Seeds on my shoes, a step from flowers to fruit.

June 7. 

A thick fog this morning, through which at last rain falls -- the first after a considerable and first dry spell. As yet nothing has suffered from dryness; the grass is very green and rank, owing to the cold spring, the June-grass converting hillside pastures into mowing-land, and the seeds (or chaff?) of many grasses begin to fall on my shoes.

It continues cloudy and is warm and muggy, the sun almost coming out. The birds sing now more than ever, as in the morning, and mosquitoes are very troublesome in the woods. 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. These racemes are strewn along the path by children.  

I am surprised at the size of green berries, -- shad-bush, low blueberries, choke-cherries, etc., etc. It is but a step from flowers to fruit. 

Yesterday I saw the painted and the wood tortoise out. Now I see a snapping turtle, its shell about a foot long, out here on the damp sand, with its head out, disturbed by me. It had just been excavating, and its shell — especially the fore part and sides — and especially its snout, were deeply covered with earth. It appears to use its shell as a kind of spade whose handle is within, tilting it now this way, now that, and perhaps using its head and claws as a pick. It was in a little cloud of mosquitoes, which were continually settling on its head and flippers, but which it did not mind.

Now the river is reduced to summer width. It is in the spring that we observe those dark-blue lakes on our meadows. Now weeds are beginning to fill the stream. 

This muggy evening I see fireflies, the first I have seen or heard of at least.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 7, 1854

River reduced to summer width.
Weeds begin to fill the stream.
Muggy evening: fireflies!

(The first I have seen.)

These racemes are strewn along the path by children. See June 5, 1854 ("Children have been to the Cliffs and woven wreaths or chaplets of oak leaves, which they have left, for they were unconsciously attracted by the beauty of the leaves now.")

A snapping turtle . . . had just been excavating. See September 16, 1854 ("I find the mud turtle’s eggs at the Desert all hatched . . .”)

I am surprised at the size of green berries. It is but a step from flowers to fruit. See June 6, 1852 ("The earliest blueberries are now forming as greenberries.”); see also June 17, 1854(“The season of hope and promise is past; already the season of small fruits has arrived. We are a little saddened, because we begin to see the interval between our hopes and their fulfillment”);  August 18, 1853(“The season of flowers or of promise may be said to be over, and now is the season of fruits; but where is our fruit ?”)

The seeds many grasses begin to fall on my shoes. . . The birds sing now more than ever. . . . Carry some boards out to the board walk then we loop up around by the rope trail and up to the view, just before sunset. The orange spots of light in the woods are later matched by phopeescent moonlight on way home past the pond in the dark. I thought she had painted rocks until i saw the glow all through the woods. Spring flowers are past. now seeing one old violet or one columbine left is remarkable. The grasses are in seed and birds subdued, though still hear thrush sounds and bursts from the oven bird 

Now grasses in seed

still hear bursts from the ovenbird
though birds subdued

June 7, 2014

zphx

June 7. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, June 7

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