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

May 26

Rye four feet high. The luxuriant and rapid growth of this hardy and valuable grass is always surprising. 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, winter recedes many degrees in my memory. This the early queen of grasses. 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.

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.

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