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
There are but us three
the earth (with moon’s reflection)
the moon and myself.
The wood thrush -- singer
The Bidens Beckii
yellows the side of the river --
the yellowing year.
August 12, 2018
In the after-midnight hours the traveller’s sole companion is the moon . . . She is waging continual war with the clouds in his behalf. August 12, 1851
There are but us three, the moon, the earth which wears this jewel (the moon’s reflection) in her crown, and myself. August 12, 1851
How wholesome the taste of huckleberries, when now by moonlight I feel for them amid the bushes! August 12, 1851
It is only a little after 3 o’clock, and already there is evidence of morning in the sky. August 12, 1851
Now at very earliest dawn the nighthawk booms and the whip-poor-will sings. August 12, 1851
I hear . . . the pewee and the catbird and the vireo, red-eyed? August 12, 1851
Now at very earliest dawn the nighthawk booms and the whip-poor-will sings. August 12, 1851
I hear . . . the pewee and the catbird and the vireo, red-eyed? August 12, 1851
Have not heard a wood thrush since last week of July. August 12, 1854
I hear a wood thrush even now, long before sunrise, as in the heat of the day. August 12, 1851
The wood thrush, that beautiful singer, inviting the day once more to enter his pine woods. August 12, 1851
This and the last day or two very hot. August 12, 1853
Now at last, methinks, the most melting season of this year. August 12, 1853
This and the last day or two very hot. August 12, 1853
Now at last, methinks, the most melting season of this year. August 12, 1853
There is very little air over the water, and when I dip my head in it for coolness, I do not feel any coolness. August 12, 1853
I bathe at Hubbard's. The water is rather cool, comparatively. August 12, 1854
To-day there is an uncommonly strong wind, against which I row, yet in shirt-sleeves, trusting to sail back. August 12, 1854
To-day there is an uncommonly strong wind, against which I row, yet in shirt-sleeves, trusting to sail back. August 12, 1854
There are but few haymakers left in the meadows. August 12, 1854
The black willow hardly ceases to shed its down when it looks yellowish. August 12, 1860
The black willow hardly ceases to shed its down when it looks yellowish. August 12, 1860
See the blue herons opposite Fair Haven Hill, as if they had bred here. August 12, 1853.
I see-a hen-harrier (female) pursued by a red-wing, etc., circling low and far off over the meadow. She is a peculiar and distinct reddish brown on the body beneath. August 12, 1858
The note of the wood pewee is a prominent and common one now. You see old and young together. August 12, 1858
It is surprising how young birds, especially sparrows of all kinds, abound now. August12, 1858
And bobolinks and wood pewees and kingbirds.August12, 1858
I am surprised at the number of birds about me, — wood pewees, singing so sweetly on a pine; chickadees, uttering their phebe notes, apparently with their young too; the pine warbler, singing; robins, restless and peeping; and a Maryland yellow-throat, hopping within a bush closely. August 12, 1858
You now see and hear no red-wings along the river as in spring. August 12, 1853
I see goldfinches nowadays on the lanceolate thistles, apparently after the seeds. August 12, 1854
11 a. m. — To Hill. The Hypericum mutilum is well out at this hour. August 12, 1856
The sarothra — as well as small hypericums generally — has a lemon scent. August 12, 1856
The Bidens Beckii yellows the side of the river just below the Hubbard Path, but is hardly yet in fullest flower generally. August 12, 1854
Now the great sunflower’s golden disk is seen. August 12, 1851
It takes all the heat of the year to produce these yellow flowers. It is the 3 o'clock p. m. of the year when they begin to prevail, — when the earth has absorbed most heat, when melons ripen and early apples and peaches. It is already the yellowing year. August 12, 1854
Am surprised to see still a third species or variety of helianthus (which may have opened near August 1st, say only a week). Only the first flowers out. At edge of the last clearing south of spring. I cannot identify it. . . . The bruised leaves of these helianthuses are rather fragrant. . August 12, 1856.
It takes all the heat of the year to produce these yellow flowers. It is the 3 o'clock p. m. of the year when they begin to prevail, — when the earth has absorbed most heat, when melons ripen and early apples and peaches. It is already the yellowing year. August 12, 1854
Am surprised to see still a third species or variety of helianthus (which may have opened near August 1st, say only a week). Only the first flowers out. At edge of the last clearing south of spring. I cannot identify it. . . . The bruised leaves of these helianthuses are rather fragrant. . August 12, 1856.
