July 14.
How deep or perhaps slaty sky-blue are those blueberries that grow in the shade in dense drooping clusters under the fresh green of oak and hickory sprouts.
How deep or perhaps slaty sky-blue are those blueberries that grow in the shade in dense drooping clusters under the fresh green of oak and hickory sprouts.
See to-day for the first time this season fleets of yellow butterflies in compact assembly in the road like a mackerel fleet with their small hulls and great sails now suddenly dispersing on our approach and filling the air with yellow in their zigzag flight, as when a fair wind calls schooners out of haven and disperses them over the broad ocean.
The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or perchance a palace or temple on the earth, and at length the middle-aged man concludes to build a wood-shed with them.
Trees have commonly two growths in the year, a spring and a fall growth, the latter sometimes equalling the former, and you can see where the first was checked whether by cold or drouth, and wonder what there was in the summer to produce this check, this blight.
So is it with man; most have a spring growth only, and never get over this first check to their youthful hopes; but plants of hardier constitution, or perchance planted in a more genial soil, speedily recover themselves, and, though they bear the scar or knot in remembrance of their disappointment, they push forward again and have a vigorous fall growth which is equivalent to a new spring.
These two growths are now visible on the oak sprouts, the second already nearly equalling the first.
Trees have commonly two growths in the year, a spring and a fall growth, the latter sometimes equalling the former, and you can see where the first was checked whether by cold or drouth, and wonder what there was in the summer to produce this check, this blight.
So is it with man; most have a spring growth only, and never get over this first check to their youthful hopes; but plants of hardier constitution, or perchance planted in a more genial soil, speedily recover themselves, and, though they bear the scar or knot in remembrance of their disappointment, they push forward again and have a vigorous fall growth which is equivalent to a new spring.
These two growths are now visible on the oak sprouts, the second already nearly equalling the first.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 14, 1852
See to-day for the first time this season fleets of yellow butterflies in compact assembly in the road. See July 19, 1856 ("Fleets of yellow butterflies on road. “);July 26, 1854 ("Today I see in various parts of the town the yellow butterflies in fleets in the road, on bare damp sand, twenty or more collected within a diameter of five or six inches in many places.")
Two growths are now visible on the oak sprouts, the second already nearly equalling the first. See May 25, 1853 ("Many do most of their growing for the year in a week or two at this season. They shoot - they spring - and the rest of the Year they harden and mature,. . .”);August 19, 1853 ("In the case of a single tree there is the dark glossy green of the lower, older leaves, — the spring growth, — which hang down, fading on every side into the silvery hoariness of the younger and more downy leaves on the edges, — the fall growth, — whose under sides are seen, which stand up, and more perhaps at this hour."); May 26, 1854 ("Some young red oaks have already grown eighteen inches, i. e. within a fortnight, before their leaves have two-thirds expanded. They have accomplished more than half their year's growth, as if,. . . now burst forth like a stream which has been dammed. They are properly called shoots.”); June 30, 1854 ("Young oak shoots have grown from one and a half to three or four feet");
Does this passage refer to the failure of " A Week on the Concord..." and HDT's resolve and renewed effort, begun in 1852, to rewrite the "Walden" manuscript?
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