This is where the men who save the country are born and bred.

June 15.

Suddenly hot weather, - 90° - after very cool days.



Yarrow out, how long? 

Blue flag abundant. 

Blue-eyed grass at height. 

Saw near mill, on the wooded hillside, a regular old-fashioned country house, long and low, one story unpainted, with a broad green field, half orchard, for all yard between it and the road, — a part of the hill side, — and much June-grass before it. This is where the men who save the country are born and bred. Here is the pure fountain of human life. 

Walked over a rocky hill there in the midst of the heat. How interesting a thin patch of strawberry vines now on a rocky hillside, though the fruit is quite scarce! Good for suggestion and intention, at least. 

Herd's-grass spikes just appear; not in bloom. 

Sitting by Hubbard Bath swamp wood and looking north, at 3 P.M., I notice the now peculiar glaucous color of the very water, as well as the meadow-grass (i.e. sedge), at a dozen or twenty rods' distance, seen through the slight haze which accompanies this first June heat. A sort of leaden color, as if the fumes of lead floated over it.

Young crow blackbirds which have left the nest, with great heads and bills, the top of the head covered with a conspicuous raised light-colored down.

A fly (good-sized) with a large black patch on the wing and a reddish head alights on my hand. (A day or two after, one with a greenish head.) 

Birds shoot like twigs. The young are as big as the old when they leave the nest; have only got to harden and mature.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, June 15, 1859

Suddenly hot weather, - 90° - after very cool days. See June 15, 1860 ("A new season begun.") and  June 16, 1860 ("It appears to me that these phenomena occur simultaneously, say June 12th . . .”)

Yarrow out, how long? See June 15, 1851("And the yarrow, with its persistent dry stalks and heads, is now ready to blossom again")

Blue flag abundant. See June 10, 1858 ("Common blue flag, how long?"); June 14, 1853 ("The blue flag (Iris versicolor) grows in this pure water, rising from the stony bottom all around the shores, and is very beautiful, . . . especially its reflections in the water.); June 30,1851 ("The blue flag (Iris versicolor) enlivens the meadow.”)

Blue-eyed grass at height,  See June 15, 1851 ("The blue-eyed grass, well named, looks up to heaven.")

A regular old-fashioned country house, long and low, one story unpainted, with a broad green field, half orchard See August 26, 1856 ("What is a New England landscape this sunny August day? A weather-painted house and barn, with an orchard by its side, in midst of a sandy field surrounded by green woods, with a small blue lake on one side.”); April 24, 1857 (“Now the sun comes out and shines on the pine hill west of Ball's Hill, lighting up the light-green pitch pines and the sand and russet-brown lichen-clad hill. That is a very New England landscape. Buttrick's yellow farmhouse near by is in harmony with it.")