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
At a little distance
we should see all the colors.
We -- in a rainbow.
August 9, 1851
Dim bluish outline
of the Green Mountains in the
clear red evening sky.
On the horizon
local cloud of the mountain --
isle in sunset sky.
August 9, 2017
August 9, 2023
I spend the forenoon in my chamber, writing or arranging my papers, and in the afternoon I walk forth into the fields and woods. August 9, 1853
I turn aside, perchance, into some withdrawn, untrodden swamp, and find these blueberries, large and fair, awaiting me in inexhaustible abundance. August 9, 1853
I taste and am strengthened. August 9, 1853
This is the season of small fruits. I trust, too, that I am maturing some small fruit as palatable in these months, which will communicate my flavor to my kind. August 9, 1853
Now the earliest apples begin to be ripe, but none are so good to eat as some to smell. August 9, 1851
Now the earliest apples begin to be ripe, but none are so good to eat as some to smell. August 9, 1851
I see under the railroad bridge a mass of meadow which lodged there last spring, not revealed till this low water. August 9, 1859
How fatally the season is advanced toward the fall! August 9, 1853
The Hieracium Canadense is out and is abundant at Peter's well. August 9, 1853
Edith Emerson gives me an Asclepias tuberosa from Naushon, which she thinks is now in its prime there. August 9, 1858
What I have called Aster corymbosus out a day, above Hemlocks. August 9, 1856
What I have called Aster corymbosus out a day, above Hemlocks. August 9, 1856
I also find one or two heads of the liatris. It has the aspect of a Canada thistle at a little distance. August 9, 1853
There is much yellow beside now in the fields. August 9, 1853
How beautiful now the early goldenrods (Solidago stricta), rising above the wiry grass . . .not solid yellow like the sunflower, but little pyramidal or sheaf like golden clouds or mists, supported by almost invisible leafy columns, which wave in the wind. August 9, 1853
They give
a very indefinite but rich, mellow, and golden aspect to the field. August 9, 1853
Again I am surprised to see the Apocynum cannabinum close to the rock at the Island. August 9, 1856
The Trichostema dichotomum is quite beautiful now in the cool of the morning. August 9, 1851
Among the pines and birches I hear the invisible locust. August 9, 1851
I see the blackbirds flying in flocks (which did not when I went away July 20th) and hear the shrilling of my alder locust. August 9, 1857
I saw the tortoises shedding their scales a week ago. Many of the scales two-thirds off, turned up all around. August 9, 1859
I scare up a couple of wood ducks separately, undoubtedly birds bred and dispersed about here. The rise of the river attracts them. August 9, 1856
The notes of the wood pewee and warbling vireo are more prominent of late, and of the goldfinch twittering over. 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 9, 1856.
Edward Bartlett shows me this morning a nest which he found yesterday. . . .The eggs were five, pure white or with a faint bluish-green tinge, just begun to be developed. August 9, 1858
The goldfinch nest of this forenoon is saddled on a horizontal twig of an apple, some seven feet from ground and one third of an inch in diameter, supported on one side by a yet smaller branch, also slightly attached to another small branch. It measures three and one half inches from outside to outside, one and three quarters inside, two and one half from top to bottom, or to a little below the twig, and one and one half inside. It is a very compact, thick, and warmly lined nest, slightly incurving on the edge within. . . .This nest shows a good deal of art. August 9, 1858
I did not see the bird. It is but little you learn of a bird in this irregular way, — having its nest and eggs shown you. How much more suggestive the sight of the goldfinch going of on a jaunt over the hills, twittering to its plainer consort by its side! August 9, 1858
It rained again and again with very vivid lightning, more copiously than ever, last night, and without long intervals all this day. August 9, 1856
Few, if any, can remember such a succession of thunder-storms merged into one long thunder-storm, lasting almost continuously (the storm does) two nights and two days. August 9, 1856
I see a black cloud in the northern horizon and hear the muttering of thunder, and make haste. August 9, 1851
Rowing home in haste
before a black approaching
storm from the northeast.
