A Book of the Seasons: June 7 (June shadows moving over waving grass-fields, crickets chirp, a fishing day, wood sorrel, nesting birds and turtles, first fire-flies, bead-work of the hemlocks)

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

June 7

It is in the spring

that we observe those dark-blue

lakes on our meadows.

June 7, 1854

And now I notice 

many bubbles left on the 

water in my wake.

June 7, 1857

I sit in my boat

in the twilight by the

edge of the river.

June 7, 1858

June 7, 2019 

Surveying for Sam. Pierce. Found piece of an Indian soapstone pot. June 7, 1852

A thick fog this morning, through which at last rain falls -- the first after a considerable and first dry spell. June 7, 1854

Rain. June 7, 1855

In afternoon —mizzling weather.  June 7, 1855

This is a southwest-breezy day, after the rain of the last two days. June 7, 1860

It continues cloudy and is warm and muggy, the sun almost coming out. June 7, 1854 

Warm weather has suddenly come, beginning yesterday. June 7, 1858 

To-day it is yet warmer, 87° at 3 P. M June 7, 1858

There is on the whole a fresh and breezy coolness in June thus far, perhaps owing to the rains and the expanded foliage. June 7, 1860 

June shadows are moving over waving grass-fields, June 7, 1858

I see that a new season has arrived. June 7, 1858 

You may walk out in any direction over the earth's surface, lifting your horizon, and everywhere your path, climbing the convexity of the globe, leads you between heaven and earth [toward]  the light of the sun and stars and the habitations of man. June 7, 1851

It is a certain faeryland where we live. June 7, 1851 

The crickets chirp uninterruptedly, June 7, 1858 

I am surprised at the size of green berries, -- shad-bush, low blueberries, choke-cherries, June 7, 1854  

It is but a step from flowers to fruit. June 7, 1854 

I noticed rye (winter rye) just fairly begun to bloom, May 29th. June 7, 1860

The trees having leaved out, you notice their rounded tops, suggesting shade. June 7, 1858

The peculiarities of the new leaves, or young ones, are to be observed. June 7, 1860

• the whitish shoot of the white pine. June 7, 1860

• the reddish brown of the pitch pine, giving a new tinge to its tops. June 7, 1860

• the bead work of the hemlock. June 7, 1860

• the now just conspicuous bursting lighter glaucous-green buds of the black spruce in cold swamps. June 7, 1860

The conspicuous

bursting glaucous-green buds of

black spruce in cold swamps.

June 7, 1860

• the frizzly-looking glaucous-green shoots and leafets of the fir (and fragrant now or soon). June 7, 1860

• the thin and delicate foliage of the larch. June 7, 1860

• the inconspicuous and fragrant arbor-vitæ. June 7, 1860

• the bead-work of the Juniperus repens (red cedar inconspicuous). June 7, 1860

• probably the bead work of the yew. June 7, 1860

• the tented leaves of the white oak. June 7, 1860

• the crimson black and white oaks and black shrub lately, and now, in hollows, the downy grayish (at first) of black and white, etc.. June 7, 1860

• the now tender, delicate green of swamp white and chincapin. June 7, 1860

• the large and yellowish, rapildy expanding (at first), of the nut trees. June 7, 1860

• the gamboge-yellow of the birches (now as dark as most, for leaves are acquiring one shade at present). June 7, 1860

• the thick darker green of alders. June 7, 1860

• the downyish of buttonwood still small. June 7, 1860

• the soon developed and darkened and fluttering early aspens and Gileads. June 7, 1860

• the still silvery Populus grandidentata. June 7, 1860

• the small-leafeted and yellowish locust. June 7, 1860

• the early yellow of Salix alba. June 7, 1860

• the fine-leaved S.nigra. June 7, 1860

• the wreath-and-column-leaved elm. June 7, 1860

• the suddenly expanding but few-leaved ash trees, showing much stalk, or stem, and branch. June 7, 1860

• the button-bush, with shoots before leaves. June 7, 1860

• the reddish-leafed young checkerberry. June 7, 1860

• the suddenly developed and conspicuous viburnums (sweet and naked). June 7, 1860

