May 19.
Up to about the 14th of May I watched the progress of the season very closely, — though not so carefully the earliest birds, – but since that date, both from poor health and multiplicity of objects, I have noted little but what fell under my observation.
The pear trees are in bloom before the apples.
The cherries appear to have been blasted by the winter.
The lilac has begun to blossom.
There was the first lightning we have noticed this year, last Sunday evening, and a thunder-storm in Walpole, N. H.
Lightning here this evening and an aurora in form of a segment of a circle.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 19, 1852
The first lightning we have noticed this year. See
May 9, 1859 ("The first thunder this afternoon.");
May 10, 1857(" A sudden shower with some thunder and lightning; the first.");
May 11, 1854 (“I suspect that summer weather may be always ushered in in a similar manner, — thunder-shower, rainbow, smooth water, and warm night”);
May 16, 1853 ("People stand at their doors in the warm evening, listening to the muttering of distant thunder and watching the forked lightning, now descending to the earth, now ascending to the clouds. This the first really warm day and thunder-shower");
May 20, 1856 ("So now is Nature’s grandest voice heard, and her sharpest flashes seen.");
May 29, 1857 ("A first regular summer thunder-shower, preceded by a rush of wind.")
An aurora in form of a segment of a circle. See
May 10, 1852 ("There is an aurora borealis to-night.");
June 16, 1852 ("There are northern lights, shooting high up withal.");July 12, 1852 ("As I sit on the river-bank beyond the ash tree there is an aurora, a low arc of a circle, in the north.") See also
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,
Northern Lights
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality.”
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021
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