Now is the summer come.

May 30, 2012

May 30.

Now is the summer come. A breezy, washing day. A day for shadows, even of moving clouds, over fields in which the grass is beginning to wave.

What kind of blackberry do I find in blossom in Hubbard's Swamp? Pass a cow that has just dropped her calf in the meadow. The sumach (glabra) is well under weigh now. The yellow water ranunculus by the Corner causeway. There are young robins in nests. To what sparrow belong the coffee-colored eggs in Hubbard's field by the brook? White cohosh in bloom; high blueberry flowers are quite conspicuous.

Violets everywhere spot the meadows, some more purple, some more lilac. . . .Distinguished the Viola palmata in Hubbard's meadow, near the sidesaddle-flowers, which last are just beginning to blossom. The last are quite showy flowers when the wind turns them so as to show their under sides.

Strong lights and shades now. It is a day of shadows, the leaves have so grown, and of wind, -- a washing  day,-- and the shadows of the clouds are observed flitting over the landscape.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 30, 1852

Now is the summer come.  . . . A day for shadows, even of moving clouds, over fields in which the grass is beginning to wave.  . . .   See May 27, 1853 ("A new season has commenced - summer - leafy June.”); May 27, 1855 ("The fields now begin to wear the aspect of June, their grass just beginning to wave;. . .”);  May 26, 1854 (At sight of this deep and dense field all vibrating with motion and light, winter recedes many degrees in my memory. . . . The season of grass, now everywhere green and luxuriant.”); May 19, 1860 ("The grass, especially the meadow-grasses, are seen to wave distinctly, and the shadows of the bright fair-weather cumuli are sweeping over them.")

Violets everywhere spot the meadows, some more purple, some more lilac. . . . Distinguished the Viola palmata in Hubbard's meadow,. See May 30, 1853 ("The Viola palmata, which is later, and therefore, methinks, fresher than most, is now quite prevalent, one of the most common, in fact, in low ground and a very handsome purple, with more red than usual in its violet.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Violets

May 30 See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 30

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

May 30. Sunday.

Now is the summer come. A breezy, washing day. A day for shadows, even of moving clouds, over fields in which the grass is beginning to wave.

 Senecio in bloom. A bird's nest in grass, with coffee-colored eggs. Cinquefoil and houstonia cover the ground, mixed with the grass and contrasting with each other.

 Strong lights and shades now.

Wild cherry on the low shrubs, but not yet the trees, a rummy scent.

Violets everywhere spot the meadows, some more purple, some more lilac.

The tall pipe-grass (Equisetum uliginosum) .

The Drosera rotundifolia now glistens with its dew at midday, a beautiful object closely examined.

The dwarf andromeda is about out of bloom. Its new shoots from the side of the old stem are an inch or more long. The little leaves appear to be gradually falling off, after all. See again if they do not all fall off in the summer.

Distinguished the Viola palmata in Hubbard's meadow, near the sidesaddle-flowers, which last are just beginning to blossom. The last are quite showy flowers when the wind turns them so as to show their under sides.

It is a day of shadows, the leaves have so grown, and of wind, — a washing day, — and the shadows of the clouds are observed flitting over the landscape.

 I do not yet observe a difference between the two kinds of Pyrus arbutifolia, if, indeed, I have compared the two, i. e. my early black and later red-fruited, which last holds on all winter.

The fruit of the amelanchier is as big as small peas. I have not noticed any other berry so large yet.

The anemones appear to be nearly gone.

Yellow lilies are abundant.

The bulbous arethusa, the most splendid, rich, and high-colored flower thus far, methinks, all flower and color, almost without leaves, and looking much larger than it is, and more conspicuous on account of its intense color. A flower of mark. It appeared two or three times as large as reality when it flashed upon me from the meadow. Bigelow calls it a " crystalline purple." (Saw some the 6th of June, but no longer fresh.)

What kind of blackberry did I find in blossom in Hubbard's Swamp?

 Passed a cow that had just dropped her calf in the meadow.

The sumach (glabra) is well under weigh now.

