I saw the seal of evening on the river.

August 31.

August 31, 2017

Half an hour before sunset I was at Tupelo Cliff, when, looking up from my botanizing, I saw the seal of evening on the river. There was a quiet beauty in the landscape at that hour which my senses were prepared to appreciate. 

• The sun going down on the west side, that hand being already in shadow for the most part, but his rays lighting up the water and the willows and pads even more than before. His rays then fell at right angles on their stems.

• I sitting on the old brown geologic rocks, their feet submerged and covered with weedy moss. Sometimes their tops are submerged.

• The cardinal-flowers standing by me.

The trivialness of the day is past. 

• The greater stillness, the serenity of the air, its coolness and transparency, the mistiness being condensed, are favorable to thought. (The pensive eve.)

• The coolness of evening comes to condense the haze of noon and make the air transparent and the outline of objects firm and distinct, and chaste (chaste eve). 

Even as I am made more vigorous by my bath, am more continent of thought. After bathing, even at noonday, a man realizes a morning or evening life. The evening air is such a bath for both mind and body.

When I have walked all day in vain under the torrid sun and the world has been all trivial, ― 

    then at eve the sun goes down westward, 

    and the wind goes down with it, 

    and the dews begin to purify the air and make it transparent, 

    and the lakes and rivers acquire a glassy stillness, reflecting the skies, the reflex of the day.

I too am at the top of my condition for perceiving beauty.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 31, 1851

The pensive eve. See August 31, 1852 ("This is the most glorious part of this day, the serenest, warmest, brightest part, and the most suggestive . . . Evening is pensive. The serenity is far more remarkable to those who are on the water."); see also August 2, 1854 ("I feel the necessity of deepening the stream of my life. . .I am inclined now for a pensive evening walk."); August 11, 1853 ("The serene hour, the season of reflection! The pensive season."); May 17, 1853 ("Ah, the beauty of this last hour of the day — when a power stills the air and smooths all waters and all minds") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The hour before sunset

August 31. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 31

The greater stillness

is favorable to thought –

pensive evening.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, pensive evening

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 ©  2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-510831

It is beautiful weather, the air wonderfully clear and all objects bright and distinct.

September 25


The season of flowers may be considered as past now that the frosts have come. Fires have become comfortable. The evenings are pretty long. 

2 P. M. To bathe in Hubbard's meadow, thence to ― Cliffs. 

It is beautiful weather, the air wonderfully clear and all objects bright and distinct. The air is of crystal purity.

Both air and water are so transparent that the fisherman tries in vain to deceive the fish with his baits. Even our commonly muddy river looks clear to-day.

I find the water suddenly cold, and that the bathing days are over. 

I see numerous butterflies still, yellow and small red, though not in fleets. 

Examined the hornets' nest near Hubbard's Grove, suspended from contiguous huckleberry bushes . . .

I watched the seeds of the milkweed rising higher and higher till lost in the sky . . . I brought home two of the pods which were already bursting open, and amused myself from day to day with releasing the seeds and watching [them] rise slowly into the heavens till they were lost to my eye. No doubt the greater or less rapidity with which they rose would serve as a natural barometer to test the condition of the air. 

The hornets' nest not brown but gray, two shades, whitish and dark, alternating on the outer layers or the covering, giving it a waved appearance. 

In these cooler, windier, crystal days the note of the jay sounds a little more native. Standing on the Cliffs, I see them flitting and screaming from pine to pine beneath, displaying their gaudy blue pinions. 

September 25, 2020

Hawks, too, I perceive, sailing about in the clear air, looking white against the green pines, like the seeds of the milkweed. There is almost always a pair of hawks. Their shrill scream, that of the owls, and wolves are all related.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 25, 1851

It is beautiful weather, the air wonderfully clear and all objects bright and distinct. See September 22, 1851 ("It is a beautifully clear and bracing air, with just enough coolness, full of the memory of frosty mornings, through which all things are distinctly seen.")

I find the water suddenly cold, and that the bathing days are over. See September 24, 1854 (" It is now too cold to bathe with comfort.");. September 26, 1852 ("The river is getting to be too cold for bathing."); September 27, 1856 ("Bathed at Hubbard's Bath, but found the water very cold. Bathing about over.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Luxury of Bathing

I watched the seeds of the milkweed rising higher and higher till lost in the sky. See September 24, 1851 ("I let one go, and it rises slowly and uncertainly at first, now driven this way, then that, by currents which I cannot perceive, and.  . . then, feeling the strong north wind, it is borne off rapidly in the opposite direction, ever rising higher and higher and tossing and heaved about with every fluctuation of the air, till, at a hundred feet above the earth and fifty rods off, steering south, I lose sight of it") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Milkweed.

I see numerous butterflies still, yellow and small red, though not in fleets. See . July 15, 1854 ("There are many butterflies, yellow and red, about the Asclepias incarnata now"); July 16, 1851 ("I see the yellow butterflies now gathered in fleets in the road, and on the flowers of the milkweed . . .also the smaller butterfly, with reddish wing"); July 16, 1854 ("Many yellow butterflies and red on clover and yarrow."); . September 6, 1858 ("Solidago nemoralis . . . is swarming with butterflies, — yellow, small red, and large, — fluttering over it") See also A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, The Small Red Butterfly

The hornets' nest. See September 28, 1851 ("Here was a large hornets' nest . . .out came the whole swarm upon me lively enough. I do not know why they should linger longer than their fellows whom I saw the other day."); October 15, 1855 (“The hornets’ nests are exposed, the maples being bare, but the hornets are gone.”); October 24, 1858 ("That large hornets’ nest which I saw on the 4th is now deserted, and I bring it home. But in the evening, warmed by my fire, two or three come forth and crawl over it, and I make haste to throw it out the window.")