• the unequal-leafing panicled andromeda. June 7, 1860

• the purplish-brown stipules of the Amelanchier Botryapium. June 7, 1860

• the downy stipules of the A. oblongifolia June 7, 1854

When, in a warm day after rain, the plants are tender and succulent, this is the time they work most. June 7, 1860  

The grass is very green and rank, . . .the June-grass converting hillside pastures into mowing-land, and the seeds (or chaff?) of many grasses begin to fall on my shoes. June 7, 1854

Now weeds are beginning to fill the stream. June 7, 1854

It is in the spring that we observe those dark-blue lakes on our meadows. June 7, 1854 

The locusts so full of pendulous white racemes five inches long, filling the air with their sweetness and resounding with the hum of humble and honey bees. These racemes are strewn along the path by children. June 7, 1854 

White clover already whitens some fields and resounds with bees. June 7, 1860

A small elm in front of Pratt's which he says three years ago had flowers in flat cymes, like a cornel! June 7, 1857 

The red maples now become darker and firm, or hard. June 7, 1860 

Am surprised to find that in that frosty Holbrook Road Hollow . . . none of the poplars (P tremuliformis) less than ten feet high. . .  have burst their buds yet,. . ., just as if they grew in a colder latitude, like the plants by the snow in Tucker man’s Ravine. June 7, 1860

The large-leafed sumachs. June 7, 1860

The Salix tristis is now generally going or gone to seed. June 7, 1858 

The water colored or dusted with the pollen of the pitch pine. June 7, 1858 

Red maple seed is still in the midst of its fall; is blown far from the trees. June 7, 1860

Pratt has got the Calla palustris, in prime, — some was withering, so it may have been out ten days,— from the bog near Bateman's Pond; June 7, 1857 

Red huckleberry about same time. It is sticky like the black. June 7, 1857 

I perceive the agreeable acid scent of high blueberry bushes in bloom. June 7, 1858

His geranium from Fitzwilliam is well in bloom. It seems to be herb-robert, but without any offensive odor! (?) June 7, 1857

At the cross-wall below N. Hunt's, some way from road, the red cohush, one plant only in flower, the rest going to seed. Probably, therefore, with the white. It has slender pedicels and petals shorter than the white. June 7, 1857

Garlic grows there, not yet out. June 7, 1857

The ledum is a very good plant to bloom in a pitcher, lasting a week or more. June 7, 1858

Rubus triflorus still in bloom there. June 7, 1857

Utricularia vulgaris out there. June 7, 1858

Pratt has got the . . . Oxalis violacea, which he says began about last Sunday, or May 31st, larger and handsomer than the yellow, though it blossoms but sparingly. June 7, 1857 

Oxalis violacea in garden. June 7, 1858

At the base of some hellebore, in a tuft a little from under the east edge of an apple tree, below violet wood-sorrel, a nest well made outside of leaves, then grass, lined with fine grass, very deep and narrow, with thick sides, with four small somewhat cream-colored eggs with small brown and some black spots chiefly toward larger end. It was a Maryland yellow-throat. Egg fresh. She is very shy and will not return to nest while you wait, but keeps up a very faint chip in the bushes or grass at some distance. June 7, 1857 

The nighthawk sparks and booms over arid hillsides and sprout-lands. June 7, 1858

Visit my nighthawk on her nest. Can hardly believe my eyes when I stand within seven feet and behold her sitting on her eggs, her head to me. June 7, 1853

With its breast toward me, and owing to its color or size no bill perceptible, it looks like the end of a brand, such as are common in a clearing, its breast mottled or alternately waved with dark brown and gray, its flat, grayish, weather-beaten crown, its eyes nearly closed, purposely, lest those bright beads should betray it, with the stony cunning of the sphinx. June 7, 1853

Another step, and it flutters down the hill close to the ground, with a wabbling motion, as if touching the ground now with the tip of one wing, now with the other, so ten rods to the water, skims close over a few rods, then rises and soars in the air above me. June 7, 1853

The sight of this creature sitting on its eggs impresses me with the venerableness of the globe. June 7, 1853

Wonderful creature

sitting sphinxlike on its eggs,

so one with the earth.

June 7, 1853 

A yellowbird’s nest on a willow bough against a twig, ten feet high, four eggs. June 7, 1855

Yellowbird’s nest on

willow bough against a twig

ten feet high, four eggs.

