Flowering season closes

July 31. I calculate that less than forty species of flowers known to me remain to blossom this year.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 31, 1853

Less than forty species of flowers known to me remain to blossom this year. See July 26, 1853 ("I reckon that about nine tenths of the flowers of the year have now blossomed")

Green galls on a goldenrod

July 30. 

See some green galls on a goldenrod three quarters of an inch in diameter, shaped like a fruit or an Eastern temple, with two or three little worms inside, completely changing the destiny of the plant, showing the intimate relation between animal and vegetable life. 

The animal signifies its wishes by a touch, and the plant, instead of going on to blossom and bear its normal fruit, devotes itself to the service of the insect and becomes its cradle and food. It suggests that Nature is a kind of gall, that the Creator stung her and man is the grub she is destined to house and feed. The plant rounds off and paints the gall with as much care and love as its own flower and fruit, admiring it perchance even more.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 30, 1853

Escaping the mower

July 29.

Most fields are so completely shorn now that the walls and fence-sides, where plants are protected, appear unusually rich. 

I know not what aspect the flowers would present if our fields and meadows were untouched for a year, if the mower were not permitted to swing his scythe there. No doubt some plants contended long in vain with these vandals, and at last withdrew from the contest. 

About these times some hundreds of men with freshly sharpened scythes make an irruption into my garden when in its rankest condition, and clip my herbs all as close as they can, and I am restricted to the rough hedges and worn-out fields which had little to attract them, to the most barren and worthless pastures. 

I know how some fields of johnswort and goldenrod look, left in the natural state, but not much about our richest fields and meadows.

The sight of the small rough sunflower about a dry ditch bank and hedge advances me at once further toward autumn. At the same time I hear a dry, ripe, autumnal chirp of a cricket. It is the next step to the first goldenrod. 

It grows where it escapes the mower, but no doubt, in our localities of plants, we do not know where they would prefer to grow if unmolested by man, but rather where they best escape his vandalism. How large a proportion of flowers, for instance, are referred to and found by hedges, walls, and fences.

Beck Stow's is much frequented by cows, which burst through the thickest bushes.

Butterflies of various colors are now more abundant than I have seen them before, especially the small reddish or coppery ones. 

I counted ten yesterday on a single Sericocarpus conyzoides. They were in singular harmony with the plant, as if they made a part of it. 

The insect that comes after the honey or pollen of a plant is necessary to it and in one sense makes a part of it. 

Being constantly in motion and, as they moved, opening and closing their wings to preserve their balance, they presented a very lifesome scene. 

To-day I see them on the early goldenrod (Solidago strict).

American pine-sap, just pushing up, — false beech- drops. Gray says from June to August. It is cream-colored or yellowish under the pines in Hubbard's Wood Path. Some near the fence east of the Close. A plant related to the tobacco-pipe.

Remarkable this doubleness in nature, — not only that nature should be composed of just these individuals, but that there should be so rarely or never an individual without its kindred, — its cousin. It is allied to something else. There is not only the tobacco-pipe, but pine- sap. 

Nature made ferns for pure leaves, to show what she could do in that line. 

I also see some small, umbrella-shaped (with sharp cones), shining and glossy yellow fungi, like an election cake atop, also some dead yellow and orange.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 29, 1853

Butterflies of various colors are now more abundant. See July 15, 1854 (“There are many butterflies, yellow and red, about the Asclepias incarnata now.”)

The insect that comes after the honey or pollen of a plant is necessary to it and in one sense makes a part of it. See March 18, 1860 (“There is but one flower in bloom in the town, and this insect knows where to find it. . . .No doubt this flower, too, has learned to expect its winged visitor knocking at its door in the spring.”)

Wewalk to the watering hole at sunset, then down the streambed scoured out by rains earlier this summer. Orange glow in the west fades to dusk; magically, the woods  fill with fireflies and the flute of the thrush.

Magically at dusk

the woods fill with fireflies and

the flute of the thrush.

zphx July 29, 2013

The Afternoon of the Year

July 26. 

I reckon that about nine tenths of the flowers of the year have now blossomed. 

Dog-days, - sultry, sticky weather, - now when the corn is topped out. 

Clouds without rain. 

Rains when it will.

Old spring and summer signs fail.

The bobolinks are just beginning to fly in flocks, and I hear their link link. I see the young birds also, just able to get out of my way above the weeds and bushes of the low grounds their tails not grown out to steady them.

Lark, too seen now, four or five together, sing as of yore; also the goldfinch twitters over oftener.