In these cooler, windier, crystal days the note of the jay sounds a little more native. See September 25, 1855 ("The scream of the jay is heard from the wood-side."); see also August 7, 1853 ("Do I not already hear the jays with more distinctness, as in the fall and winter?"); September 21, 1859 (" Jays are more frequently heard of late.");October 6, 1856 ("The jay's shrill note is more distinct of late about the edges of the woods, when so many birds have left us.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Jay

Hawks, too, I perceive, sailing about in the clear air .  . . There is almost always a pair.  See September 25, 1851 ("See two marsh hawks skimming low over the meadows and another, or a hen-hawk, sailing on high."); See also September 16, 1852 ("What makes this such a day for hawks? There are eight or ten in sight from the Cliffs,") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The hen-hawk

To watch milkweed  seeds

rising higher and higher 

till lost in the sky –

Hawks too sail about 

in the clear air looking white

against the green pines.

As soon as berries are gone, grapes come.

September 14.

September 14, 2022

A great change in the weather from sultry to cold, from one thin coat to a thick coat or two thin ones.

2 P. M. To Cliffs.

The dry grass yields a crisped sound to my feet.

The white oak which appears to have made part of a hedge fence once, now standing in Hubbard's fence near the Corner road, where it stretches along horizontally, is (one of its arms, for it has one running each way) two and a half feet thick, with a sprout growing perpendicularly out of it eighteen inches in diameter.

The corn-stalks standing in stacks, in long rows along the edges of the corn-fields, remind me of stacks of muskets.

As soon as berries are gone, grapes come.

The chalices of the Rhexia Virginica, deer-grass or meadow beauty, are literally little reddish chalices now, though many still have petals, little cream pitchers.

Rhexia Virginica, deer-grass or meadow beauty, 

See October 2, 1856

(“Its seed-vessels are perfect little cream-pitchers of graceful form.”)

The caducous polygala in cool places is faded almost white.

See August 17, 1851

("The Polygala sanguinea, caducous polygala, 

in damp ground, with red or purple heads.")

I see the river at the foot of Fair Haven Hill running up-stream before the strong cool wind, which here strikes it from the north.

The cold wind makes me shudder after my bath, before I get dressed.

Polygonum aviculare — knot-grass, goose-grass, or door-grass still in bloom.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 14, 1851

The corn-stalks standing in stacks, in long rows along the edges of the corn-fields. See July 12, 1851 ("The earliest corn is beginning to show its tassels now, and I scent it as I walk, — its peculiar dry scent."); September 2, 1851 ("A writer, a man writing, is the scribe of all nature; he is the corn and the grass and the atmosphere writing."); September 5, 1851 ("A field of ripening corn, now at night, that has been topped, with the stalks stacked up to dry, – an inexpressibly dry, rich, sweet ripening scent. I feel as if I were an ear of ripening corn myself.")

As soon as berries are gone, grapes come. See September 12, 1851 ("How autumnal is the scent of ripe grapes now by the roadside! "); September 20, 1851 ("This week we have had most glorious autumnal weather, – cool and cloudless, bright days, filled with the fragrance of ripe grapes, preceded by frosty mornings."); September 24, 1851 ("Grapes are ripe and already shrivelled by frost.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Grape

The chalices of the Rhexia Virginica, deer-grass or meadow beauty, are literally little reddish chalices now. See July 18, 1852 ("The petals of the rhexia have a beautiful clear purple with a violet tinge."); July 23, 1853 (" The rhexia is seen afar on the islets, — its brilliant red like a rose. It is fitly called meadow-beauty. Is it not the handsomest and most striking and brilliant flower since roses and lilies began? "); July 29, 1856 ("Rhexia. Probably would be earlier if not mowed down."); August 1, 1856 ("They make a splendid show, these brilliant rose-colored patches . . Yet few ever see them in this perfection, unless the haymaker who levels them, or the birds that fly over the meadow. Far in the broad wet meadows, on the hummocks and ridges, these bright beds of rhexia turn their faces to the heavens, seen only by the bitterns and other meadow birds that fly over. We, dwelling and walking on the dry upland, do not suspect their existence.."); August 5, 1858 ("I cannot sufficiently admire the rhexia, one of the highest-colored purple flowers, but difficult to bring home in its perfection, with its fugacious petals.") ;August 20, 1851("The Rhexia Virginica is a showy flower at present."); August 21, 1851 ("The prevailing conspicuous flowers at present are: . . . Rhexia Virginica, . . . Polygala sanguinea,");  August 23, 1858 ("The rhexia in the field west of Clintonia Swamp makes a great show now, though a little past prime");   August 27, 1856 (“The rhexia greets me in bright patches on meadow banks.”); August 28, 1859 ("The rhexia in Ebby Hubbard's field is considerably past prime, and it is its reddish chalices which show most at a distance now. I should have looked ten days ago. Still it is handsome with its large yellow anthers against clear purple petals. It grows there in large patches with hardhack."): September 28, 1858 ("Acalypha is killed by frost, and rhexia."); October 2, 1856 (“The scarlet leaves and stem of the rhexia, some time out of flower, makes almost as bright a patch in the meadow now as the flowers did, with its bristly leaves. Its seed-vessels are perfect little cream-pitchers of graceful form.”)  See alao also https://bsky.app/profile/geoffwisner.bsky.social/post/3mvi7hnrmkc2e

