The season of grass, now everywhere green and luxuriant, vibrating with motion and light.

May 26

May 26, 2017

Rye four feet high. The luxuriant and rapid growth of this hardy and valuable grass is always surprising.  How genial must nature be to it! It makes the revolution of the seasons seem a rapid whirl. How quickly and densely it clothes the earth! 

Thus early it suggests the harvest and fall. At sight of this deep and dense field all vibrating with motion and light, looking into the mass of its pale-green culms, winter recedes many degrees in my memory. 

This the early queen of grasses with us. It always impresses us at this season with a sense of genialness and bountifulness. 

Grasses universally shoot up like grain now. Pastures look as if they were mowing-land. The season of grass, now everywhere green and luxuriant. 

The leaves have now grown so much that it is difficult to see the small birds in the tree-tops, and it is too late now to survey in woods conveniently. 

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, being held back by winter, their vegetative force had accumulated and now burst forth like a stream which has been dammed. They are properly called shoots.

Why is the downy Populus grandidentata so much later than the other ? The lint now begins to come off the young leaves. 

The annular eclipse of the sun this afternoon is invisible on account of the clouds. Yet it seems to have created a strong wind by lowering the temperature? 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 26, 1854

Rye four feet high. The luxuriant and rapid growth of this hardy and valuable grass is always surprising. May 14, 1853 ("The dark bluish-green of that rye, already beginning to wave,"); May 15, 1860 ("The springing sorrel, the expanding leafets, the already waving rye tell of June.");  May 22, 1853 ("The rye, which, when I last looked, was one foot high, is now three feet high and waving and tossing its heads in the wind . . .I am never prepared for this magical growth of the rye. I am advanced by whole months, as it were, into summer. . . . This is the first truly lively summer Sunday, what with lilacs, warm weather, waving rye, . . . falling apple blossoms, . . .and the wood pewee.")

They have accomplished more than half their year's growth, . . . They are properly called shoots. See May 15, 1859 ("I see an oak shoot (or sprout) already grown ten inches, when the buds of oaks and of most trees are but just burst generally. . . . Very properly these are called shoots."); 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,")

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

Winter recedes in 

memory by  many degrees 

this season of grass

luxuriant growth  

vibrating motion and light

now everywhere green

such bountifulness

suggests the harvest and fall –

seasons' rapid whirl.

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The season of grass

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 © 2009-2024

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