Dry weather

May 15

Yesterday afternoon and today the east wind has been quite cool, if not cold, but the haze thicker than ever.

Deciduous woods now swarm with migrating warblers, especially about swamps.

Looking from the Cliffs through the haze, the deciduous trees are a mist of leaflets, against which the pines are already darkened. At this season there is thus a mist in the air and a mist on the earth.

The springing sorrel, the expanding leafets, the already waving rye tell of June.

Sun goes down red, and did last night. A hot day does not succeed, but the very dry weather continues.

H.D. Thoreau,  Journal, May 15, 1860

Deciduous woods now swarm with migrating warblers, especially about swamps. See May 15, 1859 (“Now, when the warblers begin to come in numbers with the leafing of the trees, the woods are so open that you can easily see them. They are scarce and silent in a cool and windy day, or found only in sheltered places.”) See also  April 19, 1854 ("Within a few days the warblers have begun to come. They are of every hue. Nature made them to show her colors with. There are as many as there are colors and shades. "); May 7, 1852 ("For now, before the leaves, they begin to people the trees in this warm weather. The first wave of summer from the south."); May 18, 1857("The swamp is all alive with warblers . . . They fill the air with their little tshree tshree sprayey notes")

Looking from the Cliffs through the haze, the deciduous trees are a mist of leaflets, against which the pines are already darkened. . . . See May 15, 1854 ("Looking off from hilltop . . .  The aspect of oak and other woods at a distance is somewhat like that of a very thick and reddish or yellowish mist about the evergreens.“); May 26, 1857 ("At the same season with this haze of buds comes also the kindred haziness of the air.”);  May 11, 1859 ("Young, or fresh-expanding, oak leaves are very handsome now, showing their colors. It is a leafy mist throughout the forest.”)

The springing sorrel, the expanding leafets, the already waving rye tell of June. See  May 22, 1853 ("This is the first truly lively summer Sunday, what with lilacs, warm weather, waving rye, . . . falling apple blossoms, . . .and the wood pewee."); May 26, 1854 ("At sight of this deep and dense field all vibrating with motion and light, winter recedes many degrees in my memory"); June 1, 1855 ("A very windy day, . . .scattering the remaining apple blossoms. Rye, to my surprise, three or four feet high and glaucous."); June 5, 1856 (" Everywhere now . . stand the red lady’s-slippers over the red pine leaves on the forest floor, rejoicing in June. . . This while rye begins to wave richly in the fields "); June 9, 1852 ("The weather is very clear, and the sky bright. The river shines like silver. . . . The locust in bloom. The waving, undulating rye.")

Sun goes down red, and did last night. See June 5, 1854 ("The sun goes down red and shorn of his beams, a sign of hot weather,"); June 17, 1854 ("The sun goes down red again, like a high-colored flower of summer. As the white and yellow flowers of spring are giving place to the rose, and will soon to the red lily, etc., so the yellow sun of spring has become a red sun of June drought, round and red like a midsummer flower, production of torrid heats."); May 5, 1859 ("The sun sets red (first time), followed by a very hot and hazy day."); May 4, 1860 (“The sun sets red, shorn of its beams.”); May 5, 1860 (Sun goes down red")