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.

It flies through the green foliage as if it would ignite the leaves.

May 20

The 18th and 19th a rather gentle and warm May storm, more rain, methinks, than we have had before this spring at one time.

Began with thunder-showers on the night of the 18th, the flashing van of the storm, followed by the long, dripping main body, with, at very long intervals, an occasional firing or skirmishing in the rear or on the flanks.

6 A. M. To Island by river.

Probably a red-wing blackbird's nest, of grass, hung between two button-bushes; whitish eggs with irregular black marks.

Sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis), probably two days.

White oak, swamp white, and chestnut oak probably will open by the 22d.

The white ashes are in full flower now, and how long ? 8 A. M.-To Flint's Pond.

Cornus Canadensis just out.

Probably the C. florida should be set down to-day, since it just begins to shed pollen and its involucre is more open.

It is a fair but cool and windy day, a strong northwest wind, and the grass, to which the rain has given such a start, conspicuously waves, showing its lighter under side, and the buttercups toss in the wind.

The pitch and white pines have grown from one to five inches.

On Pine Hill.

In this clear morning light and a strong wind from the northwest, the mountains in the horizon, seen against some low, thin clouds in the background, look darker and more like earth than usual; you distinguish forest and pasture on them. This in the clear, cool atmosphere in the morning after a rain-storm, with the wind northwest. They will grow more ethereal, melting into the sky, as the day advances.

The beech is already one of the most densely clothed trees, or rather makes a great show of verdure from the size of its fully expanded light-green leaves, though some are later. The fresh shoots on low branches are five or six inches long.

It is an interesting tree to me, with its neat, close, tight-looking bark, like the dress which athletes wear, its bare instep, and roots beginning to branch like bird's feet, showing how it is planted and holds by the ground. Not merely stuck in the ground like a stick.

It gives the beholder the same pleasure that it does to see the timbers of a house above and around.

Do they blossom here? I found nuts, but apparently not sound, at Haverhill the other day,-last year's.

There are some slender, perfectly horizontal limbs which go zigzagging, as it were creeping through the air, only two or three feet above the ground, over the side-hill, as if they corresponded to concealed rills in the ground beneath.

Plenty of arums now in bloom. Probably my earliest one was in bloom, for I did not look within it.

What is that pretty, transparent moss in the brooks, which holds the rain or dewdrops so beautifully on the undersides of the leafets, through which they sparkle crystallinely? 

Fresh checkerberry shoots now.

The cedars are full of yellowish cedar apples and minute berries just formed, the effete staminiferous blossom still on. When did they begin to bloom? 

I find none of the rare hedyotis yet on Bare Hill.

The peach bloom is now gone and the apple bloom come.

Heard the seringo note, like a rattling watch-spring, from a flock passing swiftly overhead.

The wind makes such a din in the woods that the notes of birds are lost, and added to this is the sound of the waves of Flint's Pond breaking on the shore, the fresh surf. The pond is spotted with whitecaps, five or six feet long by one foot, like a thin flock of sheep running toward the southeast shore. The smallest lakes can be lashed into a sort of fury by the wind, and are quite ocean-like then. These caps are a striving to dilute the water with air.

The barberry will probably blossom to-day.

Here, by the side of the pond, a fire has recently run through the young woods on the hillside. It is surprising how clean it has swept the ground; only the very lowest and dampest rotten leaves remaining, but uvularias and smilacinas have pushed up here and there conspicuously on the black ground, a foot high.

At first you do not observe the full effect of the fire, walking amid the bare dead or dying trees, which wear a perfect winter aspect, which, as trees generally are not yet fully leaved out and you are still used to this, you do not notice, till you look up and see the still green tops everywhere above the height of fifteen feet.

Yet the trees do not bear many marks of fire commonly; they are but little blackened except where the fire has run a few feet up a birch, or paused at a dry stump, or a young evergreen has been killed and reddened by it and is now dropping a shower of red leaves.

Hemlock will blossom to-morrow.

The geranium is just out, 

May 20, 2018

and the lady’s-slipper. 

Some with old seed vessels are still seen.