The yellow water ranunculus by the Corner causeway.

There are young robins in nests.

To what sparrow belong the coffee-colored eggs in Hubbard's field by the brook ?

White cohush in bloom; also Smilacina stellata.

The branches or branchlets of the maidenhair fern are so disposed as to form two thirds of a cup around the stem.

The flowers of the sassafras have not such a fragrance as I perceived last year.

High blueberry flowers are quite conspicuous.

The bass leaf is now large and handsome.

The geranium is a delicate flower and be longs especially to shady places under trees and shrubs, — better if about springs, — in by-nooks, so modest.

The early gnaphaliums are gone to seed, having run up seven or ten inches.

The field plantain, which I saw in Plymouth a week ago, abundant there.

The narrow- leaved cotton-grass.

The Equisetum sylvaticum, or wood horse-tail in the meadows.

The lupine, which I saw almost in blossom a week ago at Plymouth, I hear is in blossom here.

 The river is my own highway, the only wild and unfenced part of the world hereabouts.

 How much of the world is widow's thirds, with a hired man to take negligent care of it!

The apple trees are about out of blossom. It is but a week they last.

 Israel Rice thinks the first half of June is not commonly so warm as May, and that the reason is that vegetation is so advanced that the earth is shaded and protected from the sun by the grass also, so that it is delayed in being warmed by the summer sun.

At Corner Spring.

May 27.

A wet day. The veery sings nevertheless. 

The road is white with the apple blossoms fallen off, as with snowflakes. 

The dogwood is coming out.

Ladies'-slippers out. They perfume the air. 

May 27

Ranunculus recurvatus, hooked crowfoot, by the spring.

I hear but few toads and peepers now. Methinks the tree-toad croaks more this wet weather. The tall crowfoot out. 

The fringed polygala near the Corner Spring is a delicate flower, with very fresh tender green leaves and red-purple blossoms; beautiful from the contrast of its clear red-purple flowers with its clear green leaves.

  Catch a wood frog (Rana sylvatica), the color of a dead leaf. He croaks as I hold him, perfectly frog-like. 

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, May 27, 1852

Ladies'-slippers out.  See May 26, 1857 (“A lady's-slipper. At Cliffs, no doubt, before. ”)

A wood frog  the color of a dead leaf. See June 29, 1852 ("The mud turtle is the color of the mud, the wood frog and the hylodes of the dead leaves, the bullfrogs of the pads, the toad of the earth, the tree-toad of the bark."); May 30, 1854 ("Wood frogs skipping over the dead leaves, whose color they resemble."). Compare September 12, 1857 ("I brought it close to my eye and examined it. It was very beautiful seen thus nearly, not the dull dead-leaf color which I had imagined. . .")

The pewee and the cricket.

May 26

Surveying the Brooks farm. 

The air is full of the odor of apple blossoms. 

The meadow smells sweet as you go along low places in the road at sundown. 

I hear the pea-wai, the tender note. Is it not the small pewee? 

To-night I hear many crickets. They have commenced their song. They bring in the summer.  

Walking home from surveying, the fields are just beginning to be reddened with sorrel.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 26, 1852

To-night I hear many crickets. . . .See May 24, 1857 ("Hear the first cricket as I go through a warm hollow, bringing round the summer with his everlasting strain.") See also April 14, 1852; May 22, 1854

I hear the pea-wai, the tender note. See   May 26, 1857 ("Wood pewee.")  See also April 14, 1852 (" I do not hear those peculiar tender die-away notes from the pewee yet. Is it another pewee, or a later note?"); May 17. 1853 ("I hear the wood pewee, — pe-a-wai. The heat of yesterday has brought him on."); May 17, 1854 ("Hear the wood pewee, the warm weather sound. "); May 19, 1856 ("Wood pewee. ");  May 22, 1854 ("I hear also pe-a-wee pe-a-wee, and then occasionally pee-yu, the first syllable in a different and higher key emphasized, — all very sweet and naive and innocent");  May 23, 1854 ("The wood pewee sings now in the woods behind the spring in the heat of the day (2 p. m.), sitting on a low limb near me, pe-a-wee, pe-a-wee, etc., five or six times at short and regular intervals, looking about all the while, and then, naively, pee-a-oo, emphasizing the first syllable, and begins again. . . ."); May 25, 1855 ("Wood pewee. ");     May 24, 1859 ("Hear the wood pewee.");  May 24, 1860 ("Hear a wood pewee.") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Wood-Pewee

May 26. See  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 26

To Saw Mill Brook and Flint's Pond.

