ZtonePhruit: A Book of the Seasons: July 19 (morning fogs, smothering heat, butterflies and bees, raspberries, blackberries, cinnamon ferns, first signs of autumn as the seasons revolve)

Monday, July 19, 2021

A Book of the Seasons: July 19 (morning fogs, smothering heat, butterflies and bees, raspberries, blackberries, cinnamon ferns, first signs of autumn as the seasons revolve)

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 19.

The more smothering

furnace-like heats beginning

and the locust days.

July 19, 1854

Yesterday was spring,

to-morrow will be autumn.

Where is the summer?

July 19, 1851

July 19, 2018

The more smothering, furnace-like heats are beginning, and the locust days. July 19, 1854

This morning a fog and cool. July 19, 1853

There is a threatening cloud in the southwest. July 19, 1851

The wind rises more and more. The river and the pond are blacker than the threatening cloud in the south. July 19, 1851

The thunder mutters in the distance. The surface of the water is slightly rippled. The woods roar. But still no rain. July 19, 1851

A very dark cloud came up from the west this forenoon, - a dark curtain rolled up, with a grayish light beneath it, . . . and for a few minutes rain fell in a deluge, the gutters ran full, and there was a whirlpool at every grating. July 19, 1860

Here is the Canada thistle in bloom, visited by butterflies and bees. July 19, 1851

The butterflies have swarmed within these few days, especially about the milkweeds. July 19, 1851

Fleets of yellow butterflies on road. July 19, 1856

Examined painted tortoise eggs of June 10th. . . . The eggs are large and rather pointed, methinks at the larger end. The young are half developed. July 19, 1856.

I dug up three or four nests of the Emys insculpta and Sternothcerus odoratus . . . This great pile of dry sand in which the turtles now lay was recently fine particles swept down the swollen river. July 19, 1859.

It is remarkable how the river, while it may be encroaching on the bank on one side, preserves its ordinary breadth by filling up the other side. July 19, 1859

In Moore's Swamp I pluck cool, though not very sweet, large red raspberries in the shade. July 19, 1854.

Ripe blackberries are multiplying. July 19, 1851.

Apparently a catbird's nest in a shrub oak, lined with root-fibres, with three green-blue eggs. July 19, 1854.

In the maple swamp at Hubbard's Close, the great cinnamon ferns are very handsome now in tufts, falling over in handsome curves on every side. Some are a foot wide and raised up six feet long. July 19, 1854

The chestnuts on Pine Hill being in blossom reveals the rounded tops of the trees; separates them, and makes a richer and more varied scene. July 19, 1852

I am surprised to see at Walden a single Aster patens with a dozen flowers fully open a day or more. July 19, 1854

The early meadow aster out. July 19, 1855

It is the Hypericum ellipticum and Canadense (linear-leaved) whose red pods are noticed now. July 19, 1856

Beyond the bridge there is a goldenrod partially blossomed. July 19, 1851

First came the St. John's- wort and now the goldenrod to admonish us. July 19, 1851

I hear a cricket, too, under the blackberry vines, singing as in the fall. July 19, 1851

Yesterday it was spring, and to-morrow it will be autumn. Where is the summer then? July 19, 1851

To-day I met with the first orange flower of autumn. [T]his is the fruit of a dog-day sun. The year has but just produced it. July 19, 1851

Young bobolinks; one of the ﬁrst autumnalish notes. July 19, 1855.

Young song sparrows ﬂutter about. June 19, 1855

A wood thrush to-night. Veery within two or three days . July 19, 1854.

This rapid revolution of nature, even of nature in me, why should it hurry me? July 19, 1851

Methinks my seasons revolve more slowly than those of nature. July 19, 1851

If you take one side of a rock, and your companion another, it is enough to separate you sometimes for the rest of the ascent. July 19, 1858

***

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Painted Turtle (Emys picta)

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau The Wood Turtlw (Emys insculpta)

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Raspberry

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Blackberries

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Catbird nests

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wood Thrush

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Veery

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bobolink

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Bees

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Yellow Butterflies

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Milkweed

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Thistles

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cinnamon Fern

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

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, As the seasons revolve.

