On Fair Haven Hill

July 15.

July 15

Looking down on a field of red-top now in full bloom, a quarter of a mile west of this hill, at 2.30 P.M. of this very warm and slightly hazy but not dog-dayish day in a blazing sun I am surprised to see a very distinct white vapor like a low cloud drifting along close over the moist coolness of that dense grass-field.

These cultivated grasses now clothe the earth with rich hues. Field after field, densely packed like the squares of a checker-board, all through and about the villages, paint the earth. 

The rich green of young grain now, of various shades; the flashing blades of corn; the yellowing tops of ripening grain; the dense uniform red of red-top; the purple of the fowl-meadow along the low river-banks; the very dark and shadowy green of herd's-grass as if clouds were always passing over it; the fresh light green where June-grass has been cut; the fresh dark green where clover has been cut; the hard, dark green of pastures; the cheerful yellowish green of the meadows where the sedges prevail, with darker patches and veins of grass in the higher and drier parts. 

Knowing where to look, I can just distinguish with my naked eye the darker green of pipes on the peat meadows two miles from the Hill.

The potato-fields are a very dark green.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 15, 1860

The fresh light green where June-grass has been cut. See July 24, 1852 (“There is a short, fresh green on the shorn fields . . . the year has passed its culmination.”); July 24, 1860 ("Many a field where the grass has been cut shows now a fresh and very lit-up light green as you look toward the sun.”) 

July 15. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau July 15

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021