The caducous polygala in cool places is faded almost white. See July 4, 1853 ("Polygala sanguinea."); July 6, 1854 ("Polygala sanguinea, apparently a day or more."); July 13, 1852 ("The Polygala sanguinea and P. cruciata in Blister's meadow, both numerous and well out."); July 13, 1856 ("Polygala sanguinea, some time, Hubbard's Meadow Path; say meadow-paths and banks. ");July 16, 1854 ("The Polygala sanguinea heads in the grass look like sugar-plums.");July 17, 1852 ("The caducous polygala has the odor of checkerberry at its root, and hence I thought the flower had a fugacious, spicy fragrance."); July 31, 1856 ("As I am going across to Bear Garden Hill, I see much white Polygala sanguinea with the red in A. Wheeler's meadow");August 13, 1856 (“Is there not now a prevalence of aromatic herbs in prime? — The polygala roots, blue-curls, wormwood, pennyroyal, . . . etc., etc. Does not the season require this tonic?“); August 17, 1851 ("The Polygala sanguinea, caducous polygala, in damp ground, with red or purple heads."); August 21, 1851 ("The prevailing conspicuous flowers at present are: . . . Rhexia Virginica, . . . Polygala sanguinea,");  August 30, 1859 ("The prevailing flowers, considering both conspicuous-ness and numbers, at present time, as I think now: . . . Polygala sanguinea, etc."); September 3, 1854 ("In the meadow southwest of Hubbard's Hill saw white Polygala sanguinea, not described."); September 3, 1856 ("Polygala sanguinea is now as abundant, at least, as at any time, and perhaps more conspicuous in the meadows where I look for fringed gentian."); September 13, 1851 ("The cross-leaved polygala emits its fragrance as if at will. . . . Both this and the caducous polygala are now some what faded."); October 14, 1856 ("Any flowers seen now may be called late ones. I see perfectly fresh succory, not to speak of yarrow, a Viola ovata, some Polygala sanguinea, autumnal dandelion, tansy, etc., etc."); November 8, 1858 ("Pratt says he saw a few florets on a Polygala sanguinea within a week.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,The Polygala

I see the river at the foot of Fair Haven Hill running up-stream See April 16, 1852 ("A succession of bays it is, a chain of lakes, . . .There is just stream enough for a flow of thought; that is all. Many a foreigner who has come to this town has worked for years on its banks without discovering which way the river runs. "); July 30, 1859 ("Trying the current there, there being a very faint . . . wind, commonly not enough to be felt on the cheek or to ripple the water, . . .my boat is altogether blown up-stream, even by this imperceptible breath. . . .It is a mere string of lakes which have not made up their minds to be rivers. As near as possible to a standstill.")

tinyurl.com/HDTgrapesept14

A luna moth.

July 8.


P. M. — Down river in boat to the Holt.

The small globose white flower in muddy places by river and elsewhere.

The bass on Egg Rock is just ready to expand.

It is perhaps the warmest day yet.

We held on to the abutments under the red bridge to cool ourselves in the shade. No better place in hot weather, the river rippling away beneath you and the air rippling through beneath the abutments, if only in sympathy with the river, while the planks afford a shade, and you hear all the travel and the travellers' talk without being seen or suspected.

The bullfrog it is, methinks, that makes the dumping sound.

There is generally a current of air circulating over water, always, methinks, if the water runs swiftly, as if it put the air in motion. There is quite a breeze here this sultry day.

Commend me to the sub-pontean, the under-bridge, life.

I am inclined to think bathing almost one of the necessaries of life, but it is surprising how indifferent some are to it.

What a coarse, foul, busy life we lead, compared even with the South-Sea-Islanders, in some respects.

Truant boys steal away to bathe, but the farmers, who most need it, rarely dip their bodies into the streams or ponds.

M was telling me last night that he had thought of bathing when he had done his hoeing, — of taking some soap and going down to Walden and giving himself a good scrubbing, — but something had occurred to prevent it, and now he will go unwashed to the harvesting, aye, even till the next hoeing is over.

Better the faith and practice of the Hindoos who worship the sacred Ganges.

We have not faith enough in the Musketaquid to wash in it, even after hoeing.

Men stay on shore, keep themselves dry, and drink rum.

Pray what were rivers made for? One farmer, who came to bathe in Walden one Sunday while I lived there, told me it was the first bath he had had for fifteen years.

Now what kind of religion could his be? Or was it any better than a Hindoo's? 

M said that Abel Heywood told him he had been down to the Great Meadows (river meadows) to look at the grass, and that there wasn't a-going to be much of a crop; in some places there wasn't any grass at all. The great freshet in the spring didn't do it any good. 

Under the Salix nigra var. falcata, near that handsomest one, which now is full of scythe-shaped leaves, the larger six inches long by seven eighths wide, with remarkably broad lunar leafy appendages or stipules at their base, I found a remarkable moth lying flat on the still water as if asleep (they appear to sleep during the day), as large as the smaller birds.

Five and a half inches in alar extent and about three inches long, something like the smaller figure in one position of the wings (with a remarkably narrow lunar-cut tail), of a sea-green color, with four conspicuous spots whitish within, then a red line, then yellowish border below or toward the tail, but brown, brown orange, and black above, toward head; a very robust body, covered with a kind of downy plumage, an inch and a quarter long by five eighths thick.

The sight affected me as tropical, and I suppose it is the northern verge of some species. It suggests into what productions Nature would run if all the year were a July.

By night it is active, for, though I thought it dying at first, it made a great noise in its prison, a cigar-box, at night. When the day returns, it apparently drops wherever it may be, even into the water, and dozes till evening again.

Is it called the emperor moth? [The luna moth.] 

Yesterday I observed the arrow-wood at Saw Mill Brook, remarkably tall, straight, and slender. It is quite likely the Indians made their arrows of it, for it makes just such shoots as I used to select for my own arrows. It appears to owe its straightness partly to its rapid growth, already two feet from the extremities chiefly.

The pontederia begins to make a show now.

The black willow has branches horizontal or curving downward to the water first,  branching at once at the ground.