Hear again, what I have heard for a week or more sometimes, that rasping, springy note, a very hoarse chirp, ooh, twee twee twee, from a bluish bird as big as a bluebird, with some bright yellow about head, white beneath and lateral tail-feathers, and black cheeks (?).

This and that sort of brown-creeper-like bird of May 12 — and the chickadee-like bird (which may be the chickadee), and the ah te ter twee of deep pine woods (which also may be the chickadee), I have not identified.

Arbor-vitæ has been out some time and the butter nut some days.

Mountain-ash on the 18th.

Larch apparently ten days.

Nemopanthes several days.

The swamp blueberry abundantly out.

Saw a tanager in Sleepy Hollow. It most takes the eye of any bird. You here have the red-wing reversed,-the deepest scarlet of the red-wing spread over the whole body, not on the wing-coverts merely, while the wings are black. It flies through the green foliage as if it would ignite the leaves.

Of deciduous trees and shrubs, the latest to leaf out, as I find by observation to-day, must be the panicled andromeda, rhodora, and button-bush.

In some places, however, the first has perfectly formed leaves, the rhodora at most not half unfolded, the button-bush for the most part just bursting buds.

But I have not seen the prinos and perhaps one or two other shrubs.

I have no doubt that the button-bush may be called the latest of all.

Is that female ash by river at Lee's Hill a new kind? In bloom fully May 18th.

Even this remote forest, which stands so far away and innocent, has this terrible foe Fire to fear. Lightning may ignite a dead tree or the dry leaves, and in a few minutes a green forest be blackened and killed. This liability to accident from which no part of nature is exempt.

Plucked to-day a bunch of Viola pedata, consisting of four divisions or offshoots around a central or fifth root, all united and about one inch in diameter at the ground and four inches at top. [contained 49 Flowers, 22 Buds] And perhaps more buds would still make their appearance, and undoubtedly half a dozen more would have blown the next day. Forming a complex, close little testudo of violet scales above their leaves.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 20, 1853

Probably a red-wing blackbird's nest, of grass, hung between two button-bushes; whitish eggs with irregular black marks. See May 25, 1855 ("Red-wing’s nest with four eggs. . .curiously and neatly marked with brown-black spots and lines on the large end.”); June 1, 1857 ("A red-wing's nest, four eggs, . . the hieroglyphics on these eggs . . ..who determines the style of the marking?") See See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Red-wing in Spring

It flies through the green foliage as if it would ignite the leaves. See   May 20, 1858 ("See tanagers, male and female, in the top of a pine, one red, other yellow, from below. We have got to these high colors among birds.") See also  A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Scarlet Tanager

The lady’s-slipper just out. See May 20, 1852 ("A lady’s-slipper well budded and now white."); see also May 18, 1851 ("Lady's-slipper almost fully blossomed”).; May 19, 1860 (“At the Ministerial Swamp I see a white lady's-slipper almost out, fully grown, with red ones.”); May 30, 1858 ("Hear of lady's-slipper seen the 23d; how long?")

I hear the sound of distant thunder. The perception of beauty. The succession of wildflowers; the history of a hillside.

June 21. 

June 21, 2020

Monday. 7 p.m. — To Cliffs via Hubbard Bathing-Place.

Cherry-birds. I have not seen, though I think I have heard them before, — their fine seringo note, like a vibrating spring in the air. They are a handsome bird, with their crest and chestnut breasts. There is no keeping the run of their goings and comings, but they will be ready for the cherries when they shall be ripe. 

The adder's-tongue arethusa smells exactly like a snake. How singular that in nature, too, beauty and offensiveness should be thus combined! 

In flowers, as well as men, we demand a beauty pure and fragrant, which perfumes the air. The flower which is showy but has no, or an offensive, odor expresses the character of too many mortals. 

The swamp-pink bushes have many whitish spongy excrescences. 

Elder is blossoming; flowers opening now where black berries will be by and by. 

Panicled andromeda, or privet andromeda. 

Nature has looked uncommonly bare and dry to me for a day or two. With our senses applied to the surrounding world we are reading our own physical and corresponding moral revolutions. Nature was so shallow all at once I did not know what had attracted me all my life. I was therefore encouraged when, going through a field this evening, I was unexpectedly struck with the beauty of an apple tree. The perception of beauty is a moral test. 

