A Book of the Seasons: June 4. (leafy season; thin shade, the clear brightness of June, white clouds and blue sky, bird nests, dandelion seed, bullfrogs and crickets)

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

June 4

Now is the time to

observe the leaves so perfect

in color and form. 

June 4, 1854

In the washing breeze

the undersides of leaves flash

new light on the year.

June 4, 1854

Now black oak leaflets 

show a crimson edge on the

downy undersides.

June 4, 1855

Thin shade so open

that we see the shadow of

each fluttering leaf. 

June 4, 1860

June 4, 2021

These warm and dry days, which put spring far behind, the sound of the cricket at noon has a new value and significance, so serene and cool. It is the iced-cream of song. It is modulated shade.June 4, 1854

I notice to-day that most maple, birch, willow, alder, and elm leaves are fully expanded, but most oaks and hickories, ash trees, etc., are not quite. You may say that now, the leafy season has fairly commenced. June 4, 1860

The surface of the still water nowadays looking like dust at a little distance. Is it the down of the leaves blown off? June 4, 1854

Lint comes off on to clothes from the tender leaves, but it is clean dirt and all gone when you get home. June 4, 1855

Each under side of a leaf you strike leaves the mark of its lint on your clothes, but it is clean dirt and soon wears off. June 4, 1857

Great white-bosomed clouds, darker beneath, float through the cleared sky and are seen against the deliciously blue sky, such a sky as we have not had before. June 4, 1855

June 4, 2020

Now I observe the shadows of massive clouds still floating here and there in the peculiarly blue sky; which dark shadows on field and wood are the more remarkable by contrast with the light yellow-green foliage now, and when they rest on evergreens they are doubly dark, like dark rings about the eyes of June. June 4, 1855

In the washing breeze the lighter undersides [of leaves] begin to show, and a new light is flashed upon the year, lighting up and enlivening the landscape. June 4, 1854

Most trees now hold out many little twigs with two or three fully expanded leaves on it, between us and the sun, making already a grateful but thin shade, like a coarse sieve, so open that we see the fluttering of each leaf in its shadow. June 4,1860

Now is the time to observe the leaves, so fair in color and so perfect in form. June 4, 1854

Now various forms of oak leaves in sprout-lands, wet-glossy, as if newly painted green and varnished, attract me. June 4, 1854

The crimson velvety leafets of the black oak, showing also a crimson edge on the downy undersides, are beautiful as a flower. June 4, 1855

I stand over a sprig of choke-cherry, with fair and perfect glossy green obovate and serrate leaves, in the woods this p.m., as if it were a rare flower. June 4, 1854

In a week or more the twigs will have so extended themselves, and the number of fully expanded leaves be so increased, that the trees will look heavy and dark with foliage and the shadow be dark and opaque, - a gelid shade. Hazy, and mountains concealed. June 4,1860

The clear brightness of June was well represented yesterday by the buttercups (Ranunculus bulbosus) along the roadside. June 4,1860

The golden alexanders is called Zizia aurea. June 4, 1852

The cistus is out. June 4, 1852

Lupines in prime. June 4, 1852

The Canada snapdragon, that little blue flower that lasts so long, grows with the lupines under Fair Haven. June 4, 1852

The early chickweed with the star-shaped flower is common in fields now. June 4, 1852

The Linnaea borealis has grown an inch. June 4, 1855

Wintergreen has grown two inches. June 4, 1855

Cornus alternifolia well out, apparently three or four days. June 4, 1859

The birds sing at dawn. What sounds to be awakened by! If only our sleep, our dreams, are such as to harmonize with the song, the warbling of the birds, ushering in the day! They appear comparatively silent an hour or two later. June 4, 1852

In the woods I hear the tanager and chewink and red-eye. It is fairly summer, and mosquitoes begin to sting in earnest. June 4, 1855

The catbird sings less now, while its mate is sitting, or maybe taking care of her young, and probably this is the case with robins and birds generally. June 4,1860

Thus it is after the first important rain at this season. The song of birds is more lively and seems to have a new character; a new season has commenced. June 4, 1855

I hear that the nest of that marsh hawk which we saw on the 29th (q. v.) has since been found with five eggs in it. So that bird (male), whose mate was killed on the 16th of May, has since got a new mate and five eggs laid. June 4,1860

Found, on a hummock in the open swamp, in the midst of bushes, at the foot of a pitch pine, a nest about ten inches over, made of dry sedge and moss. I think it must have been a duck’s nest. June 4, 1856

In the high pasture behind Jacob Baker's, soon after coming out of the wood, I scare up a bay-wing. She runs several rods close to the ground through the thin grass, and then lurks behind tussocks, etc. The nest has four eggs, dull pinkish-white with brown spots; nest low in ground, of stubble lined with white horse hair. June 4, 1857

In that first apple tree at Wyman's an apparent hairy woodpecker's nest (from the size of the bird), about ten feet from ground. The bird darts away with a shrill, loud chirping of alarm, incessantly repeated, long before I get there, and keeps it up as long as I stay in the neighborhood. The young keep up an in cessant fine, breathing peep which can be heard across the road and is much increased when they hear you approach the hole, they evidently expecting the old bird. June 4, 1857

