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
Now is the time for
bright and breezy days blowing
off apple blossoms.
May 13. Apple in bloom. May 13, 1859
May 15. And buttercups and silvery cinquefoil and the first apple blossoms, and waving grass beginning to be tinged with sorrel, introduce us to a different season. May 15, 1853
May 17. I sit now on a rock on the west slope of Fair Haven orchard, an hour before sunset, this warm, almost sultry evening, the air filled with the sweetness of apple blossoms (this is blossom week) . . . The fragrance of the apple blossom reminds me of a pure and innocent and unsophisticated country girl bedecked for church. May 17, 1853
May 18. The blooming of the apple trees is becoming general. May 18, 1851
May 19. Apple in bloom; some, no doubt, earlier. May 19, 1856
May 19. There is a strong southwest wind after the rain, rather novel and agreeable, blowing off some apple blossoms. May 19, 1860
May 19. This occurrence of pretty strong southwest winds near the end of May, three weeks after the colder and stronger winds of March and April have died away, after the first heats and perhaps warm rain, when the apple trees and upland buttercups are in bloom, is an annual phenomenon. May 19, 1860
A strong southwest wind
blows off the apple blossoms
after the warm rain.
May 20. The peach bloom is now gone and the apple bloom come. May 20, 1853
May 20. Methinks we always have at this time those washing winds as now, when the choke-berry is in bloom, — bright and breezy days blowing off some apple blossoms. May 20, 1854
May 21. The earlier apple trees are in bloom, and resound with the hum of bees of all sizes and other insects. To sit under the first apple tree in blossom is to take another step into summer. The apple blossoms are so abundant and full, white tinged with red; a rich-scented Pomona fragrance, telling of heaps of apples in the autumn, perfectly innocent, wholesome, and delicious. May 21, 1852
May 21 And while I hear the bobolink strain dying away in the distance through the maples, I can [imagine] the falling apple blossoms which I do not see, as if they were his falling notes. May 21, 1853
May 22. Already the falling apple blossoms fill the air and spot the roads and fields. May 22, 1853
May 22. This is the first truly lively summer Sunday, what with lilacs, warm weather, waving rye, . . . falling apple blossoms, . . .and the wood pewee. May 22, 1853
First summer Sunday –
warmth, falling apple blossoms
and the wood pewee.
May 23. And buttercups and silvery cinquefoil, and the first apple blossoms, and waving grass beginning to be tinged with sorrel, introduce us to a different season. May 23, 1853
May 24. Apple out. May 24, 1857
May 25. It is blossom week with the apples. May 25, 1852
May 25. Steady fisherman's rain, without wind, straight down, flooding the ground and spattering on it, beating off the apple blossoms. May 25, 1853
May 26. The air is full of the odor of apple blossoms. May 26, 1852
May 27.
The road is white with
the apple blossoms fallen
off, as with snowflakes.
May 27. This is blossom week, beginning last Sunday (the 24th). May 27, 1857
May 28. Rain again in the night, and this forenoon, more or less. In some places the ground is strewn with apple blossoms, quite concealing it, as white and thick as if a snow-storm had occurred. May 28, 1857
May 28. The apple bloom is very rich now. May 28, 1855
May 30. The apple trees are about out of blossom. It is but a week they last. May 30, 1852
May 30. George Melvin said yesterday that he was still grafting, and that there had been a great blow on the apple trees this year, and that the blossoms had held on unusually long. I suggested that it might be because we had not had so much wind as usual. May 30, 1860
June 1. A very windy day, the third, drowning the notes of birds, scattering the remaining apple blossoms. June 1, 1855
June 1. I hear the note of a bobolink concealed in the top of an apple tree behind me. . . . [T]he meadow is all bespattered with melody. His notes fall with the apple blossoms in the orchard. June 1, 1857
June 2. The dried brown petals of apple blossoms spot the sod in pastures. June 2, 1852
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Apple Blossom Time
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 © 2009-2024
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