The year is in its manhood now.

June 15.

Tuesday. Silene Antirrhina, sleepy catch-fly, or snapdragon catch-fly, the ordinarily curled-up petals scarcely noticeable at the end of the large oval calyx. Gray says opening only by night or cloudy weather. Bigelow says probably nocturnal, for he never found it expanded by day. (I found it June 16th at 6 a. m. expanded, two of its flowers, — and they remained so for some hours, in my chamber.) 

By railroad near Badger's. 

Yesterday we smelt the sea strongly; the sea breeze alone made the day tolerable. 

This morning, a shower! The robin only sings the louder for it. He is inclined to sing in foul weather. 

To Clematis Brook, 1.30 p. m. Very warm. Now for a thin coat. This melting weather makes a stage in the year. 

The crickets creak louder and more steadily; the bullfrogs croak in earnest. 

The drouth begins. The dry z-ing of the locust is heard. 

The potatoes are of that height to stand up at night.

Bathing cannot be omitted. The conversation of all boys in the streets is whether they will or not or who will go in a-swimming, and how they will not tell their parents. You lie with open windows and hear the sounds in the streets.

The seringo sings now at noon on a post; has a light streak over eye.

The autumnal dandelion (Leontodon, or Apargia). Erigeron integrifolius of Bigelow (strigosus, i. e. narrow- leaved daisy fleabane, of Gray) very common, like a white aster. I will note such birds as I observe in this walk, beginning on the railroad causeway in middle of this hot day.

The chuckling warble of martins heard over the meadow, from a village box. The lark. 

The fields are blued with blue-eyed grass, — a slaty blue. The epilobium shows some color in its spikes. 

How rapidly new flowers unfold! as if Nature would get through her work too soon. One has as much as he can do to observe how flowers successively unfold.

It is a flowery revolution, to which but few attend. Hardly too much attention can be bestowed on flowers. We follow, we march after, the highest color; that is our flag, our standard, our "color." 

Flowers were made to be seen, not overlooked. Their bright colors imply eyes, spectators. 

There have been many flower men who have rambled the world over to see them. The flowers robbed from an Egyptian traveller were at length carefully boxed up and forwarded to Linnaeus, the man of flowers. 

The common, early cultivated red roses are certainly very handsome, so rich a color and so full of blossoms; you see why even blunderers have introduced them into their gardens. 

Ascending to pigeon-place plain, the reflection of the heat from the dead pine-needles and the boughs strewn about, combined with the dry, suffocating scent, is oppressive and reminds me of the first settlers of Concord.

The oven-bird, chewink, pine warbler (?), thrasher, swallows on the wire, cuckoo, phoebe, red eye, robin, veery. 

The maple-leaved viburnum is opening with a purplish tinge. 

Wood thrush. 

Is not that the Prunus obovata, which I find in fruit, a mere shrub, in Laurel Glen, with oval fruit and long pedicels in a raceme? And have I not mistaken the P. Virginiana, or northern red cherry, for this? 

Vide Virginiana and also vide the P. depressa. 

Golden and coppery reflections from a yellow dor-bug's coat of mail in the water. 

Is it a yellowbird or myrtle-bird? 

Huckleberry-bird. 

Walden is two inches above my last mark. It must be four or five feet, at least, higher than when I sounded it. 

Men are inclined to be amphibious, to sympathize with fishes, now. I desire to get wet and saturated with water. 

The North River, Assabet, by the old stone bridge, affords the best bathing-place I think of, — a pure sandy, uneven bottom, — with a swift current, a grassy bank, and overhanging maples, with transparent water, deep enough, where you can see every fish in it. Though you stand still, you feel the rippling current about you. 

First locust. 

The pea-wai. 

There is considerable pollen on the pond; more than last year, notwithstanding that all the white pines near the pond are gone and there are very few pitch. It must all come from the pitch pine, whose sterile blossoms are now dry and empty, for it is earlier than the white pine. Probably I have never observed it in the river because it is carried away by the current.

The umbellefl pyrola is just ready to bloom. 

Young robins, dark-speckled, and the pigeon woodpecker flies up from the ground and darts away. 

I forget that there are lichens at this season. 

The farmhouses under their shady trees (Baker's) look as if the inhabitants were taking their siesta at this hour. I pass it  in the rear, through the open pitch pine wood. 

Why does work go forward now? No scouring of tubs or cans now. The cat and all are gone to sleep, preparing for an early tea, excepting the indefatigable, never-resting hoers in the corn-field, who have carried a jug of molasses and water to the field and will wring their shirts to-night.