The Sium latifolium, water parsnip, — except that the calyx-leaves are minute and the fruit ribbed, — close to the edge of the river.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 8, 1852

I am inclined to think bathing almost one of the necessaries of life. See July 9, 1852  ("Bathing is an undescribed luxury. To feel the wind blow on your body, the water flow on you and lave you, is a rare physical enjoyment this hot day.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Luxury of Bathing

  It made a great noise in its prison, a cigar-box, at night. Is it called the emperor moth? See July 26, 1852 ("Dr. Harris says that my great moth is the Attacus luna; may be regarded as one of several emperor moths. They are rarely seen, being very liable to be snapped up by birds. . . . The one I had, being put into a large box, beat itself — its wings, etc. — all to pieces in the night, in its efforts to get out, depositing its eggs, nevertheless, on the sides of its prison.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Luna Moth (Attacus luna)

I feel well into summer when I see this redness.

 

June 12

June 12, 2019

Saturday. P. M. – To Lupine Hill via Depot Field Brook.

For some time I have noticed the grass whitish and killed at top by worms (?).

The meadows are yellow with golden senecio.

Marsh speedwell (Veronica scutellata), lilac - tinted, rather pretty.

The mouse-ear forget me-not (Myosotis laxa) has now extended its racemes (?) very much, and hangs over the edge of the brook. It is one of the most interesting minute flowers. It is the more beautiful for being small and unpretending, for even flowers must be modest.

The blue flag (Iris versicolor). Its buds are a dark indigo-blue tip beyond the green calyx. It is rich but hardly delicate and simple enough; a very handsome sword-shaped leaf.

The blue-eyed grass is one of the most beautiful of flowers. It might have been famous from Proserpine down. It will bear to be praised by poets.

The blue flag, notwithstanding its rich furniture, its fringed recurved parasols over its anthers, and its variously streaked and colored petals, is loose and coarse in its habit.

How completely all character is expressed by flowers !

This is a little too showy and gaudy, like some women's bonnets. Yet it belongs to the meadow and ornaments it much.

The critchicrotches are going to seed.

I love the sweet-flag as well as the muskrat (?). Its tender inmost leaf is very palatable below.

Enothera pumila, dwarf tree-primrose. Ever it will be some obscure small and modest flower that will most please us.

Some of the ferns have branches wholly covered with fruit.

How difficult, if not impossible, to do the things we have done! as fishing and camping out. They seem to me a little fabulous now.

Boys are bathing at Hubbard's Bend, playing with a boat (I at the willows).

The color of their bodies in the sun at a distance is pleasing, the not often seen flesh-color. I hear the sound of their sport borne over the water.

As yet we have not man in nature.

What a singular fact for an angel visitant to this earth to carry back in his note-book, that men were forbidden to expose their bodies under the severest penalties ! A pale pink, which the sun would soon tan.

White men ! There are no white men to contrast with the red and the black; they are of such colors as the weaver gives them. I wonder that the dog knows his master when he goes in to bathe and does not stay by his clothes.

Small white-bellied (?) swallows in a row ( a dozen ) on the telegraph - wire over the water by the bridge. This perch is little enough departure from unobstructed air to suit them. Pluming themselves.

If you could furnish a perch aerial enough, even birds of paradise would alight.

Swallows have forked tails, and wings and tails are about the same length. They do not alight on trees, methinks, unless on dead and bare boughs, but stretch a wire over water and they perch on it.

This is among the phenomena that cluster about the telegraph.

Hedge-mustard.

(Turned into the lane beyond Dennis's.) 

Some fields are almost wholly covered with sheep's-sorrel, now turned red, — its valves (?). It helps thus agreeably to paint the earth, contrasting even at a distance with the greener fields, blue sky, and dark or downy clouds. It is red, marbled, watered, mottled, or waved with greenish, like waving grain, — three or four acres of it.

To the farmer or grazier it is a troublesome weed, but to the landscape-viewer an agreeable red tinge laid on by the painter. I feel well into summer when I see this redness.

It appears to be avoided by the cows.

The petals of the sidesaddle-flower, fully expanded, hang down. How complex it is, what with flowers and leaves! It is a wholesome and interesting plant to me, the leaf especially.

Rye that has sown itself and come up scatteringly in bunches is now nearly ripe.

They are beginning to cut rank grass on the village street.

I should say the summer began with the leafiness, umbrageous summer! 

The glory of Dennis's lupines is departed, and the white now shows in abundance beneath them.

So I cannot walk longer in those fields of Enna in which Proserpine amused herself gathering flowers.

The steam whistle at a distance sounds even like the hum of a bee in a flower.

So man's works fall into nature.

The flies hum at mid-afternoon, as if peevish and weary of the length of the days.

The river is shrunk to summer width; on the sides smooth whitish water, or rather it is the light from the pads; - in the middle, dark blue or slate, rippled.

The color of the earth at a distance where a wood has been cut off is a reddish brown.

Nature has put no large object on the face of New England so glaringly white as a white house.

The Ranunculus filiformis on the muddy shore of the river.

The locusts' blossoms in the graveyard fill the street with their sweet fragrance.

It is day, and we have more of that same light that the moon sent us, but not reflected now, but shining directly. The sun is a fuller moon.

