Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Haymaker's Moon


July 13.

The evergreen is very handsome in the woods now, rising somewhat spirally in a round tower of five or six stories, surmounted by a long bud.


Looking across the river to Conantum from the open plains, I think how the history of the hills would read, since they have been pastured by cows, if every plowing and mowing and sowing and chopping were recorded. 

These plains are covered with shrub oaks, birches, aspens, hickories, mingled with sweet-fern and brakes and huckleberry bushes and epilobium, now in bloom, and much fine grass. The hellebore by the brooksides has now fallen over, though it is not broken off.

I hear, 4 P.M., a pigeon woodpecker on a dead pine near by, uttering a harsh and scolding scream, spying me. The chewink jingles on the tops of the bushes, and the [field] sparrow, the vireo, and oven-bird at a distance. A robin sings, superior to all; a barking dog has started something on the opposite side of the river; and now the wood thrush surpasses them all.

The cows now repose and chew the cud under the shadow of a tree, or crop the grass in the shade along the side of the woods, and when you approach to observe them they mind you just enough.

The sweet-scented life-everlasting is budded.

This might be called the Haymaker's Moon, for I perceive that when the day has been oppressively warm the haymakers rest at noon and resume their mowing after sunset, sometimes quite into evening.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  July 13, 1851

The haymakers rest at noon and resume their mowing after sunset, sometimes quite into evening. See July 13, 1857 ("The haymakers are busy raking their hay, to be ready for a shower. They would rather have their grass wet a little than not have the rain. ")

July 13.  See A Book of the Seasonsby Henry ThoreauJuly 13.

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

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