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.
North America
Atlantic to Pacific
bullfrogs troomp troomp troomp.
A slight bluish mist
over the smooth black water
mirror of green woods.
Now in the twilight
pale wild roses look so like
blackberry blossoms.
June 20, 2014
It is a warm rain, and I sit all the day and evening with my window open. June 20, 1860
Heavy rain all day and part of the following night. It comes down perpendicularly. June 20, 1860
River, on account of rain, some two feet above summer level. June 20, 1859
More rain falls to-day than any day since March, if not this year. June 20, 1860
I have now visited the Cape four times in as many different years, once in October, twice in June, and once in July, having spent in all about one month there, and about one third the days were foggy, with or without rain.. June 20, 1857
This was the third foggy day. It cleared up the next day noon, but the night after and the next day was foggy again. It is a serious objection to visiting or living on the Cape that you lose so many days by fog. June 20, 1857
4 A.M.— No fog; sky mostly overcast; drought continues. June 20, 1853
A very hot day. June 20, 1856
I heard the robin first (before the chip-bird) this morning. Heard the chip-bird last evening just after sunset. June 20, 1853
Two hair-birds’ nests fifteen feet high on apple trees at R.W.E.’s (one with two eggs). June 20, 1855.
A robin’s nest with young, which was lately, in the great wind, blown down and somehow lodged on the lower part of an evergreen by arbor,—without spilling the young! June 20, 1855.
I wade about Holden Swamp, looking for birds’ nests. June 20, 1858.
I hear a pepe expressing anxiety, June 20, 1858.
Also song sparrows. June 20, 1858.
See the redstart and hear many. June 20, 1858.
Also hear the blue yellow-backs. June 20, 1858.
A catbird’s nest eight feet high on a pitch pine in Emerson’s heater piece, partly of paper. June 20, 1855.
A summer yellowbird’s, saddled on an apple, of cotton-wool, lined with hair and feathers, three eggs, white with flesh-colored tinge and purplish-brown and black spots. June 20, 1855.
Five young phoebes in a nest, apparently upon a swallow nest, in Conant’s old house, just ready to fly. June 20, 1856.
A phoebe nest, second time, with four cream-white eggs. . . . The second brood in the same nest. June 20, 1856.
Got the marsh hawk's egg, which was addled. I noticed on the 17th that the hawk (my marsh hawk) was off her nest and soaring above the wood late in the afternoon, as I was returning. June 20, 1858.
Walking under an apple tree in the little Baker Farm peach orchard, heard an incessant shrill musical twitter or peeping, as from young birds, over my head, and, looking up, saw a hole in an upright dead bough, some fifteen feet from ground. Climbed up and, finding that the shrill twitter came from it, guessed it to be the nest of a downy woodpecker, which proved to be the case, — for it reminded me of the hissing squeak or squeaking hiss of young pigeon woodpeckers, but this was more musical or bird-like. June 20, 1856.
Anon the old appeared, and came quite near, while I stood in the tree, keeping up an incessant loud and shrill scolding note. June 20, 1856.
Now there are young rabbits, skunks, and probably woodchucks. June 20, 1853
Saw a little skunk coming up the river-bank in the woods at the White Oak, a funny little fellow, about six inches long and nearly as broad. It faced me and actually compelled me to retreat before it for five minutes. June 20, 1853
Some of the stone nests are a foot above the water now, but uninjured. I can find nothing in them. June 20, 1853
I heard that snapping sound against a pad on the surface, and at the same time saw a pad knocked up several inches, and a ripple in the water there as when a pickerel darts away. June 20, 1858
Saw a snap-turtle out in sun on tussock opposite Bittern Cliff. Probably the water was too warm for him. June 20, 1856
I see wood tortoises in the path; one feels full of eggs. June 20, 1853,
Two Sternotherus odoratus by heap in Sanborn’s garden, one making a hole for its eggs, the rear of its shell partly covered. See a great many of these out to-day on ground and on willows. June 20, 1856.
Walking in the white pine wood there, I find that my shoes and, indeed, my hat are covered with the greenish-yellow pollen of the white pines. June 20, 1858.
Dry fields have now a reddish tinge from the seeds of the grass. June 20, 1852
The river has been some days full with weeds which drape and trail from my oars. June 20, 1853
The stake-driver is at it in his favorite meadow. June 20, 1852.
The pitchers of the comandra seeds are conspicuous. June 20, 1853
Meadow-sweet out, probably yesterday. It is an agreeable, unpretending flower. June 20, 1853
Found two lilies open in the very shallow inlet of the meadow. Exquisitely beautiful, and unlike anything else that we have, is the first white lily just expanded in some shallow lagoon where the water is leaving it, – perfectly fresh and pure. June 20, 1853
There is also the exquisite beauty of the small sagittaria, which I find out, maybe a day or two, — three transparent crystalline white petals with a yellow eye and as many small purplish calyx-leaves, four or five inches above the same mud. June 20, 1853
Coming home at twelve, I see that the white lilies are nearly shut. June 20, 1853
Great purple fringed orchis. June 20, 1859.
