18 August 1856 – 24 August 1856

P. M.— To Beck Stow’s. Now, perhaps, get thoroughwort. The lecheas in the Great Fields are now turning red, especially the fine one. As I go along the hillsides in sprout-lands, amid the Solidago stricta, looking for the blackberries left after the rain, the sun warm as ever, but the air cool never- theless, I hear the steady (not intermittent) shrilling of apparently the alder cricket, clear, loud, and au- tumnal, a season sound. Hear it, but see it not. It reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time, suggests a pleasing, thoughtful melancholy, like the sound of the flail. Such preparation, such an outfit has our life, and so little brought to pass! Hear a faint-warbling bird amid birches and pines. Clear-yellow throat and breast, greenish-yellow head, conspicuous white bar on wings, white beneath, forked tail, bluish legs. Can it be pine warbler? The note, thus faint, is not like it. See black and white creeper. Yellow Bethlehem-star yet, and indigo. Saw yesterday and some days before a monster aphis some five eighths of an inch long on a huckle- berry leaf. I mistook it, as before, for a sort of loose- spun cocoon. It was obovate, indistinctly nbbed, of long, loose, white, streaming down, but being touched it recoiled and, taken off the leaf, rolled itself into a ball. The father of all the aphides. Cinothera pumila still.

PM. — To Fair Haven Hill. Dog-day weather as for clouds, but less smoky than before the rains of ten days ago. I see Hyperi- cum Canadense and mutilum abundantly open at 3 Pp. M. Apparently they did not bear the dry, hot weather of July so well. They are apparently now in prime, but the Sarothrais not open at this hour. The perforatum is quite scarce now, and apparently the corymbosum ; the ellipticum quite done. ‘The small hypericums have a peculiar smart, somewhat lemon-like fragrance, but bee-like. The dangle-berries in Hubbard’s Grove have a peculiar, not very pleasant, flavor and a tough skin. I see white buds on swamp-pink, just formed, also green checkerberries about grown. In the radula, swamp the sweet scent of clethra; ’ some peculiarly bright orange toadstools with a wavy edge. Now for spotted aralia leaves, brown pupils with yellow iris amid the green. The whorled polygala is a plant almost universally dispersed but inconspicuous. I spent my afternoon among the desmodiums and lespedezas, sociably. The further end of Fair Haven Hill-side is a great place for them.

Rain all night and to-day, making it a little chilly. Though I sit with open window, I should think it uncomfortably cool with it closed. Some must have a little fire.

Rains still all day, and wind rises, and shakes off much fruit and beats down the corn. The prevailing solidagos now are, Ist, stricta (the upland * and also meadow one which I seem to have called puberula);? 2d, the three-ribbed, of apparently several varieties, which I have called arguta or gigantea (apparently truly the last); 3d, altissima, though com- monly only a part of its panicles; 4th, nemoralis, just beginning generally to bloom. Then there is the odora, 5th, out some time, but not common; and, 6th, the bicolor, just begun in some places. The commonest asters now are, Ist, the Radula; 2d, dumosus ; 3d, patens; 4th, say puniceus,; 5th, cor- difolvus ; 6th, macrophyllus ; (these two a good while); 7th, say Tradescanti; 8th, miser; 9th, longifolius ; (these three quite rare yet); 10th, probably acumina- tus, some time (not seen); 11th, undulatus; 12th, levis; (these two scarcely to be seen yet). N. B. Water so high I have not seen early meadow aster lately.

Fair weather at last. P. M. — Up Assabet. Owing to the rain of the 8th and before, two days and two nights, the river rose to within six inches of the top of Hoar’s wall. It had fallen about one half, when the rain began again on the night of the 20th, and again continued about two nights and two days, though so much did not fall as before; but, the river being high, it is now rising fast. The Assabet is ap- parently at its height, and rushing very swiftly past the Hemlocks, where it is narrow and choked with rocks, I can hardly row against it there. I see much hay floating, and two or three cocks, quite black, car- ried round and round in a great eddy by the side of the stream, which will ere long be released and con- tinue their voyage down-stream. The water is backing up the main stream so that there is no current what- ever in that, as far up as my boat’s place, at least. When I rest on my oars the boat will not after any waiting drift down-stream. It is within three inches of the top of Hoar’s wall at 7 p. M.

P. M.— To Walden. I see a bed of Antennaria margaritacea, now in its prime, by the railroad, and very handsome. It has fallen outward on all sides ray-wise, and rests on the ground, forming [a] perfectly regular circle, four feet in diameter and fifteen inches high, with a dark ash- colored centre, twenty inches in diameter, composed of the stems, then a wide circumference, one foot or more broad, of dense pearly masses of flowers covered with bees and butterflies. This is as regular as a wheel. So fair and pure and abundant. Elder-berries, now looking purple, are weighing down the bushes along fences by their abundance. White goldenrod, not long commonly. Decodon getting stale at Second Andromeda Pond. Often the end has rooted itself, and the whole forms a loop four feet long and twenty or more inches high in the middle, with numer- ous branches, making it rather troublesome to wade through. Where the stems bend down and rest on the water, they swell to several times their usual size and acquire that thick, soft bark, and put forth numerous roots; not the extreme point, but a space just short of it, while that starts up again. On R. W. E.’s hillside by railroad, burnt over by the engine in the spring, the erechthites has shot up abun- dantly, very tall and straight, some six or seven feet high. Those singular crowded and wrinkled dry galls, red and cream-color mingled, on white oak shrubs, with their grubs in them.

3 p. mM. — Up river to Clamshell. Polygonum tenue abundant and in bloom, on side of Money-Diggers’ Hill, especially at south base, near apple tree. The choke-cherry by fence beyond spring, being dead ripe and a little wilted, is at length tolerable eating, much better than I ever tasted, but the stones are much in the way. I was surprised to hear Peter Flood mention it as an objection to a certain peat meadow that he would have to dry the peat on the adjacent upland. But he explained that peat dried thus was apt to crumble, and so was not so good as that dried gradually and all alike on damper ground; so an apparent disadvan- tage is a real advantage, according to this. It rained a little last night, and the river at 3 Pp. m. is at the same height as last night. It is not re- membered when it was so high at this season. I have not seen a white lily nor a yellow one in the river for a fortnight. The river meadows probably will not be mown this year. I can hardly get under the stone bridge without striking my boat. Cardinal-flowers, etc., etc., are drowned before they are fairly in bloom. River at same height as yesterday.