his bugle accompany the animal spirit that would fain range the forest and meadow. Even the gods and goddesses, Apollo and Diana, are found in the field, though they are superior to the dog and the deer.

P. M. — To Great Meadows. Bidens connata (?) by pond-hole beyond Agricul- tural Ground; no rays yet at least. No traces of fringed gentian can I find. The liatris now in prime, — purple with a bluish reflection. A Desmodium Canadense (? ) with large flowers spreading ascendant in the liatris hollow. Was that Neottia or Spiranthes gracilis, fifteen inches high there, without apparent leaf ?

6 a. mM. — To Island by boat. Aster macrophyllus. Appear not to blossom generally this year. P. M. — To Jenny Dugan’s and Conantum. Saw one of those light-green locusts about three quar- ters of an inch long on a currant leaf in the garden. It kept up a steady shrilling (unlike the interrupted creak of the cricket), with its wings upright on its shoul- ders, all indistinct, they moved so fast. Near at hand it made my ears ache, it was so piercing, and was accom- panied by a hum like that of a factory. The wings 7 are transparent, with marks somewhat like a letter. That which I had mistaken for Mentha Canadensis at Mrs. Hosmer’s brook is apparently I. piperita, or peppermint, naturalized. It may have been in bloom a fortnight. It is higher-scented, with dark leaves and dark-purplish stems, and a short spike of flowers above, and not in the axils of the leaves. What I take to be Aster patens is a handsome light-blue aster, now abundant on the hillside by J. Hosmer’s pines. ‘The choke-cherries, which are now, and have been for some time, as ripe as they will be, actually fur the mouth, and the juice of these taken into the mouth, mixed with the saliva, is feathered like tea into which sour cream has been poured. They are a rich, fatty-looking fruit. That must be the Aster puniceus (which I have falsely called longifolius), four or five feet high and coarse and rough, commonly with a reddish stem, filling the brook behind Dugan’s; out two or three days, very pale purplish. I see aphides like a white mildew on the alders. The Polygonum articulatum not yet. The Aster levis is one of the most beautiful I have seen yet, especially when there are ten or twelve in a panicle, mak- ing a small rounded bunch. The Viburnum Lentago berries are but just beginning to redden on one cheek. The Cornus paniculata are fairly white in some places. The polygonatum berries have been a bluish-green some time. Do they turn still?