Friday, June 3, 2016

A Book of the Seasons: June 3.


 An east wind ruffles
the water and cools the air
wafting us homeward.

From a mountain-top
the shadows of clouds passing
over the landscape.
June 3, 1858


These the clear breezy
days of early June when the
leaves are young and few.



June 3, 2016





These are the clear breezy days of early June, when the leaves are young and few and the sorrel not yet in its prime. June 3, 1860

The roads now strewn with red maple seed. June 3, 1860

The foliage of deciduous trees is still rather yellow-green than green. June 3, 1860

The landscape is a vast amphitheatre rising to its rim in the horizon. June 3, 1850


The most imposing horizons are those which are seen from tops of hills rising out of a river valley. June 3, 1850

It was interesting to watch from that height the shadows of fair-weather clouds passing over the landscape. June 3, 1858

 On a mountain-top  . . . the shadows of clouds flitting over the landscape are a never-failing source of amusement. June 3, 1858

To see one man’s farm in the shadow of a cloud, — which perhaps he thought covered all the Northern States, — while his neighbor’s farm was in sunshine. June 3, 1858

The river at this time looks as large as the Hudson. June 3, 1850

On the pond we make bubbles  with our paddles on the smooth surface, in which little hemispherical cases we see ourselves and boat, small, black and distinct, with a fainter reflection on the opposite side of the bubble (head to head). June 3, 1854

I feel the suckers' nests with my paddle, but do not see them on account of the depth of the river. June 3, 1857

Conversed with John Downes, who is connected with the Coast Survey, is printing tables for astronomical, geodesic, and other uses. He tells me that he once saw the common sucker in numbers piling up stones as big as his fist (like the piles which I have seen), taking them up or moving them with their mouths. June 3, 1851

Many small devil's-needles, like shad-flies, in bushes. June 3, 1857

Early potatoes are being hoed. June 3, 1857

The gardener is killing the piper grass. June 3, 1857

Caraway in garden apparently three days out. June 3, 1855

Saw the Uvularia perfoliata, perfoliate bellwort, in Worcester near the hill; an abundance of mountain laurel on the hills, now budded to blossom and the fresh lighter growth contrasting with the dark green; an abundance of very large checkerberries, or partridge berries, as Bigelow calls them, on Hasnebumskit. June 3, 1851

A large yellow butterfly . . . Pale-yellow, the front wings crossed by three or four black bars; rear, or outer edge, of all wings widely bordered with black, and some yellow behind it; a short black tail to each hind one, with two blue spots in front of two red-brown ones on the tail. June 3, 1859

The racemed andromeda (Leucothoe) has been partly killed, — the extremities of the twigs, — so that its racemes are imperfect, the lower parts only green. It is not quite out; probably is later for this injury. June 3, 1857

The ground of the cedar swamp, where it has been burnt over and sprouts, etc., have sprung up again, is covered with the Marchantia polymorpha. Now shows its starlike or umbrella-shaped fertile flowers and its shield-shaped sterile ones. It is a very rank and wild- looking vegetation, forming the cuticle of the swamp's foundation. June 3, 1857

Plucked a white lily pad with rounded sinus and lobes in Loring’s Pond, a variety. . June 3, 1856

The painted-cup is in its prime. It reddens the meadow, - Painted-Cup Meadow. It is a splendid show of brilliant scarlet, the color of the cardinal flower, and surpassing it in mass and profusion June 3, 1853

Here is a large meadow full of it, and yet very few in the town have ever seen it. June 3, 1853

I observed the grass waving to-day for the first time. June 3, 1851

Clover has blossomed. June 3, 1851

The nepeta by Deacon Brown's, a pretty blue flower. June 3, 1852

Arenaria lateriflora
well out, how long? June 3, 1859

Carex crinita out a good while. June 3, 1859

Carex lanuginosa, Smith's shore, green fruit. June 3, 1859

Carex pallescens
, Smith's shore (higher up bank), green fruit. June 3, 1859

Common rum cherry out yesterday, how long? June 3, 1859

Salix lucida out of bloom, but S. nigra still in bloom. June 3, 1857

The first Crataegus on Hill is in many instances done, while the second is not fairly or generally in bloom yet. June 3, 1857

The bass at the Island will not bloom this year. (?)June 3, 1857

The pitch pine at Hemlocks is in bloom . . . The sterile flowers are yellowish, while those of the P. resinosa are dark-purple. June 3, 1857

Hosmer says that seedling white birches do not grow larger than your arm, but cut them down and they spring up again and grow larger. . June 3, 1856

H. says he had a lot of pine in Sudbury, which being cut, shrub oak came up. He cut and burned and raised rye, and the next year (it being surrounded by pine woods on three sides) a dense growth of pine sprang up. June 3, 1856

I saw in Sudbury twenty-five nests of the new (cliff?) swallow under the eaves of a barn . . . Their nests, built side by side, looked somewhat like large hornets' nests, enough so to prove a sort of connection. June 3, 1850

A kingbird's nest in a fork of a black willow. June 3, 1854

[O]n the southwest side of Loring’s Pond, I observe a chickadee sitting quietly within a few feet. Suspecting a nest, I look and find it in a small hollow maple stump about five inches in diameter and two feet high. I look down about a foot and can just discern the eggs. . June 3, 1856

There are seven, making by their number an unusual figure as they lay in the nest, a sort of egg rosette, a circle around with one (or more) in the middle.  June 3, 1856

The eggs are a perfect oval, five eighths inch long, white with small reddish-brown or rusty spots, especially about larger end, partly developed. . June 3, 1856

Nighthawk, two eggs, fresh. June 3, 1859

Quail heard. June 3, 1859

 [Monadnock] At length, by 3 o'clock, the signs of dawn appear, and soon we hear the robin and the Fringilla hyemalis, -its prolonged jingle, -sitting on the top of a spruce, the chewink, and the wood thrush.  June 3, 1858

Lying up there at this season, when the nighthawk is most musical, reminded me of what I had noticed before, that this bird is crepuscular in its habits. It was heard by night only up to nine or ten o’clock and again just before dawn, and marked those periods or seasons like a clock.  June 3, 1858

Picked up a young wood tortoise, about an inch and a half long, but very orbicular. Its scales very distinct, and as usual very finely and distinctly sculptured, but there was no orange on it, . . . So the one of similar rounded form and size and with distinct scales but faint yellow spots on back must have been a young spotted turtle, I think, after all. June 3, 1856

A very warm day, without a breeze. June 3, 1854

There are various sweet scents in the air now. June 3, 1860

I perceive the meadow fragrance, and, along an arborvitae hedge, a very distinct fragrance like strawberries. June 3, 1860

Thee blossoms of the huckleberries and blueberries impart a sweet scent to the whole hillside. June 3, 1854

It was the golden senecio (Senecio aureus) which I plucked a week ago in a meadow in Wayland. The earliest, methinks, of the aster and autumnal-looking yellow flowers. Its bruised stems enchanted me with their indescribable sweet odor, like I cannot think what. June 3, 1851

To-day, having to seek a shady and the most airy place, at length we are glad when the east wind rises, ruffles the water and cools the air, and wafts us homeward. June 3, 1854

It has been a sultry day, and a slight thunder-shower, and now I see fireflies in the meadows at evening. June 3, 1852

No, you must be a common man, or at least travel as one, and then nobody will know that you are there or have been there. June 3, 1857



June 3, 2015





A Book of the Seasons
,  by Henry Thoreau, June 3 

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 © 2009-2024

A hermit thrush nests
here at the mouth of the gorge –
the stream rushing by.
zphx- 20170603

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