May 25. The ferns are grown up large, and some are in fruit, a dark or blackish fruit part way down the stem, with a strong scent, --quite a rich-looking fruit, of small dark-greenish globules clustered together.

The female red maples bearing keys are later to put forth leaves. The catkins of the willows on the Turnpike, now fallen, cover the water. The water has subsided so that the pads lie on the surface.

The chinquapin shrub oak is blossoming. The pincushion galls appear on the oak. The oak apples are forming. The veronica is everywhere in bloom, in the grass by the roadside.

It is blossom week with the apples. 

The shad-blossoms are gone. The sarsaparilla in bloom; and trientalis, its white star. What a sunny yellow in the early cinquefoil, which now spots the grass!

The red oak sprouts have grown ten inches before their leaves are expanded. Some late willows have fresh green catkins now. Clustered Solomon's-seal. Polygonatum pubescens ready to bloom. Medeola or cucumber-root in bud, with its two-storied whorl of leaves.

Mosquitoes have come. Cress in flower. The veratrums by this brook have run up so high they make a tropical scenery on the edge of the water. Yellow butterflies one at a time. The large yellow woods violet (V. pubescens) by this brook now out.

The Rana palustris, or pickerel frog, is abundant in the meadows. I hear the first troonk of a bullfrog. The fringed polygala (P. paucifolia), flowering wintergreen. Grasshoppers appear.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 25, 1852

It is blossom week with the apples. See  May 19, 1860 ("There is a stong southwest wind after the rain, rather novel and agreeable, blowing off some apple blossoms.”); May 20, 1854 ("Methinks we always have at this time those washing winds as now, when the choke-berry is in bloom, — bright and breezy days blowing off some apple blossoms”); May 26, 1852 (“The air is full of the odor of apple blossoms.”); May 27 1852 ("The road is white with the apple blossoms fallen off, as with snowflakes.”); May 27, 1857 ("This is blossom week, beginning last Sunday (the 24th).”);May 28, 1855 (“The apple bloom is very rich now.”); June 1, 1855 ("A very windy day, . . . scattering the remaining apple blossoms.”)

Clustered Solomon's-seal. Polygonatum pubescens ready to bloom. See May 22, 1856 (“Polygonatum pubescens at rock.”); May 21, 1856 ("The Polygonatum pubescens there, in shade, almost out; perhaps elsewhere already.”) May 13, 1855 (" The brook in Yellow Birch Swamp is very handsome now — broad and full, with the light-green hellebore eighteen inches high and the small two-leaved Solomon’s-seal about it, in the open wood.”); May 12, 1855 ("One flower of the Polygonatum pubescent open there [under Lee’s Cliff]; probably may shed pollen to-morrow.”).

Two thrushes

May 22.

Saturday. On my way to Plymouth, looked at Audubon in the State-House. The female (and male?) wood thrush spotted the whole length of belly; the hermit thrush not so.

The seringo-bird cannot be the Savannah sparrow.

Two kinds of bluets in New York Report.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 22, 1852

See September 29, 1855 ("At Natural History Library saw Dr. Cabot, who says that he has heard either the hermit, or else the olivaceous, thrush sing,—very like a wood thrush, but softer. Is sure that the hermit thrush sometimes breeds hereabouts.”) and note to April 24, 1856 ("[S]ee a brown bird flit, and behold my hermit thrush, with one companion, flitting silently through the birches. I saw the fox-color on his tail-coverts, as well as the brown streaks on the breast.”). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring: The Arrival of the Hermit Thrush

The seringo-bird cannot be the Savannah sparrow. See  May 2, 1852 ("I think that my seringo-bird has not the marks of the Savannah sparrow ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Savannah Sparrow (Fringilla savanna)

Bluets. See April 20, 1860 (""C. sees bluets and some kind of thrush to-day, size of wood thrush, — he thought probably hermit thrush."); May 7,1860 ("I saw bluets whitening the fields yesterday a quarter of a mile off. They are to the sere brown grass what the shad-bush is now to the brown and bare sprout lands.")