When, in bathing, I rush hastily into the river the clamshells cut my feet. It is dusky now. Men are fishing on the Corner Bridge. 

I hear the veery and the huckleberry-bird and the catbird. 

It is a cool evening, past 8 o'clock.

I see the tephrosia out through the dusk; a handsome flower. 

What rich crops this dry hillside has yielded! First I saw the Viola pedata here, and then the lupines and the snapdragon covered it; and now the lupines are done and their pods are left, the tephrosia has taken their place. 

This small dry hillside is thus a natural garden. I omit other flowers which grow here, and name only those which to some extent cover it or possess it. No eighth of an acre in a cultivated garden would be better clothed, or with a more pleasing variety, from month to month, and while one flower is in bloom you little suspect that which is to succeed and perchance eclipse it. It is a warmly placed dry hillside beneath a wall, very thinly clad with grass. Such spots there are in nature, natural flower gardens. Of this succession I hardly know which to admire the most. 

It would be pleasant to write the history of one hillside for one year. First and last you have the colors of the rainbow and more, and the various fragrances, which it has not. Blackberries, roses, and dogsbane also are now in bloom here.

I hear neither toads nor bullfrogs at present; they want a warmer night. 

I hear the sound of distant thunder, though no cloud is obvious, muttering like the roar of artillery. That is a phenomenon of this season. As you walk at evening, you see the light of the flashes in the horizon and hear the muttering of distant thunder, where some village is being refreshed with the rain denied to Concord. We say that showers avoid us, that they go down the river, i. e. go off down the Merrimack, or keep to the south. 

Thunder and lightning are remarkable accompaniments to our life, as if to remind us that there always is or should be a kind of battle waging. The thunder is signal guns to us. 

The dwarf orchis (O. herbiola (Bigelow), Platanthera flava (Gray)) at the bathing-place in Hubbard's meadow, not remarkable. 

The purple orchis is a good flower to bring home. It will keep fresh many days, and its buds open at last in a pitcher of water. 

Obtuse galium. 

I observe a rose (called by some moss rose), with a bristly reddish stem; another, with a smooth red stem and but a few prickles; another, with many prickles and bristles. 

Found the single-flowered broom-rape in Love Lane, under the oak.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 21, 1852


The swamp-pink bushes have many whitish spongy excrescences. See June 20, 1853 ("Those great greenish-white puffs on the panicled andromeda are now decaying.On the swamp-pink they are solid.")

The adder's-tongue arethusa smells exactly like a snake. Compare July 26, 1856 ("The pod of the ellipticum, when cut, smells like a bee.") See July 7, 1852 ("The Arethusa bulbosa, "crystalline purple;" Pogonia ophioglossoides, snake-mouthed arethusa, "pale purple;" and the Calopogon pulchellus, grass pink, "pink purple," make one family in my mind, — next to the purple orchis, or with it, — being flowers par excellence, all flower, all color, with inconspicuous leaves, naked flowers, . . .the pogonia has a strong snaky odor."); see also July 2, 857 ("Pogonia ophioglossoides apparently in a day or two. "); to July 7, 1856 ("the snake-head arethusa is now abundant amid the cranberries. there [Gowings Swamp]");July 8, 1857 ("Find a Pogonia ophioglossoides with a third leaf and second flower an inch above the first flower."); August 1, 1856 ("Snake-head arethusa still in the meadow. “)..Coompare Arethusa bulbosa, May 30, 1854 ("I am surprised to find arethusas abundantly out in Hubbard's Close, maybe two or three days ... This high-colored plant shoots up suddenly, all flower, in meadows where it is wet walking. A superb flower.”); June 10, 1854 (“The fragrance of the arethusa is like that of the lady's-slipper, or pleasanter.”).  See also  June 19, 1852 ("These are peculiar days when you find the purple orchis and the arethusa, too, in the meadows."); June 30, 1852 ("Is not this period more than any distinguished for flowers, when roses, swamp-pinks, morning-glories, arethusas, pogonias, orchises, blue flags, epilobiums, mountain laurel, and white lilies are all in blossom at once?")

