I passed a regular country dooryard this forenoon, the unpainted one-story house, long and low with projecting stoop, a deep grass-plot unfenced for yard, hens and chickens scratching amid the chip dirt about the door,—this last the main feature, relics of wood-piles, sites of the wooden towers. The nightshade has bloomed and the prinos, or winterberry. _July 5._ The vetch-like flower by the Marlborough road, the _Tephrosia Virginica_, is in blossom, with mixed red and yellowish blossoms. Also the white fine-flowered Jersey tea (_Ceanothus Americana_), and, by the side of wood-paths, the humble cow-wheat (_Apocynum_, etc.). The blue flower by the roadside, slender but pretty spike, is the pale lobelia (_L. pallida_). The reddish blossoms of the umbelled wintergreen (_Pyrola umbellata_) are now in perfection and are exceedingly beautiful. Also the white sweet-scented flowers of the _P. rotundifolia_. It is a remarkably cool, clear, breezy atmosphere to-day. One would say there were fewer flowers just now than there have been and are to be; _i. e._ we do not look so much for the blossoming of new flowers. The earliest small fruits are just beginning to be ripe,—the raspberry, thimble-berry, blueberry, etc. We have no longer the blossoms of those which must ripen their fruits in early autumn. I am interested in those fields in the woods where the potato is cultivated, growing in the light, dry, sandy soil, free from weeds; now in blossom, the slight vine not crowded in the hill. I think they do not promise many potatoes, though mealy and wholesome like nuts. Many fields have now received their last hoeing, and the farmers’ work seems to be soon over with them. What a pleasant interview he must have had with them! What a liberal education with these professors! Better than a university. It is pleasing to consider man’s cultivating this plant thus assiduously, without reference to any crop it may yield him, as if he were to cultivate johnswort in like manner. What influences does he receive from this long intercourse. The flowers of the umbelled pyrola, or common wintergreen, are really very handsome now, dangling red from their little umbels like jewelry,—especially the unexpanded buds with their red calyx-leaves against the white globe of petals. There is a handsome wood-path on the east side of White Pond. The shadows of the pine stems and branches falling across the path, which is perfectly red with pine-needles, make a very handsome carpet. Here is a small road running north and south along the edge of the wood, which would be a good place to walk by moonlight. The calamint grows by the lane beyond Seven-Star Lane; now in blossom.