I shall ere long hear the horn blow for their early tea. The wife or the hired Irish woman steps to the door and blows the long tin horn, a cheering sound to the laborers in the field. 

The motive of the laborer should be not to get his living, to get a good job, but to perform well a certain work. 

A town must pay its engineers so well that they shall not feel that they are working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific ends. 

Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love, and pay him well. 

On Mt. Misery, panting with heat, looking down the river. The haze an hour ago reached to Wachusett; now it obscures it. 

Methinks there is a male and female shore to the river, one abrupt, the other flat and meadowy. Have not all streams this contrast more or less, on the one hand eating into the bank, on the other depositing their sediment? 

The year is in its manhood now. 

The very river looks warm, and there is none of that light celestial blue seen in far reaches in the spring. I see fields a mile distant reddened with sorrel. The very sight of distant water is refreshing, though a bluish steam appears to rest on it. 

Catbird. 

The waxwork is just in blossom and groves [of] hickories on the south of Mt. Misery. How refreshing the sound of the smallest waterfall in hot [weather]

I sit by that on Clematis Brook and listen to its music. The very sight of this half-stagnant pond-hole, drying up and leaving bare mud, with the pollywogs and turtles making off in it, is agreeable and encouraging to behold, as if it contained the seeds of life, the liquor rather, boiled down. The foulest water will bubble purely. 

They speak to our blood, even these stagnant, slimy pools. It, too, no doubt, has its falls nobler than Montmorenci, grander than Niagara, in the course of its circulations. 

Here is the primitive force of Egypt and the Nile, where the lotus grows. 

Some geraniums are quite rose-colored, others pale purplish-blue, others whitish. 

The blossom of the Zentago is rather sweet smelling.

Orobanche uniflora, sin gle-flowered broom-rape (Bigelow), [or] Aphyllon uniflorum, one-flowered cancer-root (Gray), grows by this brook-side, — a naked, low, bluish-white flower, even re minding you of the tobacco-pipe. 

Cattle walk along in a brook or ditch now for coolness, lashing their tails, and browse the edges; or they stand concealed for shade amid thick bushes. How perfectly acquainted they are with man, and never run from him! 

Thorn bushes appear to be just out of blossom. I have not observed them well. 

Woodchucks and squirrels are seen and heard in a walk. 

How much of a tortoise is shell! But little is gone with its spirit. It is well cleaned out, I trust. It is emptied of the reptile. It is not its exuviae. 

I hear the scream of a great hawk, sailing with a ragged wing against the high wood-side, apparently to scare his prey and so detect it, — r- shrill, harsh, fitted to excite terror in sparrows and to issue from his split and curved bill. I see his open bill the while against the sky. Spit with force from his mouth with an undulatory quaver imparted to it from his wings or motion as he flies. A hawk's ragged wing will grow whole again, but so will not a poet's. 

By half past five, robins more than before, crows, of course, and jays. 

Dogsbane is just ready to open. 

Swallows. 

It is pleasant walking through the June-grass (in Pleasant Meadow), so thin and offering but little obstruction. 

The nighthawk squeaks and booms. 

The Veratrum viride top is now a handsome green cluster, two feet by ten inches. 

Here also, at Well Meadow Head, I see the fringed purple orchis, unexpectedly beautiful, though a pale lilac purple, — a large spike of purple flowers. 

I find two, — the grandiflora of Bigelow and fimbriata of Gray. Bigelow thinks it the most beautiful of all the orchises. 

I am not prepared to say it is the most beautiful wild flower I have found this year. Why does it grow there only, far in a swamp, remote from public view? It is somewhat fragrant, reminding me of the lady's-slipper. 

Is it not significant that some rare and delicate and beautiful flowers should be found only in unfrequented wild swamps? There is the mould in which the orchis grows. Yet I am not sure but this is a fault in the flower. It is not quite perfect in all its parts. 

A beautiful flower must be simple, not spiked. It must have a fair stem and leaves. 

This stem is rather naked, and the leaves are for shade and moisture. It is fairest seen rising from amid brakes and hellebore, its lower part or rather naked stem concealed. 

Where the most beautiful wild-flowers grow, there man's spirit is fed, and poets grow. It cannot be high-colored, growing in the shade. Nature has taken no pains to exhibit [it], and few that bloom are ever seen by mortal eyes. 

The most striking and handsome large wild-flower of the year thus far that I have seen. 

Disturbed a company of tree-toads amid the bushes. They seemed to bewilder the passer by their croaking; when he went toward one, he was silent, and another sounded on the other side. 

The hickory leaves are fra grant as I brush past them. 

Quite a feast of strawberries on Fair Haven, — the upland strawberry. The largest and sweetest on sand. The first fruit. 