Solidago bicolor, white goldenrod, apparently in good season. August 12, 1852
The Aster patens is very handsome by the side of Moore's Swamp on the bank, — large flowers, more or less purplish or violet August 12, 1856
The clethra is in prime. August 12, 1860
Gerardia purpurea, two or three days. August 12, 1856
Saw a Viola pedata blooming again. August 12, 1858
The Emerson children say that Aralia nudicaulis berries are good to eat. August 12, 1856
To Conantum by boat, berrying, with three ladies. August 12, 1853
Viburnum nudum berries generally green, but some, higher and more exposed, of a deep, fiery pink on one cheek and light green on the other, and a very few dark purple or without bloom, black already. I put a bunch with only two or three black ones in my hat, the rest pink or green. When I got home more than half were turned black, — and ripe !! August 12, 1854
Off Holden Woods a baffling counter wind as usual (when I return), but looking up-stream I see the great undulations extending into the calm from above, where the wind blows steadily. August 12, 1854
The wind is autumnal and at length compels me to put on my coat. August 12, 1854
Saw the primrose open at sundown. The corolla burst part way open and unfolded rapidly; the sepals flew back with a smart spring. In a minute or two the corolla was opened flat and seemed to rejoice in the cool, serene light and air. August 12, 1856
August 12, 2013
*****
August 12, 2013
June 1, 1852 ("The moving clouds are the drama of the moonlight nights.")
June 8, 1858 ("A red-wing and a kingbird are soon in pursuit of the hawk, which proves, I think, that she meddles with their nests or themselves.”)
July 5, 1852 ("Nature offers fruits now as well as flowers. We have become accustomed to the summer. It has acquired a certain eternity.")
July 5, 1856 ("The large evening-primrose below the foot of our garden . . freshly out in the cool of the evening at sundown, as if enjoying the serenity of the hour.”)The moon reflected
from the rippled surface like
a stream of dollars.
July 8, 1854
July 16, 1850 ("Many men walk by day; few walk by night. It is a very different season..")
July 31, 1859 ("See a blue heron several times to-day and yesterday. They must therefore breed not far off ")
August 2, 1854 (" I am compelled to stand to write where a soft, faint light from the western sky came in between two willows. Fields to-day sends me a specimen copy of my "Walden." It is to be published on the 12th inst.")
August 2, 1858 ("I see there what I take to be a marsh hawk of this year, hunting by itself. It has not learned to be very shy yet, so that we repeatedly get near it. What a rich brown bird! almost, methinks, with purple reflections.")
August 2, 1860 ("The black willow down is even yet still seen here and there on the water.")
August 3, 1852 ("The Hypericum Sarothra appears to be out. . . . Hypericum mutilum, probably last part of July. ")
August 4, 1856 ("Carried party a-berrying to Conantum in boat.")
August 4, 1860 ("Cloud, drifting cloud, alternate with moonlight all the rest of the night")
August 5, 1851 ("I am sobered by the moonlight. I bethink myself. It is like a cup of cold water to a thirsty man.")
Sobered by moonlight,
sensing my own existence,
who I am and where.
August 5, 1851 (You all alone, the moon all alone, overcoming with increased victory whole squadrons of clouds above the forests and the lakes and rivers anty the mountains. You cannot always calculate which one the moon will undertake next. ")
August 6, 1852 ("Summer gets to be an old story. Birds leave off singing, as flowers blossoming.")
August 6, 1852 ("The water in the river and pond is quite cool, and it is more bracing and invigorating to bathe, though less luxurious. Methinks the water cannot again be as warm as it has been.
August 6, 1854 ("The wind is very unsteady and flirts our sail about to this side and that.")
August 7, 1858 ("The sprightly kingbird glances and twitters above the glossy leaves of the swamp white oak. ")
August 8, 1858 ("Saw yesterday a this year’s (?) marsh hawk, female, flying low across the road near Hildreth’s. I took it to be a young bird, it came so near and looked so fresh. It is a fine rich-brown, full-breasted bird, with a long tail.")
August 9, 1856 ("The goldfinch twittering over. Does the last always utter his twitter when ascending? These are already feeding on the thistle seeds.")
August 10, 1853 ("What a moist, fertile heat now! I see naked viburnum berries beginning to turn. Their whiteness faintly blushing.")
