18 May 1857 – 24 May 1857

P. M.— To Bateman’s Pond via Yellow Birch Swamp with Pratt. Pratt says he saw the first rhodora and cultivated pear out yesterday. Many are now setting out pines and other evergreens, transplanting some wildness into the neighborhood of their houses. I do not know of a white pine that has been set out twenty-five years in the town. It is a new fashion. Judging from the flowering of such of the plants as I notice, this is a back- ward season. There is a very grand and picturesque old yellow birch in the old cellar northwest the yellow birch swamp. Though this stands out in open land, it does not shed its pollen yet, and its catkins are not much more than half elongated, but it is very beautiful as it is, with its dark-yellowish tassels variegated with brown. Yet in the swamp westerly the yellow birches are in full bloom, and many catkins strew the ground. They are four or five inches long when in bloom. They begin to shed their pollen at the base of the catkin, as, I think, other birches do. In the yellow birch and ash swamp west of big yellow birch, I hear the fine note of cherry-birds, much like that of young partridges, and see them on the ash trees. Viola Muhlenbergit abundantly out, how long? The fever-bush in this swamp is very generally killed, at least the upper part, so that it has not blossomed. This is especially the case in the swamp; on higher ground, though exposed, it is in better condition. It appears to have been killed in the spring, for you see the unex- panded flower-buds quite conspicuous. Pratt shows me the fringed gentian stems by a swamp northeast of Bateman’s Pond, but we find no traces of a new plant, and I think it must be annual there. The violet wood- sorrel is apparently later than the Ovals stricta, not now so forward, lower, and darker green, only a few of the leaves showing that purplish mark. Hear the pepe, how long? In woods close behind Easterbrook’s place, whence it probably strayed, several Canada plums now in bloom, showing the pink. Interesting to see a wild apple tree in the old cellar there, though with a forward caterpillar’s nest on it. Call it Malus cel- laris, that grows in an old cellar-hole.’ Pedicularis, some time. The blossom-buds of the Cornus florida have been killed when an eighth of an inch in diameter, and are black within and fall on the least touch or jar; all over the town. There is a large tree on the further side the ravine near Bateman’s Pond and an- other by some beeches on the rocky hillside a quarter of a mile northeast. In the swampy meadow north of this Pratt says he finds the calla. The Rubus triflorus is well out there on the hummocks. The white ash is not yet out in most favorable places. The red huckle- berry looks more forward —blossom-buds more swollen — than those of common there. Some high blueberry. Pratt has found perfectly white Viola pedata behind Easterbrook place, and cultivated them, but now lost them. Says he saw two “black” snakes intertwined (copulating ?) yesterday.

A. M.—Surveying D. Shattuck’s wood- lot beyond Peter’s. See myriads of minute pollywogs, recently hatched, in the water of Moore’s Swamp on Bedford road. Dig- ging again to find a stake in woods, came across a nest or colony of wood ants, yellowish or sand-color, a third of an inch long, with their white grubs, now squirming, still larger, and emitting that same pungent spicy odor, perhaps too pungent to be compared with lemon-peel. This is the second time I have found them in this way this spring (vide April 28th). Is not the pungent scent emitted by wasps quite similar? I see the ferns all blackened on the hillside next the meadow, by the frost within a night or two. That ant scent is not at all sickening, but tonic, and reminds me of a bitter flavor like that of peach- meats.

Began to rain the latter part of yesterday, and rains all day against all desire and expectation, raising the river and, in low land, rotting the seed. Gardeners wish that their land had not been planted nor plowed. Postpone your journey till the May storm Is over. It has been confidently asserted and believed that if the cold in the winter exceeded a certain degree it surely killed the peach blossoms. Last winter we had greater cold than has ever been generally observed here, and yet it is a remarkable spring for peach blossoms; thus once for all disproving that assertion. Everything in the shape of a peach tree blossoms this season, even a mutilated shrub on the railroad causeway, sprung "* from a stone which some passenger cast out. Never- theless the lowest limbs, which were covered by the drifts, have blossomed much the earliest and fullest, as usual, and this after-blow is quite unexpected. Peach trees are revealed along fences where they were quite unobserved before. The expression in Sophocles’ Cidipus at Colonos, “White Colonos,”’ said to refer to the silvery soil, re- minded me at first of the tracts now whitened by the pyrus blossoms, which may be mistaken for hoary rocks. Vide this description of Colonos. Have all the Canada plums that striking pink color at the base of the blos- soms at last? I find that the corydalis sprig which I brought home five days ago keeps fresh and blossoms remarkably well in water,—its delicate bright flesh-colored or pink flowers and glaucous leaves! How suddenly, after all, pines seem to shoot up and fill the pastures! I wonder that the farmers do not ear- lier encourage their growth. To-day, perchance, as I go through some run-out pasture, I observe many young white pines dotting the field, where last year I had noticed only blackberry vines; but I see that many are already destroyed or injured by the cows which have dived into them to scratch their heads or for sport (such is their habit; they break off the leading shoot and bend down the others of different evergreens), or perchance where the farmer has been mowing them down, and I think the owner would rather have a pasture here than a wood-lot. A year or two later, as I pass through the same field, I am surprised to find myself in a flourishing young wood-lot, from which the cows are now carefully fenced out, though there are many open spaces, and I perceive how much further advanced it would have been if the farmer had been more provident and had begun to abet nature a few years earlier. It is surprising by what leaps — two or three feet in a season — the pines stretch toward the sky, affording shelter also to various hardwoods which plant themselves in their midst. I do not know a white pine in the town which has been set out twenty-five years.

