The sprayey note of toads now more than ever, after the rain.

May 31. 

Rained hard during the night.

May 31, 2020

At 6 P. M. the river has risen to half an inch below summer level, having been three to four inches below summer level yesterday morning. 

I hear the sprayey note of toads now more than ever, after the rain.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 31, 1860

I hear the sprayey note of toads now more than ever, after the rain. See May 31, 1858 ("Does not the voice of the toad along the river sound differently now from what it did a month ago? "); May 13, 1860 ("It is so warm that I hear the peculiar sprayey note of the toad generally at night."); May 16, 1853 ("Nature’appears to have passed a crisis. . . . The sprayey dream of the toad has a new sound."); May 19, 1854 ("I hear the sprayey-note frog now at sunset."); May 25, 1859 ("Hear within a day or two what I call the sprayey note of the toad, different and later than its early ring."); May 25, 1860 ("5 P.M. the toads ring loud and numerously, as if invigorated by this little moisture and coolness.”) See also June 13, 1851 ("The different frogs mark the seasons pretty well,- the peeping hyla, the dreaming frog, and the bullfrog.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Ring of Toads

May 31. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 31

I hear the sprayey 

note of toads more than ever –

now after the rain.

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