The brown panicles of the June-grass now paint some fields with the color of early summer.

May 30 .

May 30, 2020

P. M. – To Second Division. A washing southwest wind. 

George Melvin said yesterday that he was still grafting, and that there had been a great blow on the apple trees this year, and that the blossoms had held on unusually long. I suggested that it might be because we had not had so much wind as usual. 

On the wall, at the brook behind Cyrus Hosmer’s barn, I start a nighthawk within a rod or two. It alights again on his barn-yard board fence, sitting diagonally. I see the white spot on the edge of its wings as it sits. It flies thence and alights on the ground in his corn-field, sitting flat, but there was no nest under it. This was unusual. Had it not a nest nearby? 

I observed that some of the June-grass was white and withered, being eaten off by a worm several days ago, or considerably before it blossoms. 

June-grass fills the field south of Ed. Hosmer’s ledge by the road, and gives it now a very conspicuous and agreeable brown or ruddy(?)-brown color, about as ruddy as chocolate, perhaps. This decided color stretching afar with a slightly undulating surface, like a mantle, is a very agreeable phenomenon of the season. The brown panicles of the June-grass now paint some fields with the color of early summer. 

Front-yard grass is mowed by some. 

The stems of meadow saxifrage are white now. 

The Salix tristis generally shows its down now along dry wood-paths. 

The Juncus filiformis not out yet, though some panicles are grown nearly half an inch. Much of it seems to be merely chaffy or effete, but much also plumper, with green sepals and minute stamens to be detected within. It arises, as described, from matted running rootstocks. Perhaps will bloom in a week. 

A succession of moderate thunder and lightning storms from the west, two or three, an hour apart. 

Saw some devil’s-needles (the first) about the 25th. 

I took refuge from the thunder-shower this afternoon by running for a high pile of wood near Second Division, and while it was raining, I stuck three stout cat-sticks into the pile, higher than my head, each a little lower than the other, and piled large flattish wood on them and tossed on dead pine-tops, making a little shed, under which I stood dry.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 30, 1860

A nighthawk alights on the ground in his corn-field, sitting flat, but there was no nest under it. See June 1, 1853 ("Walking up this side-hill, I disturb a nighthawk eight or ten feet from me . .Without moving, I look about and see its two eggs on the bare ground, on a slight shelf of the hill, on the dead pine-needles and sand, without any cavity or nest whatever.") and note to June 3, 1859 ("Nighthawk, two eggs, fresh. ")

The brown panicles of the June-grass now paint some fields with the color of early summer. See June 11, 1853 ("The upland fields are already less green where the June-grass is ripening its seeds.")

I took refuge from the thunder-shower this afternoon by running for a high pile of wood.  See May 30, 1857 ("When first I had sheltered myself under the rock, I began at once to look out on the pond with new eyes, as from my house. I was at Lee's Cliff as I had never been there before. .. .  This Cliff thus became my house. I inhabited it. . . I think that such a projection as this, or a cave, is the only effectual protection that nature affords us against the storm. ") See also  August 9, 1851 ("I meet the rain at the edge of the wood, and take refuge under the thickest leaves, where not a drop reaches me, and, at the end of half an hour, the renewed singing of the birds alone advertises me that the rain has ceased, and it is only the dripping from the leaves which I hear in the woods."); June 14, 1855 (“It suddenly begins to rain with great violence, and we in haste draw up our boat on the Clamshell shore, upset it, and get under, sitting on the paddles, . . .  It is very pleasant to lie there half an hour close to the edge of the water and see and hear the great drops patter on the river, each making a great bubble”); July 22, 1858 ("Took refuge from a shower under our boat at Clamshell; staid an hour at least. A thunderbolt fell close by."); August 17, 1858 (“Being overtaken by a shower, we took refuge in the basement of Sam Barrett’s sawmill, where we spent an hour, and at length came home with a rainbow over arching the road before us.”); October 17, 1859 ("The rain drives me from my berrying and we take shelter under a tree. It is worth the while to sit under the lee of an apple tree trunk in the rain, if only to study the bark and its inhabitants. ")

May 30 See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 30

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 © 2009-2021