Rains still, more or less, all day. But it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good; this weather is good for cuttings and transplanted trees. P. M. — To Hill. Sassafras (fertile) will apparently bloom to-morrow. These, too, — the young trees, — have been killed the past winter, like the fever-bush. There is, leaning over the Assabet at the Grape Bower, an amelanchier variety Botryapiwm about five inches in diameter and some twenty-eight feet long, a light and graceful tree. ‘The leaves of this are, as usual, nearly smooth and quite brown, of a delicate tint (pur- plish ?). At the spring just beyond, is another amelan- chier, and other small ones are not uncommon, differing from the last, not in the form of its petals and leaves, but the latter are green, or very slightly streaked with purplish. It seems to be a common variety of the variety Botryapium and quite downy, though not so downy as those of the oblongifolia. ‘The bark of these trees is much like that of a maple. I find checkerberries still fresh and abundant. Last year was a remarkable one for them. They lurk under the low leaves, scarcely to be detected, often, as you are standing up, almost below the level of the ground, dark- scarlet berries, some of them half an inch in diameter, broad pear-shaped, of a pale or hoary pink color be- neath. The peduncle curves downward between two leaves. There they lurk under the glossy, dark-green, brown-spotted leaves, close to the ground. They make a very handsome nosegay. I saw yesterday a parrot exceedingly frightened in its cage at a window. It rushed to the bars and struggled to get out. A piece of board had been thrown from the window above to the ground, which probably the parrot’s instinct had mistaken for a hawk. Their eyes are very open to danger from above. The staminate buds of the black spruce are quite a bright red.

After two or three days more of rainy weather, it is fair and warm at last. Thermometer seventy-odd degrees above zero. When the May storm is over, then the summer is fairly begun. 9 a.m. — I go up the Assabet in boat to stone bridge. Is it not summer when we do not go seeking sunny and sheltered places, but also love the wind and shade? As I stand on the sand-bank below the Assabet stone bridge and look up through the arch, the river makes a pretty picture. It is perfectly smooth above the bridge and appears two or three feet higher (it is probably half as much) than below and rushes to its fall very regularly thus, the bridge partially damming the stream: the smoothness extends part way under the bridge in the middle, the turbulent water rushing down each side.

P. M.— To Holden Swamp by boat. . River still high generally over the meadows. Can sail across the Hubbard meadow. Off Staples wood-lot, hear the ah tche tche chit-1-vet of the redstart. Tortoises out again abundantly. Each particularly warm and sunny day brings them out on to every floating rail and stump. I count a dozen within three or four feet on a rail. It is a tortoise day. I hear one regular bullfrog trump, and as I approach the edge of the Holden Swamp, the tree-toads. Hear the pepe there, and the redstarts, and the chestnut-sided warbler. It appears striped slate and black above, white beneath, yellow-crowned with black side-head, two yellow bars on wing, white side-head below the black, black bill, and long chestnut streak on side. Its song lively and rather long, about as the summer yellowbird, but not in two bars; tse tse tse | te tsah tsah tsah | te sah yer se is the rhythm. Kalmia glauca yesterday. Rhodora, on shore there, a little before it. Nemopanthes, a day or two. This is the time and place to hear the new-arriving warblers, the first fine days after the May storm. When the leaves generally are just fairly expanding, and the deciduous trees are hoary with them, —a silvery hoari- ness, — then, about the edges of the swamps in the woods, these birds are flitting about in the tree-tops like gnats, catching the insects about the expanding leaf- buds. I wade in the swamp for the kalmia, amid the water andromeda and the sphagnum, scratching my legs with the first and sinking deep in the last. The water is now gratefully cool to my legs, so far from being poisoned in the strong water of the swamp. It is a sort of baptism for which I had waited. At Miles Swamp, the carpinus sterile catkins, appar- ently a day or two, but I see no fertile ones, unless that is one (pressed) at the southeast edge of swamp near grafted apple, and its catkins are effete! Hear the first veery strain. The small twigs of the carpinus are singularly tough, as I find when I try to break off the flowers. They bend without breaking. Sand cherry at Lupine Bank, possibly a day. Sassafras, a day or two. Fringed polygala, I hear of. The first goldfinch twitters over, and at evening I hear the spark of a nighthawk.

A. M. — To Hill. White ash, apparently yesterday, at Grape Shore but not at Conantum. What a singular appearance for some weeks its great masses of dark-purple anthers have made, fruit-like on the trees! A very warm morning. Now the birds sing more than ever, methinks, now, when the leaves are fairly expanding, the first really warm summer days. The water on the meadows is perfectly smooth nearly all the day. At 3 p. m. the thermometer is at 88°. It soon gets to be quite hazy. Apple out. Heard one speak to-day of his sense of awe at the thought of God, and suggested to him that awe was the cause of the potato- rot.1 The same speaker dwelt on the sufferings of life, but my advice was to go about one’s business, sug- gesting that no ecstasy was ever interrupted, nor its fruit blasted. As for completeness and roundness, to be sure, we are each like one of the laciniz of a lichen, a torn fragment, but not the less cheerfully we expand in a moist day and assume unexpected colors. We want no completeness but intensity of life. Hear the first cricket as I go through a warm hollow, bringing round the summer with his everlasting strain.’