Friday, July 25, 2014

Decidedly midsummer rain.

July 25.

A decided rain-storm to-day and yesterday, such as we have not had certainly since May. Are we likely ever to have two days' rain in June and the first half of July? There is considerable wind too.

P. M. — To Bare Hill, Lincoln, via railroad. 

High blackberries, a day or two.  

I see some oak sprouts from the stump, six feet high. Some are now just started again after a pause, with small red leaves as in the spring. 

The rain has saved the berries. They are plump and large.

Hear a wood thrush. I now start some packs of partridges, old and young, going off together without mewing. 

See in woods a toad, dead-leaf color with black spots.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 25, 1854

High blackberries, a day or two. See August 3, 1856 ("High blackberries beginning; a few ripe. "); August 4, 1856 ("Here and there the high blackberry, just beginning, towers over all. "):
See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Blackberries

Oak sprouts... started again. See July 14, 1852 ("Trees have commonly two growths in the year, a spring and a fall growth, ... and you can ... wonder what there was in the summer to produce this check...These two growths are now visible on the oak sprouts, the second already nearly equalling the first."); August 4, 1854 (" I see a new growth on oak sprouts, three to six inches, with reddish leaves as in spring. Some whole trees show the lighter new growth at a distance, above the dark green.")

A toad, dead-leaf color with black spots. See July 25, 1855 ("Many little toads about.") See also June 29, 1852 ("The mud turtle is the color of the mud, the wood frog and the hylodes of the dead leaves, the bullfrogs of the pads, the toad of the earth, the tree-toad of the bark."); July 12, 1852 ("I go to walk at twilight, — at the same time that toads go to their walks, and are seen hopping about the sidewalks or the pump"); July 17, 1853 ("Young toads not half an inch long at Walden shore."); July 17, 1856 (“I see many young toads hopping about on that bared ground amid the thin weeds, not more than five eighths to three quarters of an inch long.”)

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