August 10, 1854 ("The tinkling notes of goldfinches and bobolinks which we hear nowadays are of one character and peculiar to the season. They are nuts of sound, --ripened seeds of sound. It is the linking of ripened grains in Nature's basket. It is like the sparkle on water,-- sound produced by friction on the crisped air.")
August 11, 1856 ("A new sunflower at Wheeler's Bank, . . ., which I will call the tall rough sunflower")
August 11, 1858 ("Also the small rough sunflower (now abundant)")
August 11, 1858 (" I see of late a good many young sparrows (and old) of different species flitting about")
August 13, 1854 ("I see where the pasture thistles have apparently been picked to pieces (for their seeds? by the goldfinch?), and the seedless down strews the ground")
August 13, 1858 ("The broad-leaved helianthus on bank opposite Assabet Spring is not nearly out, though the H. divaricatus was abundantly out on the 11th")
August 13, 1858 ("The dullish-blue or lead-colored Viburnum dentatum berries are now seen, not long, overhanging the side of the river..")
August 14, 1854 ("To Hubbard Bath. . .Though yesterday was quite a hot day, I find by bathing that the river grows steadily cooler")
August 14, 1858 (The wood pewee, with its young, peculiarly common and prominent. "")
August 14, 1858 ("The goldfinch, a prevailing note, with variations into a fine song. . . . I have not been out early nor late, nor attended particularly to the birds. The more characteristic notes would appear to be the wood pewee’s and the goldfinch’s, with the squeal of young hawks.")
August 15, 1852 ("Birds fly in flocks")
August 15, 1852 (" I see a dense, compact flock of bobolinks going off in the air over a field. . . . This is an autumnal sight, that small flock of grown birds in the afternoon sky.")
August 15, 1852 ("Some naked viburnum berries are quite dark purple amid the red, while other bunches are wholly green yet. ")
August 15, 1854 (" Some birds, after they have ceased to sing by day, continue to sing faintly in the morning now as in spring. On the top of the Hill I see the goldfinch eating the seeds of the Canada thistle. I rarely approach a bed of them or other thistles nowadays but I hear the cool twitter of the goldfinch about it")
August 18, 1860 ("The note of the wood pewee sounds prominent of late.")
August 19, 1851 ("Small rough sunflower by side of road between canoe birch and White Pond, — Helianthus divaricatus")
August 19, 1851 ("The fragrance of the clethra fills the air by water sides.")
August 19, 1852 ("The small fruits of most plants are now generally ripe or ripening, and this is coincident with the flying in flocks of such young birds now grown as feed on them")
August 19, 1853 ("A great reddish-brown marsh hawk circling over the meadow there")
August 19, 1853 ("Flocks of bobolinks go tinkling along about the low willows, and swallows twitter, and a kingbird hovers almost stationary in the air, a foot above the water.”)
August 19, 1856 (".I see Hypericum Canadense and mutilum abundantly open at 3 P. M. . . The small hypericums have a peculiar smart, somewhat lemon-like fragrance, but bee-like")
August 19, 1858 ("Blue herons, which have bred or been bred not far from us (plainly), are now at leisure, or are impelled to revisit our slow stream")
August 20, 1852 ("The purple gerardia is very beautiful now in green grass.")
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 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 24, 1851 ("Is that the naked viburnum, so common, with its white, red, then purple berries, in Hubbard's meadow?")
August 25, 1856 ("Why is the black willow so strictly confined to the bank of the river?")
August 28, 1859 ("You feel the less inclined to bathing this weather, and bathe from principle, when boys, who bathe for fun, omit it.")
August 30, 1856 ("The sarothra is now apparently in prime on the Great Fields, and comes near being open now, at 3 p. m. Bruised, it has the fragrance of sorrel and lemon, rather pungent or stinging, like a bee.")
August 31. I observe, on the willows on the east shore, the shadow of my boat and self and oars, upside down. August 31, 1852
September 21, 1856 ("[On top of Cliff, behind the big stump] is a great place for white goldenrod, now in its prime and swarming with honey-bees.")October 22, 1859 (" In the wood-path below the Cliffs I see perfectly fresh and fair Viola pedata flowers, as in the spring, though but few together. No flower by its second blooming more perfectly brings back the spring to us.")
August 12, 2013
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.
August 11 <<<<< August 12. >>>>> August 13
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 12.
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
https://tinyurl.com/HDT12August
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