Now is the summer come.

May 30

May 30. 2012

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

Strong lights and shades now.

It is a day of shadows,

the leaves have so grown –

and of wind –

A day for shadows

of fast moving clouds over

fields of waving grass.

,A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Now is the Summer come

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.