The year is but a succession of days,
and I see that I could assign some office to each day
which, summed up, would be the history of the year.
Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852
The bobolink strain
dies away in the distance --
apple blossoms fall.
Is not summer come
when we see morning fog and
cobwebs on the grass?
May 21 , 1854
Surprising red bird —
A tanager against the
darkening green leaves.
Their leaves like flowers
the birches by the railroad
flash yellow on me.
May 21. 2014, 2018
Very cold to-day; cold weather, indeed, from the 20th to 23d inclusive. Sit by fires, and sometimes wear a greatcoat and expect frosts. May 21, 1855
Cold, at 11 A.M. 50°; and sit by a fire. At 12 it begins to rain . . .
All vegetation is refreshed by the rain. The grass appears to stand perfectly erect and on tiptoe, several inches higher, all at once in every field, the fresh green prevailing over the brown ground in every field. The color of the new leaves is surprising May 21, 1860
The grass begins to be conspicuously reddened with sorrel. May 21, 1853
Sorrel in bloom, beginning. I am eager to taste a handful. May 21, 1852
The dew hangs on the grass like globules of quicksilver. May 21, 1852
A slight fog in morning. Cobwebs on grass, the first I have noticed. This is one of the late phenomena of spring . . . When these begin to be seen, then is not summer come? May 21, 1854
To sit under the first apple tree in blossom is to take another step into summer. May 21, 1852
The earlier apple trees are in bloom, and resound with the hum of bees of all sizes and other insects. May 21, 1852
Noticed the shadows of apple trees yesterday. May 21, 1860
The black oak is just beginning to blossom. May 21, 1852
On hillsides cut off two years ago, the red oaks now contrast at a little distance with the yellowish-green birches. The latter are covered with green lice, which cover me. May 21, 1852
I notice that the old indigo-bird path behind Pratt's is for some distance distinctly defined by young birches, three or four feet high, which are now clothed with tender leaves before the young oaks, etc., on each side. May 21, 1855
Young white oaks and shrub oaks have a reddish look quite similar to their withered leaves in the winter. May 21, 1853
The hickories are budded and show the red anthers. May 21, 1853
Some button bush begins to leaf. May 21, 1855
The larger Populus grandidentata here are pretty well leaved out and may be put with the young ones. May 21, 1854
The white maple keys are nearly two inches long by a half-inch wide, in pairs, with waved inner edges like green moths ready to bear off their seeds. May 21, 1853
The red maple keys are not half so large now, and are a dull red, of a similar form. May 21, 1853
Saw two splendid rose-breasted grosbeaks with females in the young wood in Emerson’s lot. What strong colored fellows, black, white, and fiery rose-red breasts! Strong-natured, too, with their stout bills. A clear, sweet singer, like a tanager but hoarse somewhat, and not shy. May 21, 1856
A tanager, — the surprising red bird, — against the darkening green leaves. May 21, 1854
A tanager, — the surprising red bird, — against the darkening green leaves. May 21, 1854
The catbird sings like a robin sometimes, sometimes like a blackbird's sprayey warble. May 21, 1852
Is that plump blue-backed, rufous rumped swallow the cliff swallow, flying with barn swallows, etc., over the river? May 21, 1855
A song sparrow's nest and eggs so placed in a bank that none could tread on it; bluish-white, speckled. May 21, 1852
A robin's nest and eggs in the crotch of a maple. May 21, 1852
A robin’s nest without mud, on a young white oak in woods, with three eggs. May 21, 1856
I find checkerberries still fresh and abundant. May 21, 1857
The Polygonatum pubescens there, in shade, almost out; perhaps elsewhere already. May 21, 1856
Myosotis laxa by Turnpike, near Hosmer Spring , may have been out several days; two or three at least . May 21, 1856
Viola pedata along the woodland paths, in high land. May 21, 1852
Viola palmata [wood violet] pretty common, apparently two or three days. May 21, 1855
Hear the squeak of a nighthawk. May 21, 1854
It is still windy weather, and while I hear the bobolink strain dying away in the distance through the maples, I can [imagine] the falling apple blossoms which I do not see, as if they were his falling notes.. May 21, 1853
The birches by the railroad, as I am whirled by them in the cars, flash upon me yellow as gamboge, their leaves more like flowers than foliage. May 21, 1860
Yet the water is quite still and smooth by the Hemlocks, and as the weather is warm, it is a soothing sight to see it covered with dust there over the Deep Eddy. May 21, 1853
The finest days of the year, days long enough and fair enough for the worthiest deeds. May 21, 1854
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Birds of May
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Rose-breasted Grosbeak
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Song Sparrow (Fringilla melodia)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Wood Sorrel (Oxalis)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Solomon's Seal
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Mouse-ear forget-me-not
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Leaf-Out
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Apple Blossom Time
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. The Hickory
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Maple Keys
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The world can never be more beautiful than now.
*****
May 12, 1858 ("The white maple keys have not fallen.")
May 15, 1856 (“Checker-berries very abundant on south side of Pine Hill, by pitch pine wood. Now is probably best time to gather them.”)
May 17, 1854 ("Red maple keys are seen at a distance against the tender green of birches and other trees.")
May 20, 1853 ("Fresh checkerberry shoots now.")
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")
May 22, 1852 ("Polygonatum pubescens at rock.")
May 22, 1853 ("Hear the hoarse note of the tanager and the sweet pe-a-wai,")
May 22, 1853 ("Sorrel reddens the fields.")
May 22, 1854 (". The grass so short and fresh, the tender yellowish-green and silvery foliage of the deciduous trees lighting up the landscape, the birds now most musical, 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!")
May 22, 1856 (“The red and cream-colored cone-shaped staminate buds of the black spruce will apparently shed pollen in one to three days? They are nearly half an inch long.”);
May 23, 1853 ("At Loring's Wood heard and saw a tanager. That contrast of a red bird with the green pines and the blue sky!")
May 24, 1855 ("Hear a rose-breasted grosbeak. At first think it a tanager, but soon I perceive its more clear and instrumental — should say whistle, if one could whistle like a flute; a noble singer, reminding me also of a robin; clear, loud and flute-like.")
May 24, 1860 (“I notice the first shadows of hickories, - not dense and dark shade, but open-latticed, a network of sun and shadow on the north sides of the trees.”)
May 28, 1858 ("See already one or two (?) white maple keys on the water")
May 21, 2023
If you make the least correct
observation of nature this year,
you will have occasion to repeat it
with illustrations the next,
and the season and life itself is prolonged.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 21
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 © 2009-2023
https://tinyurl.com/HDT21May
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