With our senses applied to the surrounding world we are reading our own physical and corresponding moral revolutions.See  June 25, 1852 ("There is a flower for every mood of the mind."); May 23, 1853 ("The poet must bring to Nature the smooth mirror in which she is to be reflected. Every new flower that opens, no doubt, expresses a new mood of the human mind.”) August 7, 1853 ("Is it not as language that all natural objects affect the poet? He sees a flower or other object, and it is beautiful or affecting to him because it is a symbol of his thought. . .The objects I behold correspond to my mood.”);  June 6, 1857 (“Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind.”); August 30, 1851 ("The fall of each humblest flower marks the annual period of some phase of human life experience. I can be said to note the flower's fall only when I see in it the symbol of my own change. When I experience this, then the flower appears to me.)


Nature was so shallow all at once I did not know what had attracted me all my life. See November 18, 1857 ("I lost for the time my rapport or relation to nature. ")

I was unexpectedly struck with the beauty of an apple tree. The perception of beauty is a moral test. See  December 11. 1855 ("Beauty and music are not mere traits and exceptions. They are the rule and character. It is the exception that we see and hear "); January 17, 1852 (“As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind. Some see only clouds there; some behold there serenity, purity, beauty ineffable.”); May 17, 1853 ("I was surprised, on turning round, to behold the serene and everlasting beauty of the world, it was so soothing. I saw that I could not go home to supper and lose it. It was so much fairer, serener, more beautiful, than my mood had been."); July 26, 1852 ("The mind that perceives clearly any natural beauty is in that instant withdrawn from human society."); December 11. 1855 ("It is only necessary to behold thus the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance."); November 18, 1857 ("You cannot perceive beauty but with a serene mind."); October 4, 1859 ("You have got to be in a different state from common.") Autumnal Tints ("There is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate")

Panicled andromeda, or privet andromeda. See June 21, 1854 ("(panicled andromeda, which loves dry places, now in blossom")

I see the tephrosia out through the dusk; a handsome flower. See July 10, 1857 ("The tephrosia, which grows by Peter's road in the woods, is a very striking and interesting, if I may not say beautiful, flower, especially when, as here, it is seen in a cool and shady place, its clear rose purple contrasting very agreeably with yellowish white, rising from amidst a bed of finely pinnate leaves.")

A natural garden. Blackberries, roses, and dogsbane also are now in bloom here. See June 30, 1852 (" Is not this period more than any distinguished for flowers, when roses, swamp-pinks, morning-glories, arethusas, pogonias, orchises, blue flags, epilobiums, mountain laurel, and white lilies are all in blossom at once?")

We say that showers avoid us, that they go down the river, i. e. go off down the Merrimack, See May 16, 1853 ("At 5 P. M., dark, heavy, wet-looking clouds are seen in the northern horizon, perhaps over the Merrimack Valley, and we say it is going down the river and we shall not get a drop."); June 15, 1860 (“A thunder-shower in the north goes down the Merrimack.”)  See also June 16, 1860 ("Thunder-showers show themselves about 2 P.M. in the west, but split at sight of Concord and go east on each side.”); June 16, 1854 ("Three days in succession, — the 13th, 14th, and 15th, — thunder-clouds, with thunder and lightning, have risen high in the east, threatening instant rain, and yet each time it has failed to reach us.”); June 17, 1852 ("A small thunder-shower comes up . . . We see the increasing outline of the slate-colored falling rain from the black cloud. It passes mainly to the south. Also see note to June 9, 1860 ("We have half a dozen showers to-day, distinct summer showers from black clouds suddenly wafted up from the west and northeast; also some thunder and hail, - large white stones.")

The dwarf orchis Platanthera flava (Gray) at the bathing-place in Hubbard's meadow, not remarkable.  See June 18, 1854 ("Platanthera flava at the Harrington Bathing - Place, possibly yesterday , — an unimportant yellowish - green spike of flowers.")