I notice to-day the first purplish aster, a pretty sizable one; may have been out a day or two, near the brook beyond Hubbard's Grove, - A.Radula.

I mark again the sound of crickets or locusts about alders, etc. about this time when the first asters open, which makes you fruitfully meditative, helps condense your thoughts, like the mel dews in the afternoon. This the afternoon of the year.

How apt we are to be reminded of lateness, even before the year is half spent! Such little objects check the diffuse tide of our thoughts and bring it to a head, which thrills us. They are such fruits as music, poetry, love, which humanity bears.

Saw one of the common wild roses (R. lucida?).

The swamp blackberry ripe in open ground. 

The Rhus copallina is not yet quite out, though the glabra is in fruit. 

The smaller purple fringed orchis has not quite filled out its spike. What a surprise to detect under the dark, damp, cavernous copse, where some wild beast might fitly prowl, this splendid flower, silently standing with all its eyes on you! It has a rich fragrance withal. 

Rain in the evening.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 26, 1853

This the afternoon of the year.  See August, 19, 1853 (" The day is an epitome of the year.”);
August 23, 1853 "I am again struck by the perfect correspondence of a day — say an August day — and the year. I think that a perfect parallel may be drawn between the seasons of the day and of the year.”)

Such little objects check the diffuse tide of our thoughts and bring it to a head, which thrills us. See September 3, 1853 ("I will endeavor to separate the tide in my thoughts, or what is due to the influence of the moon, from the current distractions and fluctuations.")

. . . music, poetry, love . . . See November 30, 1858 ("music, poetry, beauty, and the mystery of life . . .”)

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

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

Evening on Fair Haven Pond

July 21.

2 p. m. — Went, in pursuit of boys who had stolen my boat-seat, to Fair Haven. Plenty of berries there now, — large huckleberries, blueberries, and blackberries.

I am entering Fair Haven Pond. It is now perfectly still and smooth, like dark glass. The westering sun is very warm. 

There is no more beautiful part of the river than the entrance to this pond. He who passes over a lake at noon, when the waves run, little imagines its serene and placid beauty at evening, as little as he anticipates his own serenity. 

The sun is now warm on my back, and when I turn round I shade my face with my hands. Nature is beautiful only as a place where a life is to be lived. It is not beautiful to him who has not resolved on a beautiful life. 

It rapidly grows cool toward sunset. A damp, cool air is felt over the water, and I want a thick coat. Ten minutes before sunset I see large clear dewdrops at the tips, or half an inch below the tips, of the pontederia leaves.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  July 21, 1853

He who passes over a lake at noon, when the waves run, little imagines its serene and placid beauty at evening, as little as he anticipates his own serenity. See July 21, 1852 (“The river is perfectly smooth, reflecting the golden sky and the red . . .. At evening lakes and rivers become thus placid. Every dimple made by a fish or insect is betrayed. ”); August 31. 1852 ("The pond, so smooth and full of reflections after a dark and breezy day, is unexpectedly beautiful.");May 17, 1853 ("Ah, the beauty of this last hour of the day — when a power stills the air and smooths all waters and all minds — that partakes of the light of the day and the stillness of the night!”)

. . .when I turn round I have to shade my face with my hands. . . See July 27, 1852 ("I turn round, and there shines the moon”).

July 21, 2013

Ageless bream

July 10.

The bream poised over its sandy nest on waving fin -- how aboriginal! 

So it has poised here and watched its ova before this New World was known to the Old. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 10, 1853

The bream poised over its sandy nest.   See November 30, 1858: ("When my eyes first rested on Walden the striped bream was poised in it, though I did not see it...I can only poise my thought there by its side and try to think like a bream for a moment. I can only see the bream in its orbit, as I see a star...The bream, appreciated, floats in the pond as the centre of the system, another image of God. Its life no man can explain more than he can his own.")

July 10. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 10

  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

Lowering clouds

This morning  in  a low cloud trees emerge outside the white and yellow lines, turn green, and pass me by. 

Zphx 20130701

We walk down to the waterfall and back It gets dark as we walk and sprinkles on and off.  Buda is with me on a leash. The woods are damp, as it has rained every day.  June is over tonight with nine inches in Burlington as opposed to a regular three. Before the boardwalk we see a flash, then later hear thunder.  A moderate downpour hits just after we get home, i am sweaty and happy. i come up and turn off my fan to listen to the rain.

A flash, then thunder --

Home, sweaty and happy, I

listen to the rain.

zphx

June 30, 2013