The summer is begun sweet and spicy to the smell.

June 5.

To-night, June 5th, after a hot day, I hear the first peculiar summer breathing of the frogs.

Yesterday, when I walked to Goodman's Hill, it seemed to me that the atmosphere was never so full of fragrance and spicy odors. There is a great variety in the fragrance of the apple blossoms as well as their tints. Some are quite spicy. The air seemed filled with the odor of ripe strawberries, though it is quite too early for them. The earth was not only fragrant but sweet and spicy to the smell, reminding us of Arabian gales and what mariners tell of the spice islands. 

Silene caroliniana, (wild pink)

The first of June, when the lady’s-slipper and the wild pink have come out in sunny places on the hillsides, then the summer is begun according to the clock of the seasons.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 5, 1850

Yesterday, when I walked to Goodman's Hill. See June 3, 1850 ("I visited this afternoon (June 3d) Goodman's Hill in Sudbury, going through Lincoln over Sherman's Bridge and Round Hill, and returning through the Corner. It probably affords the best view of Concord River meadows of any hill")

 The earth was not only fragrant but sweet and spicy to the smell. See June 5, 1853 ("The world now full of verdure and fragrance and the air comparatively clear . . . through which the distant fields are seen, reddened with sorrel, and the meadows wet green.")

When the lady’s-slipper and the wild pink have come out in sunny places on the hillsides, then the summer is begun according to the clock of the seasons. See  June 5, 1856 ("Everywhere now in dry pitch pine woods stand the red lady’s-slippers over the red pine leaves on the forest floor, rejoicing in June, with their two broad curving green leaves."); April 25, 1859 ("This is the beginning of that season which, methinks, culminates with the buttercup and wild pink and Viola pedata")

The landscape is a vast amphitheatre rising to its rim in the horizon.

June 3.

I visited this afternoon (June 3d) Goodman's Hill in Sudbury, going through Lincoln over Sherman's Bridge and Round Hill, and returning through the Corner. It probably affords the best view of Concord River meadows of any hill. The horizon is very extensive as it is, and if the top were cleared so that you could get the western view, it would be one of the most extensive seen from any hill in the county. 

The most imposing horizons are those which are seen from tops of hills rising out of a river valley. The prospect even from a low hill has something majestic in it in such a case. The landscape is a vast amphitheatre rising to its rim in the horizon. 

There is a good view of Lincoln lying high up in among the hills. You see that it is the highest town hereabouts, and hence its fruit. 

The river at this time looks as large as the Hudson. I think that a river-valley town is much the handsomest and largest-featured, — like Concord and Lancaster, for instance, natural centres. 

Upon the hills of Bolton, again, the height of land between the Concord and Nashua, I have seen how the peach flourishes. 

Nobscot, too, is quite imposing as seen from the west side of Goodman's Hill. On the western side of a continuation of this hill is Wadsworth’s battle field.

Returning, I saw in Sudbury twenty-five nests of the new (cliff?) swallow under the eaves of a barn.

The republican or cliff swallow.
Their nests, built side by side, looked somewhat like large hornets' nests.

 They seemed particularly social and loquacious neighbors, though their voices are rather squeaking. Their nests, built side by side, looked somewhat like large hornets' nests, enough so to prove a sort of connection. Their activity, sociability, and chattiness make them fit pensioners and neighbors of man — summer companions — for the barn-yard.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 3, 1850

 The landscape is a vast amphitheatre rising to its rim in the horizon. See September 12, 1851 ("It is worth the while to see the mountains in the horizon once a day"); June 25, 1852 ("The earth appears like a vast saucer sloping upward to its sharp mountain rim."); July 27, 1852 ("How beautiful hills and vales, the whole surface of the earth a succession of these great cups, falling away from dry or rocky edges to gelid green meadows and water in the midst, where night already is setting in!"); August 2, 1852 ("In many moods it is cheering to look across hence to that blue rim of the earth, and be reminded of the invisible towns and communities, for the most part also unremembered, which lie in the further and deeper hollows between me and those hills."); August 5, 1852 (" From Smith's Hill beyond, there is as good a view of the mountains as from any place in our neighbor hood, because you look across the broad valley in which Concord lies first of all.");  March 18, 1858 ("When I get two thirds up the hill, I look round and am for the hundredth time surprised by the landscape of the river valley and the horizon with its distant blue scalloped rim.");March 28, 1858 ("From this hilltop I overlook,. . . this seemingly concave circle of earth, in the midst of which I was born and dwell, which in the northwest and southeast has a more distant blue rim to it,.") See also note to September 27, 1852 ("From Smith's Hill I looked toward the mountain line.")

Twenty-five nests of the new (cliff?) swallow under the eaves of a barn. See April 30, 1856 ("I was surprised by the great number of swallows—white-bellied and barn swallows and perhaps republican — flying round and round, or skimming very low over the meadow. . .There were a thousand or more of swallows, and I think that they had recently arrived together on their migration."); May 4, 1856 (“Among others, I see republican swallows flying over river at Island”); May 11, 1856 ("There are many swallows circling low over the river behind Monroe’s, — bank swallows, barn, republican, chimney, and white-bellied. These are all circling together a foot or two over the water, passing within ten or twelve feet of me in my boat."); May 20, 1858 (“Hundreds of swallows are now skimming close over the river. . .. There are bank, barn, cliff, and chimney swallows, all mingled together.”); May 20, 1858 (“The cliff swallow, then, is here.”); May 21, 1855 (“Is that plump blue-backed, rufous rumped swallow the cliff swallow, flying with barn swallows, etc., over the river?"); May 29, 1859 “The republican swallow at Hosmer's barn just begun to lay.”