Who knows how much lighter day there may be?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 12, 1852

The meadows are yellow with golden senecio. See June 9, 1853 ("The meadows are now yellow with the golden senecio, a more orange yellow, mingled with the light glossy yellow of the buttercup."); June 10, 1854 ("The meadows now begin to be yellow with senecio.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Golden Senecio

It is one of the most interesting minute flowers. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Mouse-ear forget-me-not (Myosotis laxa small-flowered forget- me- not)

The blue-eyed grass is one of the most beautiful of flowers . . .It will bear to be praised by poets.  See June 15, 1851 ("The blue-eyed grass, wellnamed, looks up to heaven."); A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Blue-Eyed Grass

The critchicrotches are going to seed. I love the sweet-flag as well as the muskrat (?). Its tender inmost leaf is very palatable below. See May 23, 1860 ("Critchicrotches some two or three days; now tender to eat . How agreeable and surprising the peculiar fragrance of the sweet flag when bruised! That this plant alone should have extracted this odor surely for so many ages each summer from the moist earth!");   May 27, 1852 ("The fruit of the sweet flag is now just fit to eat, and reminds me of childhood, — the critchicrotches. They would help sustain a famished traveller. The inmost tender leaf, also, near the base, is quite palatable, as children know. I love it as well as muskrats (?)."); July 20, 1852. "Dug open a muskrat's gallery ... there was half a critchicrotch in it." May 29 1854  (Critchicrotches have been edible some time in some places. It must be a kind of water milfoil, whose leaves I now see variously divided under water, and some nearly two feet long. ") See also Critchicrotches · iNaturalist ("It turns out Thoreau is referring to the fruit of Acorus calamus. This wetland plant goes by dozens of common names . . . sweet flag, calamus, beewort, bitter pepper root, gladdon, myrtle grass, myrtle sedge, pine root, rat root, sea sedge, sweet cane, sweet cinnamon, sweet grass, sweet myrtle, sweet root, sweet rush, and sweet sedge. . . . I continue to be amazed at how often I can observe the same plant or animal on the exact same date as Thoreau observes it.") and Journal IV 74, 92, 240, V 155, VI 307, VII 387.

Sheep's-sorrel, now turned red, helps thus agreeably to paint the earth, contrasting even at a distance with the greener fields, blue sky, and dark or downy clouds. See June 12, 1859 ("I am struck with the beauty of the sorrel now. . . . What a wholesome red! . . . There is hardly a more agreeable sight at this season."); June 12, 1854 ("Clover now reddens the fields."); See also June 11, 1853 ("In the sorrel-fields, also, what lately was the ruddy, rosy cheek of health, now that the sorrel is ripening and dying, has become the tanned and imbrowned cheek of manhood."); May 22, 1854 ("The sorrel beginning to redden the fields with ruddy health, — all these things make earth now a paradise. How many times I have been surprised thus, on turning about on this very spot, at the fairness of the earth!"); June 5, 1853 ("The distant fields are seen, reddened with sorrel, and the meadows wet green, full of fresh grass, and the trees in their first beautiful, bright, untarnished and unspotted green."); June 6, 1857(“A year is made up of a certain series and number of sensations and thoughts which have their language in nature. Now I am ice, now I am sorrel. Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind.”)

The petals of the sidesaddle-flower, fully expanded, hang down. See note to June 12, 1856 ("Sidesaddle flower numerously out now.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Pitcher Plant

I should say the summer began with the leafiness, umbrageous summer! See May 27, 1853 ("A new season has commenced - summer - leafy June.”); June 1, 1853 ("Summer begins now about a week past, with the expanded leaves, the shade and warm weather");June 4, 1860 (''The leafy season has fairly commenced."); June 6, 1855 ("The dark eye and shade of June”); June 9, 1852 (The general leafiness, shadiness, and waving of grass and boughs in the breeze characterize the season")

Nature has put no large object on the face of New England so glaringly white as a white house. See June 24, 1852 ("I have not heard that white clouds, like white houses, made any one's eyes ache.");  November 25, 1853 ("The white houses of the village, also, are remarkably distinct and bare and brought very near."); November 29, 1858 ("[After a snowfall ] White houses no longer stand out and stare in the landscape.")

The locusts' blossoms in the graveyard fill the street with their sweet fragrance.  See 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"); June 9, 1852 ("The locust in bloom"); June 10, 1853 ("The locust bloom is now perfect, filling the street with its sweetness."); June 11, 1856 ("The locust in graveyard shows but few blossoms yet.")

A summer begun

 June 8.

J\

June 8, 2018

Here it is the 8th of June, and the grass is growing apace. In the front yards of the village they are already beginning to cut it. The fields look luxuriant and verdurous, but, as the weather is warmer, the atmosphere is not so clear.

In distant woods the partridge sits on her eggs, and at evening the frogs begin to dream and boys begin to bathe in the river and ponds.

Cultivate the habit of early rising. It is unwise to keep the head long on a level with the feet.

The cars come and go with such regularity and precision, and the whistle and rumble are heard so far, that town clocks and family clocks are already half dispensed with, and it is easy to foresee that one extensive well-conducted and orderly institution like a railroad will keep time and order for a whole country. The startings and arrivals of the cars are the epochs in a village day.

Not till June can the grass be said to be waving in the fields. When the frogs dream, and the grass waves, and the buttercups toss their heads, and the heat disposes to bathe in the ponds and streams then is summer begun.



H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 8, 1850

 When the frogs dream, and the grass waves, and the buttercups toss their heads, and the heat disposes to bathe in the ponds and streams then is summer begun. See June 8, 1859 ("Within a day or two has begun that season of summer when you see afternoon showers, maybe with thunder, or the threat of them, dark in the horizon, and are uncertain whether to venture far away or without an umbrella.. . .When you go forth to walk at 2 p. m. you see perhaps, in the south west or west or maybe east horizon, a dark and threatening mass of cloud showing itself just over the woods, its base horizontal and dark, with lighter edges where it is rolled up to the light, while all beneath is the kind of dark slate of falling rain. These are summer showers, come with the heats of summer."); See also June 1, 1853 (" Summer begins now about a week past, with the expanded leaves, the shade and warm weather."); June 9, 1856 ("Now I notice where an elm is in the shadow of a cloud,. . . It suggests houses that lie under the shade, the repose and siesta of summer noons, the thunder-cloud, bathing, and all that belongs to summer. . . . It suggests also the creak of crickets, a June sound now fairly begun."); June 11, 1856 ("It is very hot this afternoon, and that peculiar stillness of summer noons now reigns in the woods. "); June 16, 1860 ("It appears to me that these phenomena occur simultaneously, say June 12th :• 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.") and See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Waving grasses, Buttercups, and Shade

These are afternoons when you expect a thunder-shower before night.

