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
July 2, 2015
The cocks crow hoarsely,
ushering in the long-drawn
thirsty summer day.
Fine silvery light
reflecting from the blades of
miles of waving grass.
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| Maiden-hair fern July 2, 2017 The cocks crow hoarsely, ushering in the long-drawn thirsty summer day. July 2, 1854 From the Hill, the sun rising, I see a fine river fog wreathing the trees. July 2, 1854 The morning the spring of the day. July 2, 1854 It is a fresh, cool summer morning. July 2, 1851 It is clear summer now. July 2, 1854 It takes but little distance to make the hills and even the meadows look blue to-day. July 2, 1851 That principle which gives the air an azure color is more abundant. July 2, 1851 Miles of waving grass adorning the surface of the earth, inconceivably fine and silvery far away, - light reflects from the grass blades. July 2, 1851  July 2, 2015 Calla palustris . . . at the south end of Gowing's Swamp. Having found this in one place, I now find it in another. July 2, 1857  Calla (bog arum) To-day the milkweed is blossoming. July 2, 1851 Some of the raspberries are ripe, the most innocent and simple of fruits. July 2, 1851 Cherries are ripe.July 2, 1851 Strawberries in the gardens have passed their prime. July 2, 1851 Mitchella repens is abundantly out. July 2, 1859
Young bobolinks are now fluttering over the meadow, but I have not been able to find a nest, so concealed in the meadow-grass. July 2, 1855 I hear a harsh keow from a bittern flying over the river. July 2, 1853 The peetweets are quite noisy about the rocks in Merrick’s pasture when I approach; have eggs or young there, which they are anxious about. July 2, 1853 Nowadays hear from my window the constant tittering of young golden robins, and by the river fields the alarm note of the peetweets, concerned about their young. July 2, 1860 At 2 P. M. — Thermometer north side of house ... 93° July 2, 1855 Waded out thirteen rods from rock in Flint's Pond, and was only up to my middle. July 2, 1859 Yet the air on the wet body, there being a strong southwest wind, feels colder than the water. July 2, 1855 The spring now seems far behind, yet I do not remember the interval. I feel as if some broad invisible lethean gulf lay behind, between this and spring. July 2, 1854 The wood thrush sings almost wherever I go, eternally reconsecrating the world, morning and evening, for us. And again it seems habitable and more than habitable to us. July 2, 1858
It is clear summer now ... The spring now seems far behind. See May 9, 1852 ("It is impossible to remember a week ago. A river of Lethe flows with many windings the year through, separating one season from another."); July 5, 1852 ("We have become accustomed to the summer. It has acquired a certain eternity"); Compare July 19, 1851 ("Yesterday it was spring, and to-morrow it will be autumn. Where is the summer then?"); August 13, 1854 ("I remember only with a pang the past spring and summer thus far.") Mitchella repens is abundantly out. Pyrola elliptica out. See March 4, 1854 ("In Hubbard's maple swamp I see the evergreen leaves of the gold-thread as well as the mitchella and large pyrola."); July 3, 1859 ("The Mitchella repens, so abundant now in the north west part of Hubbard's Grove, emits a strong astringent cherry-like scent as I walk over it, now that it is so abundantly in bloom, which is agreeable to me, — spotting the ground with its downy-looking white flowers.") Young bobolinks are now fluttering over the meadow, but I have not been able to find a nest. See June 26, 1857 ("I must be near bobolinks' nests many times these days. . .but the birds are so overanxious, though you may be pretty far off, and so shy about visiting their nests while you are there, that you watch them in vain. . ");. June 27, 1857 (" a young bobolink fluttering over the meadow") Having found this in one place, I now find it in another. We fined only what we look for. See May 29, 1856 (“Where you find a rare flower, expect to find more rare ones.”); June 19, 1856 ("Looked at a collection of the rarer plants made by Higginson and placed at the Natural History Rooms. Among which noticed:. . . the Calla palustris”); June 7, 1857 (“Pratt has got the Calla palustris, in prime. . .from the bog near Bateman's Pond”); June 9, 1857( “The calla is generally past prime and going to seed. I had said to Pratt, "It will be worth the while to look for other rare plants in Calla Swamp, for I have observed that where one rare plant grows there will commonly be others." ”); June 24, 1857 ("Found [in Owl-Nest Swamp] the Calla palustris, out of bloom, and the naumbergia, now in prime, which was hardly begun on the 9th at Bateman Pond Swamp.”); August 29, 1857 ("I find the calla [in Owl-Nest Swamp] going to seed, but still the seed is green.”); May 29, 1858 ("At Calla Swamp. . .Calla apparently in two or three, or three or four days, the very earliest") [ The Owl-Nest Swamp , Bateman Pond Swamp and Calla Swamp are the same, being the bog located south of Bateman’s Pond.] November 4, 1858 ("Objects are concealed from our view not so much because they are out of the course of our visual ray (continued) as because there is no intention of the mind and eye toward them. We do not realize how far and widely, or how near and narrowly, we are to look. The greater part of the phenomena of nature are for this reason concealed to us all our lives.. . . We cannot see any thing until we are possessed with the idea of it, and then we can hardly see anything else. In my botanical rambles I find that first the idea, or image, of a plant occupies my thoughts, though it may at first seem very foreign to this locality, and for some weeks or months I go thinking of it and expecting it unconsciously, and at length I surely see it, and it is henceforth an actual neighbor of mine. This is the history of my finding a score or more of rare plants which I could name.”); Autumnal tints.("Objects are concealed from our view, not so much because they are out of the course of our visual ray as because we do not bring our minds and eyes to bear on them”); January 5, 1860 (" A man tracks himself through life, apprehending only what he already half knows”) Waded out thirteen rods from rock in Flint's Pond, and was only up to my middle. See August 31, 1857 ("At Flint's Pond I wade along the edge eight or ten rods to the wharf rock, carrying my shoes and stockings"); September 21, 1854 ("The pond is low near the bathing-rock.") I hear a harsh keow from a bittern flying over the river. See July 22, 1859 ("A bittern's croak: a sound perfectly becoming the bird, as far as possible from music"); September 20, 1855 (“The great bittern, as it flies off from near the railroad bridge. . . utters a low hoarse kwa kwa”); September 25, 1855("Scare up the usual great bittern above the railroad bridge, whose hoarse qua qua, as it flies heavily off, a pickerel-fisher on the bank imitates.”) The wood thrush sings almost wherever I go, eternally reconsecrating the world, morning and evening, for us. See August 12, 1851 ( "The wood thrush, that beautiful singer, inviting the day once more to enter his pine woods.") See also May 10, 1858 ("Toward night wood thrush ennobles the wood and the world with his strain."); May 17, 1853 ("The wood thrush . . . touches a depth in me which no other bird's song does.."); June 22, 1853 ("I hear the wood thrush singing his evening lay. This is the only bird whose note affects me like music, affects the flow and tenor of my thought, my fancy and imagination."); July 5, 1852 ("The wood thrush's . . is not so much the composition as the strain, the tone, — cool bars of melody from the atmosphere of everlasting morning or evening"). 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.  July 2, 2015
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