Monday, July 26, 2021

A Book of the Seasons: July 26 ( berries and young birds, dog-days, first locusts and asters, shorn fields, dark shadows, the afternoon of the year)

 


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


July 26, 2022

They are such fruits as
music, poetry, love, which
humanity bears.

July 26, 2014
Very sharp and regular
shapes like the points of bodkins--
dark tops of fir trees.

Dog-days, – sultry, sticky weather,  –now when the corn is topped out. July 26, 1853

Clouds without rain. July 26, 1853

Rains when it will. July 26, 1853

Dogdayish. July 26, 1859

The peculiarity of the stream is in a certain languid or stagnant smoothness of the water, and of the bordering woods in a dog-day density of shade reflected darkly in the water.  July 26, 1854

The fields reflect light quite to the edge of the stream. July 26, 1854


I observe this light reflected from the shorn fields, contrasting affectingly with the dark smooth Assabet, reflecting the now dark shadows of the woods. July 26, 1854


The fields reflect light 
quite to the edge of the dark
shadows of the woods. 


I notice to-day the first purplish aster, a pretty sizable one; may have been out a day or two, near the brook beyond Hubbard's Grove. July 26, 1853

The Hubbard aster may be the A. Tradescanti. July 26, 1856

The smaller purple fringed orchis has not quite filled out its spike. What a surprise to detect under the dark, damp, cavernous copse, where some wild beast might fitly prowl, this splendid flower, silently standing with all its eyes on you! It has a rich fragrance withal. July 26, 1853. 

I hear borne on the wind from far, mingling with the sound of the wind, the z-ing locust, scarcely like a distinct sound. July 26, 1854


I mark again the sound of crickets or locusts about alders, etc. about this time when the first asters open, which makes you fruitfully meditative, helps condense your thoughts, like the 
mel dews in the afternoon. July 26, 1853

This the afternoon of the year.  July 26, 1853

Saw one of the common wild roses (R. lucida?). July 26, 1853

How apt we are to be reminded of lateness, even before the year is half spent!   July 26, 1853

I reckon that about nine tenths of the flowers of the year have now blossomed. July 26, 1853

The swamp blackberry ripe in open ground. July 26, 1853. 

Alternate cornel berries  a day or two. July 26, 1854

They are such fruits as music, poetry, love, which humanity bears. July 26, 1853

Almost every bush now offers a wholesome and palatable diet to the wayfarer, 
  • large and dense clusters of Vaccinium vacillans, largest in most moist ground, sprinkled with the red ones not ripe; 
  • great high blueberries, some nearly as big as cranberries, of an agreeable acid; 
  • huckleberries of various kinds, some shining black, some dull-black, some blue; 
  • and low blackberries of two or more varieties. 
 July 26, 1854


The broods of birds just matured find thus plenty to eat. July 26, 1854 

Saw bay-wings and huckleberry-birds.  July 26, 1858  

The bobolinks are just beginning to fly in flocks, and I hear their link link. I see the young birds also, just able to get out of my way above the weeds and bushes of the low grounds their tails not grown out to steady them. July 26, 1853 

I see young larks fly pretty well before me. July 26, 1856

Lark, too seen now, four or five together, sing as of yore; also the goldfinch twitters over oftener. July 26, 1853. 

The note of the white-throated sparrow, a very inspiriting but almost wiry sound, was the first heard in the morning, and with this all the woods rang. This was the prevailing bird in the northern part of Maine. The Maine Woods July 26, 1857.  

The canoe implies a long antiquity in which its manufacture has been gradually perfected. It will ere long, perhaps, be ranked among the lost arts. July 26, 1857

We soon passed the island where I had camped four years before, and I recognized the very spot. . . As we were pushing away again, a white-headed eagle sailed over our heads. The Maine Woods July 26, 1857 

Here are many raspberries on the site of an old logging-camp, but not yet ripe. July 26, 1857. 

Today I see in various parts of the town the yellow butterflies in fleets in the road, on bare damp sand, twenty or more collected within a diameter of five or six inches in many places. July 26, 1854

At first, perhaps, you do not notice them, but, as you pass along, you disturb them, and the air is suddenly all alive with them fluttering over the road, and, when you are past, they soon settle down in a new place. July 26, 1854

Yellow butterflies
fluttering over the road –
the air is alive.