May 29

May 29, 2015

These last two days, with their sultry, hazy air, are the first that suggest the expression “the furnace-like heat.”

Bathing has begun.

In the evening and during the night the ring of the toads fills the air, so that some have to shut the windows toward the river, but when you awake in the morning not one is to be heard. As it grows warmer in the forenoon I hear a few again; but still I do not hear them numerously and loudly as earlier in the season at that hour, though far more numerously and loudly at night.

P. M. - To Hosmer's Holden place.

Thimble-berry two or three days.

Cattle stand in the river by the bridge for coolness.

Place my hat lightly on my head that the air may circulate beneath.

Wild roses budded before you know it — will be out often before you know they are budded.

Fields are whitened with mouse-ear gone to seed 

—a mass of white fuzz blowing off one side — and also with dandelion globes of seeds.

Some plants have already reached their fall.

How still the hot noon; people have retired behind blinds.

Yet the kingbird — lively bird, with white belly and tail edged with white, and with its lively twittering— stirs and keeps the air brisk.

I see men and women through open windows in white undress taking their Sunday-afternoon nap, overcome with heat.

At A. Hosmer's hill on the Union Turnpike I see the tanager hoarsely warbling in the shade; the surprising red bird, a small morsel of Brazil, advanced picket of that Brazilian army, — parrot-like. But no more shall we see; it is only an affair of outposts. It appears as if he loved to contrast himself with the green of the forest.

May 29, 2024

These are afternoons when you expect a thunder-shower before night; the outlines of cloudy cumuli are dimly seen through the hazy, furnace-like air, rising in the west.

Spergularia rubra, spurry sandwort, in the roadside ditch on left just beyond A. Hosmer's hill; also Veronica peregrina (?) a good while. The last also in Great Fields in the path.

Raspberry out.

That exceedingly neat and interesting little flower blue-eyed grass now claims our attention.

The barrenest pastures wear now a green and luxuriant aspect.

I see many of those round, white, pigeon-egg fungi in the grass since the rains. Do they become puffballs? 

The thyme-leaved veronica shows its modest face in little crescent-shaped regiments in every little hollow in the pastures where there is moisture, and around stumps and in the road ditches.

The Cratægus Crus-Galli this side the Holden place on left, probably yesterday, thorns three inches long, flowers with anthers not conspicuously red.

The Viola debilis near west end of Holden farm in meadow south side of road.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 29, 1853

Bathing has begun. See May 8, 1857 (“Summer has suddenly come upon us, and . . . Some boys have bathed in the river.") May 12, 1860 ("First bathe in the river. Quite warm enough."); May 15,1853 ("The weather has grown rapidly warm. I even think of bathing in the river .")

Fields are whitened with mouse-ear gone to seed — a mass of white fuzz blowing off one side — and also with dandelion globes of seeds. See May 29, 1854 ("Dandelions and mouse-ear down have been blowing for some time and are seen on water. These are interesting as methinks the first of the class of downy seeds which are more common in the fall.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Mouse-ear

That exceedingly neat and interesting little flower blue-eyed grass now claims our attention. See May 29, 1852 ("Blue-eyed grass [in bloom]."); May 29, 1856 (“Blue-eyed grass, probably to-morrow.”); See also May 31, 1854 (“Blue-eyed grass, apparently in pretty good season.”); June 6, 1855 (“Blue-eyed grass maybe several days in some places.”); June 15, 1851 (“The blue-eyed grass, well named, looks up to heaven.”); June 15, 1852 ("The fields are blued with blue-eyed grass, — a slaty blue. "); June 15, 1859 ("Blue-eyed grass at height."); June 17. 1853 ("The dense fields of blue-eyed grass now blue the meadows, as if, in this fair season of the year, the clouds that envelop the earth were dispersing, and blue patches began to appear, answering to the blue sky. The eyes pass from these blue patches into the surrounding green as from the patches of clear sky into the clouds. "); June 19, 1853 ("I see large patches of blue-eyed grass in the meadow across the river from my window"); July 6, 1851("Blue-eyed grass is now rarely seen. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, blue-eyed grass

 

In the evening and during the night the ring of the toads fills the air.  See May 20, 1854 ("The steadily increasing sound of toads and frogs along the river with each successive warmer night is one of the most important peculiarities of the season. Their prevalence and loudness is in proportion to the increased temperature of the day.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau: The Ring of Toads

I see the tanager hoarsely warbling in the shade; the surprising red bird, a small morsel of Brazil. . .as if he loved to contrast himself with the green of the forest. See May 23, 1853 ("That contrast of a red bird with the green pines and the blue sky!. . .this bird's colors and his note tell of Brazil. "); May 28, 1855 (" the most brilliant and tropical-looking bird we have, bright-scarlet with black wings, the scarlet appearing on the rump again between wing-tips. He brings heat, or heat him. A remarkable contrast with the green pines. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the  Scarlet Tanager

The Viola debilis near west end of Holden farm in meadow. See May 22, 1853 ("Found an abundance of the Viola Muhlenbergii (debilis of Bigelow), a stalked violet, pale blue and bearded"); May 22, 1856 ("To Viola Muhlenbergii, which is abundantly out; how long? A small pale-blue flower growing in dense bunches, but in spots a little drier than the V. cucullata and blanda.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Violets

How still the hot noon; 

people retire behind blinds  –

 yet the kingbird stirs.