Before I have bathed and dressed, the gusts which precede the tempest are heard roaring in the woods, and the first black, gusty clouds have reached my zenith. August 9, 1851
Hastening toward town, I meet the rain at the edge of the wood, and take refuge under the thickest leaves, where not a drop reaches me, and, at the end of half an hour, the renewed singing of the birds alone advertises me that the rain has ceased, and it is only the dripping from the leaves which I hear in the woods. August 9, 1851
River is risen and fuller, and the weeds at bathing-place washed away somewhat. Fall to them. August 9, 1855
The water is cool to the bather after so much rain. August 9, 1856
I cast my eyes toward the dim bluish outline of the Green Mountains in the clear red evening sky. August 9, 1860
To my delight, I detect exactly over the summit of Saddleback Mountain, some sixty miles distant, its own little cloud shaped like a parasol and answering to that which caps ours. August 9, 1860
Hastening toward town, I meet the rain at the edge of the wood, and take refuge under the thickest leaves, where not a drop reaches me, and, at the end of half an hour, the renewed singing of the birds alone advertises me that the rain has ceased, and it is only the dripping from the leaves which I hear in the woods. August 9, 1851
River is risen and fuller, and the weeds at bathing-place washed away somewhat. Fall to them. August 9, 1855
The water is cool to the bather after so much rain. August 9, 1856
I cast my eyes toward the dim bluish outline of the Green Mountains in the clear red evening sky. August 9, 1860
To my delight, I detect exactly over the summit of Saddleback Mountain, some sixty miles distant, its own little cloud shaped like a parasol and answering to that which caps ours. August 9, 1860
It is a splendid sunset, a celestial light on all the land, so that all people come to their doors and windows to look on the grass and leaves and buildings and the sky, as the sun’s rays shine through the cloud and the falling rain we are, in fact, in a rainbow. At a little distance we should see all the colors. August 9, 1851
"Walden" published. August 9, 1854
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Liatris
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Blue-Curls
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Aromatic Herbs
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Goldfinch
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Eastern Wood Pewee
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Luxury of Bathing
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Western Sky
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Horizon
 |
| Trichostema dichotomum (blue-curl) |
April 12, 1859 ("I look again at the meadow-crust carried off by the ice. There is one by the railroad bridge, say three rods by one, covered with button-bushes and willows. ")
August 5, 1856 ("At the Assabet stone bridge, apparently freshly in flower, . . . apparently the Apocynum cannabinum var. hypericifolium (?).”)
August 6, 1860 ("These are the Green Mountains that we see, but there is no greenness, only a bluish mistiness; and all of Vermont is but a succession of parallel ranges of mountains.”) August 7, 1852 ("Sometimes we are completely within it, enveloped by it, and experience the realization of the child's wish")
August 7, 1853 (“The river is dark and smooth these days, reflecting no brightness but dark clouds, and the goldfinch is heard twittering over.”)
August 7, 1853 (“The river is dark and smooth these days, reflecting no brightness but dark clouds, and the goldfinch is heard twittering over.”)
August. 8, 1855 ("Blue-curls, how long? Not long.")
August 8, 1856 ("No sooner has one thunder-shower swept over and the sky begun to light up a little, than another darkens the west")August 10, 1854 ("The tinkling notes of goldfinches and bobolinks which we hear nowadays are of one character and peculiar to the season. . . .It is like the sparkle on water.")
August 17, 1851 ("The Trichostema dichotomum, — not only its bright blue flower above the sand, but its strong wormwood scent which belongs to the season, -- feed my spirit")
August 11, 1852 ("The autumnal ring of the alder locust.")
August 11, 1852 ("Aster corymbosus, path beyond Corner Spring and in Miles Swamp ")
August 11, 1852 ("Aster corymbosus, path beyond Corner Spring and in Miles Swamp ")
August 12, 1858 ("The note of the wood pewee is a prominent and common one now. You see old and young together")
August 13, 1853 ("Rowing home in haste before a black approaching storm from the northeast.")August 17, 1851 ("The Trichostema dichotomum, — not only its bright blue flower above the sand, but its strong wormwood scent which belongs to the season, -- feed my spirit")
August 18, 1860 ("The note of the wood pewee sounds prominent of late.”)
August 19, 1855 ("See painted tortoise shedding scales, half off and loose")August 28, 1856 ("A goldfinch twitters away from every thistle now, and soon returns to it when I am past. I see the ground strewn with the thistle-down they have scattered on every side")
August 29, 1857 ("R. W. E. says that he saw Asclepias tuberosa abundant and in bloom on Naushon last week.")
September 6, 1854 ("There is now approaching from the west one of the heaviest thunder-showers (apparently) and with the most incessant flashes that I remember to have seen. ")
September 7, 1857 ("I see a small round flock of birds, perhaps blackbirds, dart through the air, as thick as a charge of shot, — now comparatively thin, with regular intervals of sky be tween them, like the holes in the strainer of a watering-pot, now dense and dark, as if closing up their ranks when they roll over one another and stoop downward.")
September 9, 1852 ("Ah! the beauty of the liatris bud just bursting into bloom, the rich fiery rose-purple, like that of the sun at his rising. Some call it button snakeroot.")September 6, 1854 ("There is now approaching from the west one of the heaviest thunder-showers (apparently) and with the most incessant flashes that I remember to have seen. ")
September 7, 1857 ("I see a small round flock of birds, perhaps blackbirds, dart through the air, as thick as a charge of shot, — now comparatively thin, with regular intervals of sky be tween them, like the holes in the strainer of a watering-pot, now dense and dark, as if closing up their ranks when they roll over one another and stoop downward.")
September 24, 1854 (“These are the stages in the river fall... The water begins to be clear of weeds”)
November 12, 1852 (“I see a very distant, long, low dark-blue cloud in the northwest horizon beyond the mountains, and against this I see, apparently, a narrow white cloud resting on every mountain and conforming exactly to its outline”)
August 7, 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.
August 8 <<<<< August 9 >>>>> August 10.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 9
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/HDT09AUGUST
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