The purple orchis is a good flower to bring home. It will keep fresh many days, and its buds open at last in a pitcher of water. See June 19, 1852 ("The orchis keeps well. One put in my hat this morning, and carried all day, will last fresh a day or two at home"); June 16, 1854 (" It is eight days since I plucked the great orchis; one is perfectly fresh still in my pitcher. It may be plucked when the spike is only half opened, and will open completely and keep perfectly fresh in a pitcher more than a wee") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Fringed Orchids

I observe a rose (called by some moss rose), with a bristly reddish stem.See June 21, 1854 ("Again I am attracted by the deep scarlet of the wild moss rose half open in the grass , all glowing with rosy light."); See also June 12, 1853 ("A wild moss rose in Arethusa Meadow, where are arethusas lingering still.")

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

A May storm, gentle and warm – Foliage changes several shades darker in the rain seen while still cloudy.

May 19. 

Thunder-showers in the night, and it still storms, with holdings-up. A May storm, gentle and rather warm. 

The days of the golden willow are over for this season; their withered catkins strew the causeways and cover the water and also my boat, which is moored beneath them. 

The locust has grown three inches and is blossom-budded. It may come just after the white ash at least, and before the celtis. 

The weather toward evening still cloudy and some what mizzling. 

The foliage of the young maples, elms, etc., in the street has become, since the rain commenced, several shades darker, changing from its tender and lighter green, as if the electricity of the thunder-storm may have had some effect on it. 

It is best observed while it is still cloudy; almost a bluish, no longer yellowish green, it is peculiarly rich. 

The very grass appears to have undergone a similar change.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 19, 1853

The days of the golden willow are over for this season. Compare May 14, 1852 ("Going over the Corner causeway, the willow blossoms fill the air with a sweet fragrance, and I am ready to sing, Ah! willow, willow! These willows have yellow bark, bear yellow flowers and yellowish-green leaves, and are now haunted by the summer yellowbird and Maryland yellow-throat") See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau. Willows on the Causeway.

The locust has grown three inches and is blossom-budded. See June 10, 1853 ("The locust bloom is now perfect, filling the street with its sweetness."); 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 11, 1856 ("The locust in graveyard shows but few blossoms yet.")

It may come just after the white ash at least, and before the celtis. See May 18, 1853 ("White ash fully in bloom."); May 18, 1853 ("The Celtis occidentalis in bloom, maybe a day")

A May storm, gentle and rather warm.See May 17, 1853 ("Does not summer begin after the May storm?”);  note to May 18, 1853 ("Perchance a May storm is brewing. This day it has mizzled  . . . Methinks this is common at this season of the tender foliage.")

The very grass appears to have undergone a similar change. Compare May 19, 1860 ("The grass and the tender leaves, refreshed and expanded by the rain, are peculiarly bright and yellowish-green when seen in a favorable light.").

May 19. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 19

Foliage changes

several shades darker in the rain

seen while still cloudy.

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

This the first really warm day and thunder-shower.

May 16

E. Hoar saw the henbit (Lamium amplexi caule) a week ago from Mr. Pritchard’s garden. 

Celandine is out a day or more, and rhodora, trillium, and yellow violets yesterday at least. 

Horse-chestnut to-day. 

What handsome long yellow, threadlike peduncles to the staminate flowers of the sugar maple! three inches long, tassel-like, appearing with the leaves. 

A man is about town with a wagon-load of the Rhododendron maximum this evening from Gardiner, Maine. It is well budded; buds nearly an inch long; long, narrow, thick leaves, six inches long or more. He says it means the “rose of Dendrum" and will grow from a mere slip cut off and stuck in any soil, — only water it three times a day!!! No doubt of it. 

It has been oppressively warm to-day, the first really warm, sultry-like weather, so that we were prepared for a thunder-storm at evening. 

At 5 P. M., dark, heavy, wet-looking clouds are seen in the northern horizon, perhaps over the Merrimack Valley, and we say it is going down the river and we shall not get a drop. The main body goes by, there is a shower in the north, and the western sky is suffused with yellow where its thin skirts are withdrawing. 

People stand at their doors in the warm evening, listening to the muttering of distant thunder and watching the forked lightning, now descending to the earth, now ascending to the clouds. This the first really warm day and thunder-shower. 

Had thunder-shower while I was in Haverhill in April.

Nature’appears to have passed a crisis. All slimy reptile life is wide awake. The sprayey dream of the toad has a new sound; from the meadow the hylodes are heard more distinctly; and the tree-toad chirrups often from the elms (?). The sultry warmth and moister air has called him into life. 