See men and women

through open windows undress,

overcome with heat. 

These are afternoons

when you expect a thunder-

shower before night.

The increasing scarlet and yellow tints around the meadows and river .

September 26


Dreamed of purity last night. The thoughts seemed not to originate with me, but I was invested, my thought was tinged, by another's thought. It was not I that originated, but I that entertained the thought.

The river is getting to be too cold for bathing. There are comparatively few weeds left in it.

It is not in vain, perhaps, that every winter the forest is brought to our doors, shaggy with lichens. Even in so humble a shape as a wood-pile, it contains sermons for us.

P. M. — To Ministerial Swamp.

The small cottony leaves of the fragrant everlasting in the fields for some time, protected, as it were, by a little web of cotton against frost and snow, — a little dense web of cotton spun over it, — entangled in it, — as if to restrain it from rising higher.

The increasing scarlet and yellow tints around the meadows and river remind me of the opening of a vast flower-bud; they are the petals of its corolla, which is of the width of the valleys. It is the flower of autumn, whose expanding bud just begins to blush. As yet, however, in the forest there are very few changes of foliage.

September 26, 2017

The Polygonum articulatum, giving a rosy tinge to Jenny's Desert and elsewhere, is very interesting now, with its slender dense racemes of rose-tinted flowers, apparently without leaves, rising cleanly out of the sand. It looks warm and brave; a foot or more high, and mingled with deciduous blue-curls. It is much divided, into many spreading slender-racemed branches, with inconspicuous linear leaves, reminding me, both by its form and its color, of a peach orchard in blossom, especially when the sunlight falls on it.

Minute rose-tinted flowers that brave the frosts and advance the summer into fall, warming with their color sandy hill sides and deserts, like the glow of evening reflected on the sand. Apparently all flower and no leaf.

A warm blush on the sands, after frosty nights have come. Perhaps it may be called the "evening red." Rising, apparently, with clean bare stems from the sand, it spreads out into this graceful head of slender rosy racemes, wisp-like. This little desert of less than [an] acre blushes with it.

I see now ripe, large (three-inch), very dark chocolate(?)-colored puffballs. Are then my five-fingers puffballs?
The tree fern is in fruit now, with its delicate, tendril-like fruit climbing three or four feet over the asters, goldenrods, etc., on the edge of the swamp. The large ferns are yellow or brown now.

Larks, like robins, fly in flocks.

Dogsbane leaves a clear yellow.

Succory in bloom at the Tommy Wheeler house. It bears the frost well, though we have not had much. Set out for use.

The Gnaphalium plantaginifolium leaves, green above, downy beneath.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 26, 1852

The river is getting to be too cold for bathing. See September 26 1854 ("Took my last bath the 24th . Probably shall not bathe again this year. It was chilling cold."); September 27, 1856 ("Bathed at Hubbard's Bath, but found the water very cold. Bathing about over”)  See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Luxury of Bathing

The small cottony leaves of the fragrant everlasting in the fields for some time, protected, as it were, by a little web of cotton against frost and snow. See August 29, 1856 ("Fragrant everlasting in prime and very abundant, whitening Carter's pasture.”); February 25, 1857 (“The fragrant everlasting has retained its fragrance all winter.”)

The increasing scarlet and yellow tints remind me of the opening of a vast flower-bud; they are the petals of its corolla, the flower of autumn. See August 6, 1852 ("We live, as it were, within the calyx of a flower."); June 5, 1853 (“The heavens and the earth are one flower. The earth is the calyx, the heavens the corolla.”); November 1, 1858 ("A man dwells in his native valley like a corolla in its calyx.")

I see now ripe, large (three-inch), very dark chocolate-colored puffballs. See October 2, 1858 ("A large chocolate-colored puffball “smokes.”")

Larks, like robins, fly in flocks. See August 27, 1858 ("Robins fly in flocks."); September 18, 1852 ("The robins of late fly in flocks, and I hear them oftener."); September 19, 1854 ("I see large flocks of robins keeping up their familiar peeping and chirping."); September 20, 1855 ("See larks in flocks on meadow."); October 1, 1858 ("See larks in small flocks."); October 13, 1855 ("Larks in flocks in the meadows, showing the white in their tails as they fly, sing sweetly as in spring.")

Dogsbane leaves a clear yellow See August 21, 1852 (“The leaves of the dogsbane are turning yellow”); See August 16, 1856 ("I find the dog's-bane (Apocynum androsoemifolium) bark not the nearly so strong as that of the A. cannabinum”). Note "Apocynum" means "poisonous to dogs".

See July 9, 1851 ("The handsome blue flowers of the succory or endive (Cichorium Intybus)."); October 2, 1856 ("Succory still, with its cool blue, here and there"); October 14, 1856 ("Any flowers seen now may be called late ones. I see perfectly fresh succory, not to speak of yarrow, a Viola ovata, . . .etc., etc.")

September 26. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, September 26

Increasing scarlet 

and yellow tints around the 

meadows and river.

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 © 2009-2024

A man in a boat in the sun, just disappearing in the distance round a bend.

August 23.

Saturday.

To Walden to bathe at 5.30 A. M.

Traces of the heavy rains in the night. The sand and gravel are beaten hard by them. Three or four showers in succession.

But the grass is not so wet as after an ordinary dew.

The Verbena hastata at the pond has reached the top of its spike, a little in advance of what I noticed yesterday; only one or two flowers are adhering.

At the commencement of my walk I saw no traces of fog, but after detected fogs over particular meadows and high up some brooks’valleys, and far in the Deep Cut the wood fog.

First muskmelon this morning.

