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. 

July 26, 2013

Rain in the evening.

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

Dog-days, - sultry, sticky weather, - now when the corn is topped out . . . when the first asters open, the sound of crickets or locusts that makes you fruitfully meditative. See July 26, 1854 ("The peculiarity of the stream is . . . a dog-day density of shade reflected darkly in the water . . . Almost constantly I hear borne on the wind from far, mingling with the sound of the wind, the z-ing locust, scarcely like a distinct sound"); July 26, 1859 ("Dogdayish.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Locust, Dogdayish Days

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.”)

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. See July 19, 1855 ("Young bobolinks; one of the first autumnalish notes."); August 15, 1852 ("I see a dense, compact flock of bobolinks going off in the air over a field. They cover the rails and alders, and go rustling off with a brassy, tinkling note as I approach, revealing their yellow breasts and bellies. This is an autumnal sight, that small flock of grown birds in the afternoon sky.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bobolink

I notice to-day the first purplish aster. See July 23, 1859 ("Aster Radula, how long?"); July 25, 1857 {Maine woods} ("Here, among others, were the Aster Radula, just in bloom"); July 28, 1852 ("Aster Radula (?) in J. P. Brown's meadow.")

How apt we are to be reminded of lateness, even before the year is half spent! See July 28, 1854 ("Methinks the season culminated about the middle of this month , — that the year was of indefinite promise before, but that, after the first intense heats , we postponed the fulfillment of many of our hopes for this year, and, having as it were attained the ridge of the summer, commenced to descend the long slope toward winter, the afternoon and down- hill of the year .) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Midsummer midlife blues

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 . . .”)

Saw one of the common wild roses (R. lucida?) See July 17, 1854 ("The late rose not fairly begun along the river, now when lucida is leaving off. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Rose

The smaller purple fringed orchis has not quite filled out its spike. See July 21, 1851 ("The small purple orchis, its spikes half opened "); July 24, 1856 ("The small purple fringed orchis, apparently three or four days at least");  July 30, 1853 ("A small purple orchis (Platanthera psycodes), quite small, so that I perceive what I called by this name before must have been the fimbriata."); August 1, 1852 ("Found a long, dense spike of the Orchis psycodes. Much later this than the great orchis. The same, only smaller and denser, not high-colored enough. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Fringed Orchids

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