The season of waving boughs

June 9.

June 9, 2013

For a week past we have had washing days. The grass waving, and trees having leaved out, their boughs wave and feel the effect of the breeze. Thus new life and motion is imparted to the trees. The season of waving boughs; and the lighter under side of the new leaves are exposed. This is the first half of June. 

Methinks this is a traveller's month.  Already the grass is blossomed and some even gone to seed, and it is mixed with reddish ferns and other plants.  The deciduous trees have filled up the intervals between the evergreens, and the woods are bosky now. The locust in bloom. The waving, undulating rye. 

The general leafiness, shadiness, and waving of grass and boughs in the breeze characterize the season.  The weather is very clear, and the sky bright. The river shines like silver. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 9, 1852

For a week past we have had washing days. The grass waving, and trees having leaved out, their boughs wave and feel the effect of the breeze. Thus new life and motion is imparted to the trees. The season of waving boughs; and the lighter under sides of the new leaves are exposed. This is the first half of June. Already the grass is not so fresh and liquid-velvety a green, having much of it blossom[ed] and some even gone to seed, and it is mixed with reddish ferns and other plants, but the general leafiness, shadiness, and wav ing of grass and boughs in the breeze characterize the season. The wind is not quite agreeable, because it prevents your hearing the birds sing. Meanwhile the crickets are strengthening their quire. The weather is very clear, and the sky bright. The river shines like silver. Methinks this is a traveller's month. The locust in bloom. The waving, undulating rye. The deciduous trees have filled up the intervals between the ever greens, and the woods are bosky now.

The deciduous trees have filled up the intervals between the evergreens, and the woods are bosky now. The general leafiness, shadiness, and waving of grass and boughs in the breeze characterize the season. The river shines like silver. See June 6, 1855 ("The dark eye and shade of June”); June 8, 1860 “In early June, methinks, as now, we have clearer days, less haze, more or less breeze, — especially after rain, — and more sparkling water than before. . . .As there is more shade in the woods, so there is more shade in the sky, i. e. dark or heavy clouds contrasted with the bright sky. ”); June 9. 1856 ("Now I notice where an elm is in the shadow of a cloud,—the black elm-tops and shadows of June. It is a dark eyelash which suggests a flashing eye beneath. It suggests houses that lie under the shade, the repose and siesta of summer noons, the thunder-cloud, bathing, and all that belongs to summer. ") June 11, 1856 ("I think that this peculiar darkness of the shade, or of the foliage as seen between you and the sky, is not accounted for merely by saying that we have not yet got accustomed to clothed trees, but the leaves are rapidly acquiring a darker green, are more and more opaque, and, besides, the sky is lit with the intensest light. It reminds me of the thunder-cloud and the dark eyelash of summer."); June 23, 1852 ("It is an agreeably cool and clear and breezy day, when all things appear as if washed bright and shine, and, at this season especially, the sound of the wind rustling the leaves is like the rippling of a stream, and you see the light-colored under side of the still fresh foliage, and a sheeny light is reflected from the bent grass in the meadows.. . . The river too has a fine, cool, silvery sparkle or sheen on it. You can see far into the horizon.”); Compare 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 27, 1855 ("The fields now begin to wear the aspect of June, their grass just beginning to wave;. . . foliage thickening and casting darker shadows over the meadows,. . . deciduous trees rapidly investing evergreens .”; May 28, 1858 (“These various shades of grass remind me of June.”); 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.”)

June 9. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 9

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

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