June 7, 1855

What does it signify, the kingbird, blackbird, swallow, etc., etc., pursuing a crow? June 7, 1858 

It is evidence enough against crows and hawks and owls, proving their propensity to rob birds’ nests of eggs and young, that smaller birds pursue them so often. June 7, 1858

And probably the crow pursuing the fish hawk and eagle proves that the latter sometimes devour their young. June 7, 1858 

Standing at Holbrook’s barrel spring, a female chestnut-sided warbler hops within four feet of me, inquisitively holding its head down one side to me and peeping at me. June 7, 1860 

As I was wading in this Wyman meadow, looking for bullfrog-spawn, I saw a hole at the bottom [and].a pout put her head out, as if to see who was there, June 7, 1858 

Pouts, then, make their nests in shallow mud-holes or bays, in masses of weedy mud, or probably in the muddy bank; and the old pout hovers over the spawn or keeps guard at the entrance. June 7, 1858

Yesterday I saw the painted and the wood tortoise out. June 7, 1854 

A painted turtle beginning her hole for eggs at 4 P.M. June 7, 1860

Now I see a snapping turtle, its shell about a foot long, out here on the damp sand, with its head out, disturbed by me. It had just been excavating, and its shell — especially the fore part and sides — and especially its snout, were deeply covered with earth. June 7, 1854

It appears to use its shell as a kind of spade whose handle is within, tilting it now this way, now that, and perhaps using its head and claws as a pick. June 7, 1854

It was in a little cloud of mosquitoes, which were continually settling on its head and flippers, but which it did not mind. June 7, 1854

The birds sing now more than ever, as in the morning, and mosquitoes are very troublesome in the woods. June 7, 1854 

I have heard no musical gurgle-ee from blackbirds for a fortnight. They are now busy breeding. June 7, 1855 

This muggy evening I see fireflies, the first I have seen or heard of at least. June 7, 1854 

Fireflies pretty numerous over the river, though we have had no thunder-showers of late. June 7, 1858

River summer width.

Muggy evening -- fireflies!

(The first I have seen.)

June 7, 1854

Mosquitoes quite troublesome here. June 7, 1858

Yellow bugs have come by thousands this clear and rather warm day after the rain; also squash-bugs have come. June 7, 1860

Dor-bugs come humming by my head to-night. June 7, 1860 

I see toads copulating and toad-spawn freshly laid in the Wyman meadow at Walden. June 7, 1858

To-night the toads ring loudly and generally, as do hylodes also, the thermometer being at 62 at 9 P.M. June 7, 1860 

Toads are now in full blast along the river. Some . . .  hold up their heads so high when they ring, and make such a large bubble, that they look as if they would tumble over backward. June 7, 1858

Bullfrogs now are in full blast. . . .Some of these great males are yellow or quite yellowish over the whole back. Are not the females oftenest white-throated? June 7, 1858

Seeing a large head, with its prominent eyes, projecting above the middle of the river, I found it was a bullfrog coming across.  Probably they prefer the night for such excursions, for fear of large pickerel, etc. June 7, 1858 

At length I hear the faint stertoration of a Rana palustris (if not halecina). June 7, 1858 

At length I hear the 

faint stertoration of a 

Rana palustris

June 7, 1858

This louring day has been a regular fisherman's day, and I have seen many on the river, a general turnout. June 7, 1854

One of those gentle, straight-down rainy days, when the rain begins by spotting the cultivated fields as if shaken from a pepper-box; a fishing day, when I see one neighbor after another, having donned his oil-cloth suit, walking or riding past with a fish-pole, having struck work, - a day and an employment to make philosophers of them all. June 7, 1851 

I wonder that I ever get five miles on my way, the walk is so crowded with events and phenomena. June 7, 1851

Now I notice many bubbles left on the water in my wake. . .Far behind me they rest without bursting. June 7, 1857

I sit in my boat in the twilight by the edge of the river. June 7, 1858  

June 7, 2012

*****

See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau:

Spring Leaf-out
Week of June 1
there is that time about the first of June
June.
Summer.
the Aspens
Wood Sorrel (Oxalis)
The Summer Yellowbird
the Chestnut-sided Warbler
the Nighthawk
The Red Maple
The Maple Keys
Bees
Fireflies
The Cricket in Spring
The Ring of Toads
The Bullfrog in Spring
the Wood Turtle (Emys insculpta)
the Painted Turtle (Emys picta)
Nature is genial to man (the anthropic principle)
Reminiscence and Prompting