The violets at Conant's Spring

May 20, 2017

May 20.

P. M. – To Corner Spring.

So many birds that I have not attended much to any of late.

A barn swallow accompanied me across the Depot Field, methinks attracted by the insects which I started, though I saw them not, wheeling and tacking incessantly on all sides and repeatedly dashing within a rod of me.  It is an agreeable sight to watch one.

Nothing lives in the air but is in rapid motion.

Now is the season of the leafing of the trees and of planting.

The fields are white with houstonias, as they will soon be yellow with buttercups.

Perchance the beginning of summer may be dated from the fully formed leaves, when dense shade (?) begins. I will see.

High blueberries at length. It is unnecessary to speak of them.

All flowers are beautiful.

The Salix alba is about out of bloom.

Pads begin to appear, though the river is high over the meadows.

A caterpillars' nest on a wild cherry.

Some apple trees in blossom; most are just ready to burst forth, the leaves being half formed.

I find the fever-bush in bloom, but apparently its blossoms are now stale. I must observe it next year. They were fresh perhaps a week ago.

Currants in bloom by Conant's Spring. Are they natives of America?

A lady’s-slipper well budded and now white.

The Viola ovata is of a deep purple blue, is darkest and has most of the red in it; the V. pedata is smooth and pale-blue, delicately tinged with purple reflections; the cucullata-is more decidedly blue, slatyblue, and darkly striated.

The white violets by the spring are rather scarce now.

The red oak leaves are very pretty and finely cut, about an inch and three quarters long. Like most young leaves, they are turned  back around the twig, parasol-like.

The farmers apprehend frosts these nights.

A purplish gnaphalium with three-nerved leaves.

H.  D. Thoreau, Journal, May 20, 1852

Perchance the beginning of summer may be dated from the fully formed leaves. Compare May 17, 1853 ("Does not summer begin after the May storm?”)

A lady's-slipper well budded . . . See May 27, 1852 ("Ladies'-slippers out. They perfume the air.”)


The cucullata is more decidedly blue, slaty-blue, and darkly striated. See May 19, 1858 (“There appears to be quite a variety in the colors of the Viola cucullata. Some dark-blue, if not lilac (?), some with a very dark blue centre and whitish circumference, others dark-blue within and dark without, others all very pale blue.”);  May 16, 1852 (“I observe some very pale blue Viola cuculata in the meadows. ”);  May 31, 1858 (“I saw . . . to-day a white V. cucullata. ”) 

So much light and life in the landscape at this date.

May 18.

The landscape is most beautiful looking towards the sun (in the orchard on Fair Haven) at four.

First, there is this green slope on which I sit, looking down between the rows of apple trees just being clothed with tender green, - sometimes underneath them to the sparkling water, or over through them, or seeing them against the sky.

Secondly, the outline of this bank or hill is drawn against the water far below; the river still high, a beautifully bright sheen on the water there, a fine sparkling shimmer in front, owing to the remarkable clearness of the atmosphere (clarified by the May storm?).

Thirdly, on either side of the wood beyond the river are patches of bright, tender, yellowish, velvety green grass in meadows and on hillsides. Those great fields of green affect me as did those early green blades by the Corner Spring -like a fire flaming up from the earth. 

Fourthly, the forest, the dark-green pines, wonderfully distinct, near and erect, with their distinct dark stems, spiring tops, regularly disposed branches, and silvery light on their needles . They seem to wear an aspect as much fresher and livelier as the other trees, - though their growth can hardly be perceptible yet, - as if they had been washed by the rains and the air.

