A summer rain.

July 14.

July 14, 2014

Awake to day of gentle rain, — very much needed; none to speak of for nearly a month, methinks. The cooler and stiller day has a valuable effect on my spirits. 

P. M. — Over the Hill to Brown's watering-place. 

A fine, misty rain falls. It lies on the fine reddish tops of some grasses, thick and whitish like morning cobwebs. The stillness is very soothing. 

This is a summer rain. The earth is being bedewed. There is no storm or violence to it. 

Health is a sound relation to nature.

Anychia plenty by the watering-place (with the am- phicarpaea), but calyx apparently not expanded. Amphiearpaea, not yet. 

Penthorum, three or four days. 

Xyris, apparently three or four days in meadow close by. Hardhack, two or three days. 

A hedyotis still. Elodea to-morrow. 

The red capsules of the Hypericum ellipticum, here and there. This one of the fall-ward phenomena in still rainy days.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 14, 1854

Awake to day of gentle rain, — very much needed; none to speak of for nearly a month. See July 13, 1854 (“In the midst of July heat and drought.”); August 19, 1854 ("There is now a remarkable drought.") September 10, 1854 ("September 1st and 2d, the thunder-shower of evening of September 6th, and this regular storm are the first fall rains after the long drought.”)

Health is a sound relation to nature. See July 12, 1851 ("Nature is in as rude health as when Homer sang. We may at last by our sympathies be well."); August 23, 1853 ("For all Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. She exists for no other end. Do not resist her. "Nature" is but another name for health, and the seasons are but different states of health.”); December 16, 1853 ("Would you be well, see that you are attuned to each mood of nature");   May 28, 1854 (“To be serene and successful we must be at one with the universe”); June 5, 1854 (“I have come to this hill to see the sun go down, to recover sanity and put myself again in relation with Nature. ”);   Walden ("Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength.”); November 18, 1857 ("Sympathy with nature is an evidence of perfect health.”);  January 23, 1858 ("To insure health, a man’s relation to Nature must come very near to a personal one; . . . I do not see that I can live tolerably without affection for Nature.").

The red capsules of the Hypericum ellipticum. See July 19, 1856 ("It is the Hypericum ellipticum . . . whose red pods are noticed now.");July 26, 1856 ("The pod of the ellipticum, when cut, smells like a bee.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)