We smell the fresher and cooler air from where the storm has passed. 

And now that it has grown dark, the skirts of the cloud seem to promise us a shower. It lightens incessantly right in the west; the right wing of the rear guard of the storm is steadily advancing and firing, and every flash shows the outlines of the cloud. 

We look out into the dark, and ever and anon comes a sudden illumination blinding our eyes, like a vast glow-worm, succeeded ere long by the roll of thunder. 

The first pattering of drops is heard; all west windows are hastily shut. The weak-eyed sit with their backs to windows and close the blinds. 

But we are disappointed, after all, and each flash reveals a narrow strip of evening red through the thin drops below the advancing cloud.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 16, 1853

A man is about town with a wagon-load of the Rhododendron maximum. See June 4, 1853 ("I noticed next day one or more in every front yard on each side of the street, and the inhabitants out watering them. Said to be the most splendid native flower in Massachusetts . . . I hear to-day that one in town has blossomed.")

Yellow violets yesterday at least.  See May 11, 1860 ("Yellow violet, almost; say to-morrow."); May 18, 1856 ("E. Emerson finds half a dozen yellow violets."); May 25, 1852 ("The large yellow woods violet (V. pubescens) by this brook now out"); 

It is going down the river and we shall not get a drop. See June 15, 1860 (“A thunder-shower in the north goes down the Merrimack.”)

This the first really warm day and thunder-shower.   See  April 13, 1858 ("See through the dark rain the first flash of lightning, in the west horizon, doubting if it was not a flash of my eye at first, but after a very long interval I hear the low rumbling of the first thunder, and now the summer is baptized and inaugurated in due form."); May 9, 1859 ("The first thunder this afternoon."); May 10, 1857 ("Before night a sudden shower with some thunder and lightning; the first.”); May 11, 1854 (“ I feel the air cooled and hear the muttering of distant thunder in the northwest and see a dark cloud in that direction indistinctly through the wood. That distant thunder-shower very much cools our atmosphere. I make haste through the woods homeward ...It is surprising what an electrifying effect this shower appears to have had. It is like the christening of the summer.”); May 12, 1858 (“I see now, as I go forth on the river, the first summer shower coming up in the northwest, a dark and well defined cloud with rain falling sheaf-like from it, . . .The thunder-cloud is like the ovary of a perfect flower. . . .. It is not commonly till thus late in the season that the fertile are seen. In the thunder-cloud, so distinct and condensed, there is a positive energy, and I notice the first as the bursting of the pollen-cells in the flower of the sky.”); May 20, 1856 ("Was awaked and put into sounder sleep than ever early this morning by the distant crashing of thunder, and now ... I hear it in mid-afternoon, muttering, crashing in the muggy air in mid-heaven,... like the tumbling down of piles of boards, and get a few sprinkles in the sun. Nature has found her hoarse summer voice again.."); May 29, 1857 ("a first regular summer thunder-shower, preceded by a rush of wind,")

May we measure our lives by our joys.

February 23

2 P. M. — Thermometer 56°. Wind south. 

3 P. M. — Thermometer 58° and snow almost gone. River rising. 

We have not had such a warm day since the beginning of December (which was remarkably warm). 

I walk over the moist Nawshawtuct hillside and see the green radical leaves of the buttercup, shepherd's purse (circular), sorrel, chickweed, cerastium, etc., revealed. 

February 23, 2019

About 4 P. M. a smart shower, ushered in by thunder and succeeded by a brilliant rainbow and yellow light from under the dark cloud in the west. Thus the first remarkable heat brings a thunder-shower. 

The words “pardall” and “libbard,” applied by Gesner to the same animal, express as much of the wild beast as any. 

I read in Brand's “Popular Antiquities  that “Bishop Stillingfleet observes, that among the Saxons of the northern nations, the Feast of the New Year was observed with more than ordinary jollity: thence , as Olaus Wormius and Scheffer observe, they reckoned their age by so many Iolas.” (Iola, to make merry. – Gothic.) 

So may we measure our lives by our joys. We have lived, not in proportion to the number of years that we have spent on the earth, but in proportion as we have enjoyed. 