They are now being invested with the light, sunny, yellowish-green of the deciduous trees. This tender foliage, putting so much light and life into the landscape, is the remarkable feature at this date. The week when the deciduous trees are generally and conspicuously expanding their leaves.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 18, 1852

This tender foliage, putting so much light and life into the landscape . . .See May 18, 1851("The landscape has a new life and light infused into it. And to the eye the forest presents the tenderest green.")

The world can never be more beautiful than now.

May 18.

It is fine clear atmosphere, only the mountains blue.  Shall we have much of this weather after this? There is scarcely a flock of cloud in the sky. The heaven is now broad and open to the earth in these longest days. 

The world can never be more beautiful than now, for, combined with the tender fresh green, you have this remarkable clearness of the air. I doubt if the landscape will be any greener.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 18, 1852

The world can never be more beautiful than now.  See May 1850 ("I still sit on its Cliff in a new spring day, and look over the awakening woods and the river, and hear the new birds sing, with the same delight as ever. It is as sweet a mystery to me as ever, what this world is. . . ."); May 5, 1852 ("Every part of the world is beautiful today.”); May 17, 1852 ("I was surprised, on turning round, to behold the serene and everlasting beauty of the world. “); May 22, 1854 ("How many times I have been surprised thus, on turning about on this very spot, at the fairness of the earth!”) See also September 18, 1860 ("If you are not happy to-day you will hardly be so to-morrow.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The world can never be more beautiful than now.

To Loring's Pond

May 17.

Decidedly fair weather at last; a bright, breezy, flowing, washing day.

The different color of the water at different times. To-day it is full of light and life, the breeze presenting many surfaces to the sun. There is a sparkling shimmer on it. It is a deep, dark blue, as the sky is clear. The air everywhere is, as it were, full of the rippling of waves.



This pond is the more interesting for the islands in it. The water is seen running behind them. It is pleasant to know that it penetrates quite behind and isolates the land you see, and to see it flowing out from behind an island with shining ripples.

The sun on the young foliage of birches, alders, etc., on the opposite side of the pond has an enchanting effect. The sunshine has a double effect. The new leaves abet it, so fresh and tender, not apprehending their insect foes. Do I smell the young birch leaves at a distance ?

Most trees are beautiful when leafing out, but especially the birch. After a storm at this season, the sun comes out and lights up the tender expanding leaves, and all nature is full of light and fragrance, and the birds sing without ceasing, and the earth is a fairyland. The birch leaves are so small that you see the landscape through the tree, and they are like silvery and green spangles in the sun, fluttering about the tree.

I see dark pines in the distance in the sunshine, contrasting with the light fresh green of the deciduous trees.

Now the sun has come out after the May storm, how bright, how full of freshness and tender promise and fragrance is the new world! The woods putting forth new leaves; it is a memorable season. So hopeful! These young leaves have the beauty of flowers.

There is life in these fresh and varied colors, life in the motion of the wind and the waves; all make it a flowing, washing day. It is a good day to saunter.

Does not summer begin after the May storm?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 17, 1852

This pond is the more interesting for the islands in it. See September 12, 1851 ("I love to gaze at the low island in the pond, — at any island or inaccessible land."); December 14, 1850 ("I walk on Loring's Pond to three or four islands there which I have never visited.")

The birch leaves are so small that you see the landscape through the tree, and they are like silvery and green spangles in the sun, fluttering about the tree.... See May 17, 1854 ("the wooded shore is all lit up with the tender, bright green of birches fluttering in the wind and shining in the light, ...")

Now the sun has come out after the May storm, how bright, how full of freshness and tender promise and fragrance is the new world! May 24, 1860 ("How perfectly new and fresh the world is seen to be, when we behold a myriad sparkles of brilliant white sunlight on a rippled stream.")
Does not summer begin after the May storm? See  May 11, 1854 (" I suspect that summer weather may be always ushered in in a similar manner, — thunder-shower, rainbow, smooth water, and warm night.")

The whole earth is fragrant as a bouquet

May 16.

The air is sweet with fragrance.  