June 7, 2018

 (Avesong)

Fireflies pretty numerous over the river, though we have had no thunder-showers of late. Mosquitoes quite troublesome here. . . .[M]osquitoes are very troublesome in the woods. . . .This muggy evening I see fireflies, the first I have seen See June 16, 1860 ("It appears to me that these phenomena occur simultaneously, say June 12th, viz.: -

• Heat about. 85° at 2 P.M.
• Hylodes cease to peep.
• Purring frogs (Rana palustris) cease.
• Lightning-bugs first seen.
• Bullfrogs trump generally.
• Mosquitoes begin to be really troublesome.
• Afternoon thunder-showers almost regular.
• Sleep with open window.
• Turtles fairly and generally begun to lay.")

Bullfrogs now are in full blast.  See . June 15, 1860 ("The bullfrogs now commonly trump at night, and the mosquitoes are now really troublesome. . . A new season begun")

These racemes are strewn along the path by children. See June 5, 1854 ("Children have been to the Cliffs and woven wreaths or chaplets of oak leaves, which they have left, for they were unconsciously attracted by the beauty of the leaves now.")

I am surprised at the size of green berries. It is but a step from flowers to fruit. See June 6, 1852 ("The earliest blueberries are now forming as greenberries.”); see also June 17, 1854(“The season of hope and promise is past; already the season of small fruits has arrived. We are a little saddened, because we begin to see the interval between our hopes and their fulfillment”); August 18, 1853 (“The season of flowers or of promise may be said to be over, and now is the season of fruits; but where is our fruit ?”)

Now I notice many bubbles left on the water in my wake. See September 14, 1854("Now our oars leave a broad wake of large bubbles, which are slow to burst.”)

Visit my nighthawk on her nest. See June 1, 1853 ("Walking up this side-hill, I disturb a nighthawk eight or ten feet from me, which goes down the hill, half fluttering, half hopping, as far as I can see. . . .Without moving, I look about and see its two eggs on the bare ground") 

Red maple seed is still in the midst of its fall; is blown far from the trees. See June 3, 1860 ("The roads now strewn with red maple seed."); August 1, 1860 ("If you look carefully through a dense red maple swamp now, you find many little maples a couple of inches high")

Found piece of an Indian soapstone pot. See March 20, 1858 (“I had noticed from the Cliff by Lee's road an elevated sandy point above Pole Brook which I said must be Indian ground, and, walking there, I found a piece of a soapstone pot.”); March 28, 1859 (“[I]f the knolls in the meadows are washed by a freshet where they have been plowed the previous fall, the soil will be taken away lower down and the stones left, — the arrow heads, etc., and soapstone pottery amid them”); See also March 28, 1859 (“I have not decided whether I had better publish my experience in searching for arrowheads in three volumes, with plates and an index, or try to compress it into one. ”); August 22, 1860 ("I never find a remarkable Indian relic but I have first divined its existence, and planned the discovery of it. Frequently I have told myself distinctly what it was to be before I found it. “); and Tahatowan’s Scarab

This louring day has been a regular fisherman's day, a day and an employment to make philosophers of them all.  See January 12, 1855 ("On Flint’s Pond I find Nat Rice fishing. He has not caught one. I asked him what he thought the best time to fish. He said, “When the wind first comes south after a cold spell, on a bright morning.”"); June 26, 1853 ("Many of my fellow-citizens might go fishing a thousand times, perchance, before the sediment of fishing would sink to the bottom and leave their purpose pure, -- before they began to angle for the pond itself.”); December 28, 1856 ("if not catching many fish, still getting what they went for, though they may not be aware of it, i. e. a wilder experience than the town affords.")

The bead work of the hemlock See June 5, 1853 (" The fresh light green shoots of the hemlocks have now grown half an inch or an inch, spotting the trees, contrasting with the dark green of last year's foliage.")

the bead work of the hemlock

June 7, 2020

 

If you make the least correct 

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

June 6 < <<<<<. June 7    >>>>> June 8

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 7

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 © 2009-2023