February is pronounced the coldest month in the year. In B.'s “Popular Antiquities” is quoted this from the Harleian Manuscripts:

"Février de tous les mois, 

Le plus court et moins courtois.”

In the same work it is said that this saying is still current in the north of England: 

“On the first of March, 

The crows begin to search.”

Would it not apply to the crows searching for their food in our meadows, along the water's edge, a little later? 

A fact stated barely is dry. It must be the vehicle of some humanity in order to interest us. It is like giving a man a stone when he asks you for bread. 

Ultimately the moral is all in all, and we do not mind it if inferior truth is sacrificed to superior, as when the moralist fables and makes animals speak and act like men. It must be warm, moist, incarnated, — have been breathed on at least. 

A man has not seen a thing who has not felt it.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, February 23. 1860

We have not had such a warm day since the beginning of December. See February 23, 1856 ("At 2 P. M. the thermometer is 47°. Whenever it is near 40 there is a speedy softening of the snow") and note to February 8. 1860 ("40° and upward may be called a warm day in the winter. We have had much of this weather for a month past, reminding us of spring.")

See the green radical leaves of the shepherd's purse. See January 7, 1855 ("The delicious soft, spring-suggesting air, how it fills my veins with life ! . . . On the slopes the ground is laid bare and radical leaves revealed, crowfoot, shepherd's-purse, clover, etc., a fresh green, and, in the meadow, the skunk-cabbage buds, with a bluish bloom, and the red leaves of the meadow saxifrage; and these and the many withered plants laid bare remind me of spring."); January 23, 1855 ("The radical leaves of the shepherd’s-purse, seen in green circles on the water-washed plowed grounds, remind me of the internal heat and life of the globe, anon to burst forth anew."); March 8, 1859 ("The shepherd's-purse radical leaves are particularly bright"); April 25, 1855 ("Shepherd's-purse will bloom to-day, the first I have noticed which has sprung from the ground this season, or of an age.")

 The first remarkable heat brings a thunder-shower. See February 14, 1861 ("A little thunder and lightning late in the afternoon. I see two flashes and hear two claps.")

A brilliant rainbow and yellow light from under the dark cloud in the west. See August 7, 1852 ("If I were to choose a time for a friend to make a passing visit to this world for the first time, in the full possession of all his faculties, perchance it would be at a moment when the sun was setting with splendor in the west, his light reflected far and wide through the clarified air after a rain, and a brilliant rainbow, as now, o'erarching the eastern sky.")

So may we measure our lives by our joys. See July 13, 1852 ("A journal, a book that shall contain a record of all your joy, your ecstasy.")

Crows searching for their food in our meadows, along the water's edge, a little later? See March 5, 1859 ("I see crows walking about on the ice half covered with snow in the middle of the meadows, where there is no grass, apparently to pick up the worms and other insects left there since the midwinter freshet"); March 22, 1855 ("I have noticed crows in the meadows ever since they were first partially bare, three weeks ago."); March 22, 1856 ("Many tracks of crows in snow along the edge of the open water against Merrick’s at Island. They thus visit the edge of water—this and brooks —before any ground is exposed. Is it for small shellfish?")

A fact stated barely is dry. It must be the vehicle of some humanity in order to interest us. See December 16, 1837 ("The fact will one day flower out into a truth."); August 5, 1851 ("The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”); November 9, 1851 ("Facts should be material to the mythology which I am writing; I would so state facts that they shall be significant, shall be myths or mythologic.”); June 19, 1852 (“Facts collected by a poet are set down at last as winged seeds of truth, samara?, tinged with his expectation.”); June 21, 1852 ("Nature has looked uncommonly bare and dry to me for a day or two. With our senses applied to the surrounding world we are reading our own physical and corresponding moral revolutions . . . The perception of beauty is a moral test"); May 6, 1854 (“There is no such thing as pure objective observation. Your observation, to be interesting, i. e. to be significant, must be subjective.")

February 23.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 23

A brilliant rainbow –

yellow light from under the

dark cloud in the west.

A bare fact is dry –

a man has not seen a thing 

who has not felt it.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  May we measure our lives by our joys.

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 © 2009-2025

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