There are many insects now. I hear a hummingbird about the columbines. 

Methinks the columbine here is more remarkable for growing out of the seams of the rocks than the saxifrage, and perhaps better deserves the latter name. It is now in its prime, ornamental for nature's rockwork. 

Avesong May 14, 2023

It is a beautiful sight to see large clusters of splendid scarlet and yellow flowers growing out of a seam in the side of this gray cliff. 

Avesong April 24,  2023

The sessile-leaved bellwort, with three or four delicate pale-green leaves with reflexed edges, on a tender-looking stalk, the single modest-colored flower gracefully drooping, neat, with a fugacious, richly spiced fragrance, facing the ground, the dry leaves, as if unworthy to face the heavens. It is a beautiful sight, a pleasing discovery,  the first of the season, -- growing in a little straggling company, in damp woods or swamps. When you turn up the drooping flower, its petals make a perfect geometrical figure, a six-pointed star. 

These faint, fugacious fragrances are pleasing. You are not always quite sure that you perceive any.

The earth reflects the heavens in violets.

I can now pluck a sprig of fresh sweet-briar and feed my senses with that. 

The whole earth is fragrant as a bouquet held to your nose. A fine, delicious fragrance, which will come to the senses only when it will.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 16, 1852

Methinks the columbine here is more remarkable for growing out of the seams of the rocks than the saxifrage, and perhaps better deserves the latter name . . .[ Latin, saxifragus breaking rocks, from saxum rock + frangere to break]. . . See May 12, 1855 ("Under Lee’s Cliff, . . . am surprised to find some pale-yellow columbines. . .")

The sessile-leaved bellwort . . . a beautiful sight, a pleasing discovery, the first of the season. See .May 14, 1852 ("The Uvularia sessilifolio, a drooping flower with tender stems and leaves; the latter curled so as to show their under sides hanging about the stems, as if shrinking from the cold"); May 16, 1858 (" The Uvularia perfoliata, which did not show itself at all on the 3d, is now conspicuous") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bellworts

The whole earth is fragrant as a bouquet held to your nose. See See May 16, 1854 ("The earth is all fragrant as one flower. And bobolinks tinkle in the air. Nature now is perfectly genial to man.”)

The song of the robin is most suggestive in cloudy weather.

May 14.

First kingbird. Its voice and flight relate it to the swallow. 

The maple-keys are already formed, though the male blossoms (on different trees) are not withered.

Going over the Corner causeway, the willow blossoms fill the air with a sweet fragrance, and I am ready to sing, Ah! willow, willow! These willows have yellow bark, bear yellow flowers and yellowish-green leaves, and are now haunted by the summer yellowbird and Maryland yellow-throat. 

They see this now conspicuous mass of yellowish verdure at a distance and fly to it. Single large willows at distance are great nosegays of yellow. This orchard precedes the peach and apple weeks. 

The Salix nigra (?) is leafing out now with its catkins appearing.

The sounds and sights — as birds and flowers — heard and seen at those seasons when there are fewest are most memorable and suggestive of poetic associations.

 The trillium is budded. 

bellwort
May 14, 2017

The Uvularia sessilifolio, a drooping flower with tender stems and leaves; the latter curled so as to show their under sides hanging about the stems, as if shrinking from the cold.

The Ranunculus bulbosus  shows its yellow by this spring thus early (Corner Spring).

The grass is now whitened with bluets; the fields are green, and the roadsides. (I am on the C. Miles road.) Now is the season to travel.

The deciduous trees are rapidly investing the evergreens, making the woods rich and bosky by degrees. 

The robin sings this louring day. They sang most in and about that great freshet storm. The song of the robin is most suggestive in cloudy weather. 

I have not heard any toads during this rain (of which this is the third day), and very few peepers. 

The beautiful birch catkins hang down four inches.

Saw a whip-poor-will sitting in the path in woods on the mill road, — the brown mottled bird. It flutters off blindly, with slow, soft flight. 

Most birds are silent in the storm. Hear the robin, oven-bird, night warbler, and, at length, the towhee's towee, chickadee's phoebe, and a preluding thrasher and a jay.