I rarely pass the shanty in the woods, where human beings are lodged, literally, no better than pigs in a sty, — little children, a grown man and his wife, and an aged grandmother living this squalid life, squatting on the ground, — but I wonder if it can be indeed true that little Julia Riordan calls this place home, comes here to rest at night and for her daily food, — in whom ladies and gentlemen in the village take an interest.

Of what significance are charity and almshouses? That there they live unmolested! in one sense so many degrees below the almshouse! beneath charity!

It is admirable, — Nature against almshouses.

A certain the wealth of nature, not poverty, it suggests.

Not to identify health and contentment, aye, and independence, with the possession of this world’s goods!

It is not wise to waste compassion on them.

As I go through the Deep Cut, I hear one or two early humblebees, come out on the damp sandy bank, whose low hum sounds like distant horns from far in the horizon over the woods. It was long before I detected the bees that made it, so far away and musical it sounded, like the shepherds in some distant eastern vale greeting the king of day.

The farmers now carry — those who have got them — their early potatoes and onions to market, starting away early in the morning or at midnight. I see them returning in the afternoon with the empty barrels.

Perchance the copious rain of last night will trouble those who had not been so provident as to get their hay from the Great Meadows, where it is often lost.

P. M. – Walk to Annursnack and back over stone bridge.

I sometimes reproach myself because I do not find anything attractive in certain mere trivial employments of men, — that I skip men so commonly, and their affairs, — the professions and the trades, — do not elevate them at least in my thought and get some material for poetry out of them directly. I will not avoid, then, to go by where these men are repairing the stone bridge, — see if I cannot see poetry in that, if that will not yield me a reflection.

It is narrow to be confined to woods and fields and grand aspects of nature only. The greatest and wisest will still be related to men.

Why not see men standing in the sun and casting a shadow, even as trees? May not some light be reflected from them as from the stems of trees? I will try to enjoy them as animals, at least.

They are perhaps better animals than men.

Do not neglect to speak of men’s low life and affairs with sympathy, though you ever so speak as to suggest a contrast between them and the ideal and divine. You may be excused if you are always pathetic, but do not refuse to recognize.

Resolve to read no book, to take no walk, to undertake no enterprise, but such as you can endure to give an account of to yourself. Live thus deliberately for the most part.

When I stopped to gather some blueberries by the roadside this afternoon, I heard the shrilling of a cricket or a grasshopper close to me, quite clear, almost like a bell, a stridulous sound, a clear ring, incessant, not intermittent, like the song of the black fellow I caught the other day, and not suggesting the night, but belonging to day.

It was long before I could find him, though all the while within a foot or two. I did not know whether to search amid the grass and stones or amid the leaves. At last, by accident I saw him, he shrilling all the while under an alder leaf two feet from the ground, - a slender green fellow with long feelers and transparent wings.

When he shrilled, his wings, which opened on each other in the form of a heart perpendicularly to his body like the wings of fairies, vibrated swiftly on each other. The apparently wingless female, as I thought, was near.

We experience pleasure when an elevated field or even road in which we may be walking holds its level toward the horizon at a tangent to the earth, is not convex with the earth’s surface, but an absolute level.

On or under east side of Annursnack, Epilobium coloratum, colored willow-herb, near the spring.

Also Polygonum sagittatum, scratch-grass.

The Price Farm road, one of those everlasting roads which the sun delights to shine along in an August afternoon, playing truant; which seem to stretch themselves with terrene jest as the weary traveller journeys on; where there are three white sandy furrows (lira), two for the wheels and one between them for the horse, with endless green grass borders between and room on each side for huckleberries and birches; where the walls indulge in freaks, not always parallel to the ruts, and goldenrod yellows all the path; which some elms began to border and shade once, but left off in despair, it was so long; from no point on which can you be said to be at any definite distance from a town.

I associate the beauty of Quebec with the steel-like and flashing air.

Our little river reaches are not to be forgotten. I noticed that seen northward on the Assabet from the Causeway Bridge near the second stone bridge.

There was [a] man in a boat in the sun, just disappearing in the distance round a bend, lifting high his arms and dipping his paddle as if he were a vision bound to land of the blessed, — far off, as in picture.

When I see Concord to purpose, I see it as if it were not real but painted, and what wonder if I do not speak to thee? 

I saw a snake by the roadside and touched him with my foot to see if he were alive.

He had a toad in his jaws, which he was preparing to swallow with his jaws distended to three times his width, but he relinquished his prey in haste and fled; and I thought, as the toad jumped leisurely away with his slime-covered hind-quarters glistening in the sun, as if I, his deliverer, wished to interrupt his meditations, — without a shriek or fainting, — I thought what a healthy indifference he manifested. Is not this the broad earth still? he said.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 23, 1851

The Verbena hastata at the pond has reached the top of its spike, a little in advance of what I noticed yesterday; only one or two flowers are adhering. See  August 6, 1852 ("Blue vervain is now very attractive to me, and then there is that interesting progressive history in its rising ring of blossoms. It has a story."); August 20, 1851 ("The flowers of the blue vervain have now nearly reached the summit of their spikes."); August 21, 1851 (" It is very pleasant to measure the progress of the season by this and similar clocks. So you get, not the absolute time, but the true time of the season."); August 22, 1859 The circles of the blue vervain flowers, now risen near to the top, show how far advanced the season is.") See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  the Blue Vervain

He had a toad in his jaws, which he was preparing to swallow with his jaws distended to three times his width, but he relinquished his prey in haste and fled. See May 19, 1856 ("saw a small striped snake in the act of swallowing a Rana palustris, within three feet of the water. The snake, being frightened, released his hold, and the frog hopped off to the water. "); April 16, 1861 ("Horace Mann says that he killed a bullfrog in Walden Pond which had swallowed and contained a common striped snake")

 Account to yourself –

always resolve to live 

deliberately.

HDT ~ August 23, 1851