23 May 1859 – 29 May 1859

What that brilliant warbler on the young trees on the side of the Deep Cut? Orange throat and beneath, with distinct black stripes on breast (1. e. on each side?), and, I think, some light color on crown. Was [it] Blackburnian ? or maculosa ??° Hear the wood pewee. Sand cherry flower is apparently at its height. I see (the 9th of June) that its fruit is an abortive puff, like that of some plums.

Dragon-flies have begun to come out of their larva state in numbers, leaving the cases on the weeds, etc. See one tender and just out this forenoon. Meadow fox-tail grass abundantly out (how long ?), front of E. Hosmer’s by bars and in E. Hubbard’s meadow, front of meeting-house. The Salix petiolaris is either entire or serrate, and generally, I should now say, was becoming serrate, the later leaves, e. g. that one, a fertile one, nearly opposite the Shattuck oak. The river is quite high for the season, on account of the late rains. Hear within a day or two what I call the sprayey note of the toad, different and later than its early ring.

Thursday. P. M.—'To Ledum Swamp and Lee’s Cliff. Eleocharis tenuis in bloom, apparently the earliest eleocharis. The rhodora at Ledum Swamp is now in its perfection, brilliant islands of color. Hriophorum vaginatum, how long? Ledum out apparently two or three days. Andromeda Polzfolia out, how long? Tall swamp huckleberry just budded to bloom. Do I not hear the nuthatch note in the swamp? Do not detect the scheuchzeria there yet.' The air is full of terebinthine odors to-day, — the scent of the sweet-fern, etc. The reddish leaves (and calyx) of the Vaccinium vacillans, just leafed, are in- teresting and peculiar now, perhaps more or less crim- son. See a flock of cowbirds, the first I have seen. Cows in water, so warm has it got to be. Geranium (how long?), behind Bittern Cliff, and wild pink. Pitch pine pollen at Lee’s. Cherry-birds. Ascendant potentilla abundant, how long? Juniperus repens pollen, how long? Interrupted fern pollen [sic]. The dicksonia fern is one foot high, but not fairly unfolded. The tender white-downy stems of the meadow saxifrage, seen toward the westering sun, are very conspicuous and thick in the meadows now. A purple finch’s nest in one of our firs.

Friday. P. M. — Up Assabet. Now first I notice a linty dust on the surface of the dark river at the Hemlocks, evidently from the new and downy leaves. These expressions of the face of Nature are as constant and sure to recur as those of the eyes of maidens, from year to year, — sure to be repeated as long as time lasts. It is a new and peculiar season when this phenomenon is observed. Rivers flow al- ready bearing the dust of summer on their bosoms. The dark river, now that shades are increased, is like the dark eye of a maiden. Azalea nudiflora blooms generally. Hear a black and white creeper sing, ah vee vee, vee vee, vitchet vitchet vitchet vitchet. A peculiarity of these days is the first hearing of the crickets’ creak, suggesting philosophy and thought. No greater event transpires now. It is the most interesting piece of news to be communicated, yet it is not in any newspaper.’ Melvin and Skinner tell me of three wild geese, to their surprise seen within a week down the river, —a gander and two geese, — which must be breeding here. Melvin got near them a fortnight ago. They are too much disturbed to rear a brood, I think. Melvin tells of seeing once in June dead shad-flies washed up on the North Branch in windrows, along the shore. Golden senecio, at least to-morrow. Went by Temple’s. For rural interest, give me the houses of the poor, with simply a cool spring, a good deal of weather-stained wood, and a natural door-stone: a house standing somewhere in nature, and not merely in an atmosphere of art, on a measured lot; on a hillside, perchance, obviously not made by any gar- dener, amid rocks not placed there by a landscape gardener for effect; with nothing “pretty ” about it, but life reduced to its lowest terms and yet found to be beau- tiful. This is a good foundation or board to spring from. All that the natives erect themselves above that will be a genuine growth. Blue-eyed grass out.

Saturday. P. M. — To Cliffs. Some Salia rostrata seed begins to fly. Low black- berry in bloom on railroad bank. Also S. Torreyana seed, just begun to fly. S. pedicellaris long out of bloom there. At the extreme east side of Trillium Wood, come upon a black snake, which at first keeps still prudently, thinking I may not see him, —in the grass in open land, — then glides to the edge of the wood and darts swiftly up into the top of some slender shrubs there — Viburnum dentatum and alder — and lies stretched out, eying me, in horizontal loops eight feet high. The biggest shrub was not over one inch thick at the ground. At first I thought its neck was its chief member, — as if it drew itself up by it, — but again I thought that it rather (when I watched it ascending) extended its neck and a great part of its body upward, while the lower extremity was more or less coiled and rigid on the twigs from a point d’apput. ‘Thus it lifted itself quickly to higher forks. When it moved along more horizontally, it extended its neck far, and placed it successively be- tween the slender forks. This snake, some four feet long, rested there at length twelve feet high, on twigs, not one so big as a pipe-stem, in the top of a shad-bush; yet this one’s tail was broken off where a third of an inch thick, and it could not cling with that. It was quick as thought in its motions there, and perfectly at home in the trees, so far was it from making the impression of a snake in an awkward position. Cinnamon fern pollen [sic]. Lady’s-slipper pollen. These grow under pines even in swamps, as at Ledum Swamp. The lint from leaves sticks to your clothes now. Hear a rose-breasted grosbeak. Methinks every tree and shrub is started, or more, now, but the Vaccinium dumosum, which has not burst.

Sunday. Thorn bushes and the Ranunculus bulbosus are apparently in prime. Coming out of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery to-day, where I had just been to deposit the corpse of a man, I picked up an oak three inches high with the acorn at- tached. They are just springing up now on all sides.