The blue-eyed grass is shut up. When does it open? June 20, 1852
Some blue flags are quite a red purple, — dark wine color. June 20, 1852
Identified the Iris prismatica, Boston iris, with linear leaves and round stem. June 20, 1852
Dangle-berry well out, how long? June 20, 1858
Potentilla Norvegica, how long? June 20, 1858
Potentilla Norvegicea; apparently petals blown away. June 20, 1856
Late thalictrum apparently a day or two there. June 20, 1856
Archangelica apparently two or three days. June 20, 1856
Rudbeckia hirta budded. June 20, 1856
What that colored-flowered locust in Deacon Farrar's yard and house this side Lincoln? June 20, 1859
What is that sedge with a long beak, some time out of bloom, now two feet high, common just north of new stone bridge? June 20, 1858
Those great greenish-white puffs on the panicled andromeda are now decaying. June 20, 1853
On the swamp-pink they are solid. June 20, 1853
Swamp-pink out apparently two or three days at Clamshell Ditch. June 20, 1856
The bosky bank shows bright roses from its green recesses; the small white flowers of the panicled andromeda. June 20, 1853
Some wild roses, so pale now in the twilight that they look exactly like great blackberry blossoms. I think these would look so at midday. June 20, 1853
The bullfrogs begin about 8.30. They lie at their length on the surface amid the pads. June 20, 1853
At night bullfrogs lie on the pads and answer to one another all over North America; undoubtedly there is an incessant and uninterrupted chain of sound, troomp, troomp, troomp, from the Atlantic to the Pacific June 20, 1852
I touched one’s nose with my finger, and he only gave a sudden froggish belch and moved a foot or two off. June 20, 1853
Now they are fixed and imperturbable like the Sphinx, and now they go off with short, squatty leaps over the spatter-dock, on the irruption of the least idea. June 20, 1852
The moon full. June 20, 1853
Walking amid the bushes and the ferns just after moonrise, I am refreshed with many sweet scents which I cannot trace to their source. June 20, 1853
Perhaps there is no more beautiful scene than that on the North River seen from the rock this side the hemlocks. June 20, 1853.
As we look up-stream, we see a crescent-shaped lake completely embosomed in the forest. June 20, 1853
There is nothing to be seen but the smooth black mirror of the water, on which there is now the slightest discernible bluish mist, a foot high, and thick set alders and willows and the green woods without an interstice sloping steeply upward from its very surface, like the sides of a bowl. June 20, 1853
The river is here for half a mile completely shut in by the forest. June 20, 1853
One hemlock, which the current has undermined, has fallen over till it lies parallel with the water, a foot or two above it and reaching two thirds across the stream, its extremity curving upward to the light, now dead. June 20, 1853
How the trees shoot! The tops of young pines toward the moon are covered with fine shoots some eighteen inches long. Will they grow much more this year? June 20, 1853
On our return, having reached the reach by Merrick’s pasture, we get the best view of the moon in the southeast, reflected in the water, on account of the length of the reach. June 20, 1853
There is a peculiarly soft, creamy light round the moon, now it is low in the sky. June 20, 1853
The creamy light about it is also perfectly reflected; the path of insects on the surface between us and the moon is lit up like fire. June 20, 1853
This is the most sultry night we have had. June 20, 1853
All windows and doors are open in the village and scarcely a lamp is lit. I pass many families sitting in their yards. June 20, 1853
Thee moon is low in the heavens. June 20, 1853
Something like the woodland sounds will be heard to echo through the leaves of a good book. Sometimes I hear the fresh emphatic note of the oven-bird, and am tempted to turn many pages. June 20, 1840
July 20, 2017
*****
See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau:
*****
June 20, 2017
More rain falls to-day than any day since March, if not this year. See note to June 17, 1860 ("A steady gentle rain here for several hours, and in the night again, the thunder, as yesterday, mostly forerunning or superficial to the shower. This the third day of thunder-showers in afternoon, though the 14th it did not rain here."); See also June 14, 1858 ("The river is raised surprisingly by the rain of the 12th. The Mill Brook has been over the Turnpike."); June 15, 1858 ("Rains steadily again, and we have had no clear weather since the 11th. The river is remarkably high, far higher than before, this year, and is rising."); June 17, 1859 ("Rain, especially heavy rain, raising the river in the night of the 17th."); June 17, 1859 ("Heavy rain, raising the river in the night.")
I see wood tortoises in the path; one feels full of eggs. See June 23, 1858 ("Take two eggs out of the oviduct of an E. insculpta, just run over in the road. ")
Coming home at twelve, I see that the white lilies are nearly shut. See July 1, 1852 ("After eating our luncheon I can not find one open anywhere for the rest of the day."); July 17, 1854 ("I think that I could tell when it was 12 o'clock within half an hour by the lilies.")
Perhaps there is no more beautiful scene than that on the North River seen from the rock this side the hemlocks. See March 29, 1853 ("A pleasant short voyage is that to the Leaning Hemlocks on the Assabet, just round the Island under Nawshawtuct Hill. The river here has in the course of ages gullied into the hill, at a curve, making a high and steep bank, on which a few hemlocks grow and overhang the deep, eddying basin. For as long as I can remember, one or more of these has always been slanting over the stream at various angles, being undermined by it, until one after another, from year to year, they fall in and are swept away. ")
I touched one’s nose with my finger. See April 18, 1858 ("Perchance you may now scratch its nose with your finger and examine it to your heart's content, for it is become as imperturbable as it was shy before. You conquer them by superior patience and immovableness; not by quickness, but by slowness; not by heat, but by coldness")
June 20, 2020
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, June 20
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 © 2009-2022
https://tinyurl.com/HDT20June
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