I distinguish more plainly than formerly the very sharp and regular dark tops of the fir trees, shaped like the points of bodkins. July 26, 1857

Now observe the darker shades, and especially the apple trees, square and round, in the northwest landscape. July 26, 1859

The sun's disk is seen round and red for a long distance above the horizon, through the thick but cloudless atmosphere, threatening heat, — hot, dry weather. 
July 26, 1856


July 26, 2019

Sun's disk round and red
seen well above horizon
through thick atmosphere.
The grandest picture in the world is the sunset sky. July 26, 1852

My interest in the sun and the moon, in the morning and the evening, compels me to solitude. July 26, 1852

Rain in the evening. July 26, 1853

At 10 p. m. I see high columns of fog, formed in the lowlands and lit by the moon, preparing to charge this higher ground. July 26, 1852

Drank up the last of my birch wine. It is an exceedingly grateful drink now, especially the aromatic, mead like, apparently checkerberry-flavored one, which on the whole I think must be the black birch. July 26, 1856

Arranged the hypericums in bottles this morning and watched their opening. The pod of the ellipticum, when cut, smells like a bee. July 26, 1856
 


July 26, 2019

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau:

July 26, 2013

July 14, 1852 ("See to-day for the first time this season fleets of yellow butterflies in compact assembly in the road.")
June 14, 1854 ("Harris's other kind, the dog-day cicada . . . He says it begins to be heard invariably at the beginning of dog-days; he (Harris) heard it for many years in succession with few exceptions on the 25th of July.")
July 16, 1851 ("The earliest corn begins to tassel out. The lark sings in the meadow; the very essence of the afternoon is in his strain. This is a New England sound.")
July 19, 1855 ("Young bobolinks; one of the first autumnalish notes. The early meadow aster out.")
July 19, 1856 ("Fleets of yellow butterflies on road.")
July 22, 1853 ("Yellow butterflies in the road.") July 23, 1860 ("The late rose is now in prime along the river, a pale rose-color but very delicate, keeping up the memory of roses.")
July 23, 1854 (" There is a peculiar light reflected from the shorn fields, as later in the fall, when rain and coolness have cleared the air.")
July 24, 1852 ("There is a short, fresh green on the shorn fields, the aftermath. When the first 
July 24, 1856 ("The small purple fringed orchis, apparently three or four days at least.")
crop of grass is off, and the aftermath springs, the year has passed its culmination ")
July 24, 1860 ("Many a field where the grass has been cut shows now a fresh and very lit-up light green as you look toward the sun.")


July 27, 1853
("The drought ceases with the dog-days.")
July 28, 1852 ("There is a yellowish light now from a low, tufted, yellowish, broad-leaved grass, in fields that have been mown.")
July 30 1852 (After midsummer we have a belated feeling")
July 31, 1853 ("I calculate that less than forty species of flowers known to me remain to blossom this year.")
July 31, 1855 ("Have observed the twittering over of goldfinches for a week.")
August, 19, 1853 ("The day is an epitome of the year.”)
August 19, 1856 ("The small hypericums have a peculiar smart, somewhat lemon-like fragrance, but bee-like.")
August 23, 1853 ("I am again struck by the perfect correspondence of a day — say an August day — and the year. I think that a perfect parallel may be drawn between the seasons of the day and of the year.”)
August 31, 1852 ("Evening is fairer than morning. Morning is full of promise and vigor. Evening is pensive. The serenity is far more remarkable to those who are on the water")
September 22, 1853 ("It took him a fortnight or three weeks to complete a canoe after he had got the materials ready. I was much struck by the method of this work, and the process deserves to be minutely described")
October 16, 1859 (“The ledum smells like a bee, — that peculiar scent they have.”)
November 30, 1858 ("music, poetry, beauty, and the mystery of life ”)


July 26, 2014

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.

 July 25    < <<<<<  July 26  >>>>>   July 27

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau ,  July 26
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





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