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

July

January 24, 1858 ("Between winter and summer there is, to my mind, an immeasurable interval.")
June 6, 1857 ("Each season is but an infinitesimal point. It no sooner comes than it is gone. It has no duration.")
July 2, 1854("The spring now seems far behind, yet I do not remember the interval.")
July 5, 1852 ("We have become accustomed to the summer. It has acquired a certain eternity")

July 14, 1852 ("See to-day for the first time this season fleets of yellow butterflies in compact assembly in the road”)
July 14, 1860 ("Perceive now the light-colored tops of chestnuts in bloom.")

July 15, 1854 ("There are many butterflies, yellow and red, about the Asclepias incarnata now.")

July 15, 1854 (“We seem to be passing, or to have passed, a dividing line between spring and autumn, and begin to descend the long slope toward winter. ”)
July 15, 1854 ("The stems and leaves of various asters and golden-rods, which ere long will reign along the way, begin to be conspicuous.")
July 15, 1859 ("Raspberries, in one swamp, are quite abundant and apparently at their height.")

July 16, 1851 ("I see the yellow butterflies now gathered in fleets in the road, and on the flowers of the milkweed")

July 16, 1851 ("St.John's-wort, one of the first of yellow flowers, begins to shine along the roadside.")

July 16, 1851 ("It is an air this afternoon that makes you indifferent to all things, - perfect summer. . . You know not heat nor cold. What season of the year is this?")

July 17, 1852 ("I pick raspberries dripping with rain beyond Sleepy Hollow.")
July 17, 1856 ("Going up the hillside . . . am surprised to see great plump ripe low blackberries. How important their acid (as well as currants) this warm weather!")

July 17, 1856 (“A very warm afternoon. Thermometer at 97° at the Hosmer Desert. I hear the early locust.”)

July 17, 1856 ("It is 5 p. m. The wood thrush begins to sing.")

July 18, 1851 ("I first hear the locust sing, so dry and piercing, by the side of the pine woods in the heat of the day.”)

July 18, 1852 (" Thus by a natural law a river, instead of flowing straight through its meadows, meanders from side to side and fertilizes this side or that. . . The river has its active and its passive side, its right and left breast.")
July 18, 1854 ("Methinks the asters and goldenrods begin, like the early ripening leaves, with midsummer heats.")

July 20, 1854 ("A muttering thunder-cloud in northwest gradually rising and with its advanced guard hiding in the sun and now and then darting forked lightning. The wind rising ominously also drives me home again.")

July 22, 1851 ("The season of morning fogs has arrived. . . .These are our fairest days, which are born in a fog.")

July 22, 1854 ("Fogs almost every morning now.")

July 24, 1853 ("The small linear leaved hypericum (H. Canadense) shows red capsules.")

July 24, 1852("When the first crop of grass is off, and the aftermath springs, the year has passed its culmination.")

July 26, 1853 ("I notice to-day the first purplish aster near the brook beyond Hubbard's Grove. I mark again the sound of crickets or locusts about this time when the first asters open . . . This the afternoon of the year. How apt we are to be reminded of lateness, even before the year is half spent!")

July 28, 1852 ("Goldenrod and asters have fairly begun; there are several kinds of each out.")

July 28, 1854 (“Methinks the season culminated about the middle of this month . . . and, having as it were attained the ridge of the summer, commenced to descend the long slope toward winter, the afternoon and down-hill of the year.”)

August 4, 1854 ("It is already fall in low swampy woods where the cinnamon fern prevails. There are the sight and scent of beginning decay.")

Aug ust 5, 1854 ("It is one long acclivity from winter to midsummer and another long declivity from midsummer to winter.")

August 19, 1851 ("If you are not out at the right instant, the summer may go by and you not see it.")

The seasons do not cease a moment to revolve

and therefore Nature rests no longer

at her culminating point

than at any other.

August 19, 1851

September 17, 1839 ("Nature never makes haste; her systems revolve at an even pace. The bud swells imperceptibly, without hurry or confusion, as though the short spring days were an eternity. Why, then, should man hasten as if anything less than eternity were allotted for the least deed? The wise man is restful, never restless or impatient. He each moment abides there where he is, as some walkers actually rest the whole body at each step"

December 5, 1859 ("Suddenly we have passed from Indian summer to winter.")

December 7, 1856 ("The winters come now as fast as snowflakes. It was summer, and now again it is winter").