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, May 14, 1852

The Ranunculus bulbosus shows it by this spring thus early (Corner Spring)s yellow. See May 14, 1853 ("The glossy or varnished yellow of buttercups (bulbosus, also abundant, some days out) spots the hillside.") See also May 17, 1856 ("Ranunculus bulbosils a day or two at least.")May 29, 1859 ("The Ranunculus bulbosus are apparently in prime."); May 29, 1857 ("Ranunculus bulbosus in bloom.");

The deciduous trees are rapidly investing the evergreens, making the woods rich and bosky by degrees. See May 18, 1852 ("They are now being invested with the light, sunny, yellowish-green of the deciduous trees.”) May 22, 1855 ("The deciduous trees leafing begin to clothe or invest the evergreens.”); June 9, 1852 (“The deciduous trees have filled up the intervals between the evergreens, and the woods are bosky now.”)

The song of the robin is most suggestive in cloudy weather. See April 26, 1855 ("We see and hear more birds than usual this mizzling and still day, and the robin sings with more vigor and promise than later in the season.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring

Walking in the rain.

May 13.

A May storm, yesterday and to-day; rather cold. The fields are green now, and all the expanding leaves and flower-buds are much more beautiful in the rain, - covered with clear drops.   

The amelanchiers are now the prevailing flowers in the woods and swamps and sprout-lands, a very beautiful flower, with its purplish stipules and delicate drooping white blossoms. The shad-blossom days in the woods.

The low early blue-berry is just in blossom, and the dwarf choke-cherry.

The white birch with its golden tassels three inches long, hanging directly down, amid the just expanding yellowish-green leaves, their perpendicularity contrasting with the direction of the branches.   Geometry mixed with nature. The catkins, beaten down by the rain, strew the ground.

The Viola pedata and ovata now begin to be abundant on warm, sandy slopes. The leaves of the lupine, six inches high, are handsome, covered with rain-drops.

They who do not walk in the woods in the rain never behold them in their freshest, most radiant and blooming beauty.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 13, 1852

The shad-blossom days in the woods.  See May 13, 1856 (“Downy amelanchier just out at Lupine Bank”); May 13, 1855 ("Saw an amelanchier with downy leaf (apparently oblongifolia) on the southeast edge of Yellow Birch Swamp, about eighteen feet high and five or six inches in diameter, —a clump of them about as big as an apple tree); May 15, 1858 ("The shad-bush in bloom is now conspicuous, its white flags on all sides. Is it not the most massy and conspicuous of any wild plant now in bloom?");May 12, 1855 ("I now begin to distinguish where at a distance the Amelanchier Botryapium, with its white against the russet, is waving in the wind."); May 10, 1854 ("The shad-bush in blossom is the first to show like a fruit tree on the hill sides . . .before even its own leaves are much expanded. "); May 9, 1852 ("The first shad-bush, Juneberry, or service-berry (Amclanchier canadensis), in blossom.").

May 11. Sunrise

May 11.

Dews come with the grass.  There is, I find on examining, a small, clear drop at the end of each blade, quite at the top on one side. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 11, 1852

See May 13, 1860: ("Each dewdrop is a delicate crystalline sphere trembling at the tip of a fresh green grass-blade. Each dewdrop takes the form of the planet itself. The surface of the globe is thus tremblingly alive."); January 6, 1858 ("What a world we live in! . . .There is nothing handsomer than a snowflake and a dewdrop. I may say that the maker of the world exhausts his skill with each snowflake and dewdrop that he sends down. We think that the one mechanically coheres and that the other simply flows together and falls, but in truth they are the product of enthusiasm, the children of an ecstasy, finished with the artist's utmost skill.")


Dogen ("The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dewdrops on the grass, or even in one drop of water.")


                                and Issa:

This dewdrop world

Is but a dewdrop world

And yet, and yet 

This dewdrop world—
Is a dewdrop world,
And yet, and yet . . .

Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828)
Translated by Lewis Mackenzie
From: The Autumn Wind