I now notice froth on the pitch and white pines. June 4, 1854

The clintonia is abundant there along by the foot of the hill, and in its prime. Look there for its berries. Commonly four leaves there, with an obtuse point, — the lady’s-slipper leaf not so rich, dark green and smooth, having several channels. June 4, 1853

In the clintonia swamp I hear a smart, brisk, loud and clear whistling warble, quite novel and remarkable, something like te chit a wit, te chit a wit, tchit a wit, tche tche. . . . I think it must be the Canada warbler June 4, 1855

See a warbler much like the black and white creeper  . . . It did not occur to me that it was the same till I could not find any other like this in the book.  June 4, 1855

Redstarts still very common in the Trillium Woods, , , Note tche, tche, tche vit, etc. I see some dark on the breast. June 4, 1855

Now there is a . . . departure of the warblers, on the expansion of the leaves and advent of yet warmer weather. The black-poll warblers (Sylvia striata) appear to have left, and some other warblers, if not generally, with this first clear and bright and warm, peculiarly June weather, immediately after the May rain. June 4, 1860

The Lycopodium dendroideum now shows fresh green tips like the hemlock. June 4, 1855

The great ferns are already two or three feet high in Hubbard’s shady swamp. June 4, 1853

Greenish puffs on panicled andromedas. June 4, 1855

Salix tristis is going to seed, showing some cotton; also some S. rostrate. June 4, 1857

The dandelions are now almost all gone to seed, and children may now see if "your mother wants you." June 4, 1852

I see the dandelions now generally gone to seed amid the grass —their downy spheres. June 4, 1855

The early potentilla is now erect in the June grass. June 4, 1857

There are now many potentillas ascendant. June 4, 1855

White clover out probably some days, also red as long. June 4, 1855

Poa compressa not quite out. June 4, 1859

Yellow-eyed grass, how long? June 4, 1859

The vetch just out by Turnpike, — dark violet purple. June 4, 1853

The bullfrog now begins to be heard at night regularly; has taken the place of the hylodes. June 4, 1853

One thing that chiefly distinguishes this season from three weeks ago is . . .the creak of crickets, which affects our thoughts so favorably, imparting its own serenity. It is time now to bring our philosophy out of doors. June 4, 1857

*****

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Reminiscence and Prompting

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Leaf-Out

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau. Summer

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The world can never be more beautiful than now.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Canada Warbler

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Bullfrog in Spring

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cricket in Spring

I think it must be the Canada Warbler? See May 28, 1860 ("Sylvia pardalina. It is a bright yellow beneath, with a broad black stripe along each side of the throat, becoming longish black marks crescent-wise on the fore part of the breast, leaving a distinct clear bright-yellow throat, and all the rest beneath bright-yellow; a distinct bright-yellow ring around eye; a dark bluish brown apparently all above; yellowish legs. Not shy; on the birches.")

The leafy season has fairly commenced.  See  May 27, 1853 ("A new season has commenced - summer - leafy June.”);  June 1, 1853 ("Summer begins now about a week past, with the expanded leaves, the shade and warm weather.")

Thin shade, like a coarse sieve, so open that we see the fluttering of each leaf in its shadow. See May 17, 1860 ("Standing in the meadow near the early aspen at the island, I hear the first fluttering of leaves, - a peculiar sound, at first unaccountable to me”); 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 29, 1857 ("For the first time this year I noticed the little shades produced by the foliage which had expanded in the rain."); June 2 ,1860 ("Not yet heavy masses of verdure, but a light openwork, the leaves being few and small yet, as regularly open as a sieve."); June 11, 1856 ("I observe and appreciate the shade, as it were the shadow of each particular leaf on the ground.")

And in the washing breeze the lighter under sides begin to show, and a new light is flashed upon the year, lighting up and enlivening the landscape. See June 11, 1860 (“I now first begin to notice the silvery under sides of the red maple and swamp white oak leaves, turned up by the wind”); June 14, 1852 (""There are various new reflections now of the light, viz. from the under sides of leaves (fresh and white) turned up by the wind.)

The surface of the still water nowadays looking like dust at a little distance. See May 27, 1859 "Now first I notice a linty dust on the surface of the dark river at the Hemlocks, evidently from the new and downy leaves. These expressions of the face of Nature are as constant and sure to recur as those of the eyes of maidens, from year to year, — sure to be repeated as long as time lasts. It is a new and peculiar season when this phenomenon is observed.")

The bullfrog now begins to be heard at night regularly; has taken the place of the hylodes. See May 10, 1858 ("At length, near Ball's Hill, I hear the first regular bullfrog's trump. . . . This sound, heard low and far off over meadows when the warmer hours have come, grandly inaugurates the summer.");  June 13, 1851 ("The different frogs mark the seasons pretty well,- the peeping hyla, the dreaming frog, and the bullfrog . . .The bullfrog belongs to summer.")

June 4, 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.

  April 7, 1853 

June 3   < <<<<<. June 4    >>>>>  June 5

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 4

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