The night-warbler. 

There are few really cold springs. I go out of my way to go by the Boiling Spring. How few men can be believed when they say the spring is cold! There is one cold as the coldest well water. What a treasure is such a spring! Who divined it? 

The cistuses are all closed. Is it because of the heat, and will they be open in the morning? 

C. found common hound's-tongue (Cynoglossum officinale) by railroad. 

8 p. m. — On river. No moon. 

A deafening sound from the toads, and intermittingly from bullfrogs. What I have thought to be frogs prove to be toads, sitting by thousands along the shore and trilling short and loud, — not so long a quaver as in the spring, — and I have not heard them in those pools, now, indeed, mostly dried up, where I heard them in the spring. (I do not know what to think of my midsummer frog now.) 

The bullfrogs are very loud, of various degrees of baseness and sonorousness, answering each other across the river with two or three grunting croaks. They are not nearly so numerous as the toads. 

It is candle-light. The fishes leap. 

The meadows sparkle with the coppery light of fireflies. The evening star, multiplied by undulating water, is like bright sparks of fire continually ascending. 

The reflections of the trees are grandly indistinct.

There is a low mist slightly enlarging the river, through which the arches of the stone bridge are' just visible, as a vision. The mist is singularly bounded, collected here, while there is none there; close up to the bridge on one side and none on the other, depending apparently on currents of air. A dew in the air for it is, which in time will wet you through. 

See stars reflected in the bottom of our boat, it being a quarter full of water. There is a low crescent of northern light and shooting stars from time to time. 

(We go only from Channing's to the ash above the railroad.) I paddle with a bough, the Nile boatman's oar, which is rightly pliant, and you do not labor much. Some dogs bay. A sultry night.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 15, 1852

The drouth begins. The dry z-ing of the locust is heard. See June 14, 1853 ("Heard the first locust from amid the shrubs by the roadside. He comes with heat.")

The fields are blued with blue-eyed grass, — a slaty blue. See June 15, 1851 ("The blue-eyed grass, well named, looks up to heaven."); June 15, 1859 ("Blue-eyed grass at height.")

Methinks there is a male and female shore to the river, one abrupt, the other flat and meadowy.See 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") See also August 7, 1858 ("The most luxuriant groves of black willow are on the inside curves, —but rarely ever against a firm bank or hillside, the positive male shore. “); August 15, 1858 (“I notice the black willows . . . to see where they grow, distinguishing ten places. In seven instances they are on the concave or female side distinctly.”); July 5, 1859 ("The deepest part of the river is generally rather toward one side, especially where the stream is energetic. On a curve it is generally deepest on the inside bank, and the bank most upright.")

The year is in its manhood now. See June 11, 1853 ("In the sorrel-fields, also, what lately was the ruddy, rosy cheek of health, now that the sorrel is ripening and dying, has become the tanned and imbrowned cheek of manhood."); June 15, 1853 ("The rude health of the sorrel cheek has given place to the blush of clover.")

I see fields a mile distant reddened with sorrel. See  note to June 12, 1859 ("I am struck with the beauty of the sorrel now.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Wood Sorrel (Oxalis)


I see the fringed purple orchis, unexpectedly beautiful. See note to June 20, 1859 ("Great purple fringed orchis")  See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Fringed Orchids

Flowers were made to be seen, not overlooked. Their bright colors imply eyes, spectators. See August 22, 1852 ("Perhaps fruits are colored like the trillium berry and the scarlet thorn to attract birds to them.”); March 18, 1860 (“There is but one flower in bloom in the town, and this insect knows where to find it. . . .No doubt this flower, too, has learned to expect its winged visitor knocking at its door in the spring.”)

It is so cool a morning that for the first time I move into the entry to sit in the sun.

August 29

August 29, 2019

I hear in the street this morning a goldfinch sing part of a sweet strain.

It is so cool a morning that for the first time I move into the entry to sit in the sun. But in this cooler weather I feel as if the fruit of my summer were hardening and maturing a little, acquiring color and flavor like the corn and other fruits in the field. 

When the very earliest ripe grapes begin to be scented in the cool nights, then, too, the first cooler airs of autumn begin to waft my sweetness on the desert airs of summer. Now, too, poets nib their pens afresh. I scent their first-fruits in the cool evening air of the year. 

By the coolness the experience of the summer is condensed and matured, whether our fruits be pumpkins or grapes. 

Man, too, ripens with the grapes and apples. 

I find that the water-bugs (Gyrinus) keep amid the pads in open spaces along the sides of the river all day, and, at dark only, spread thence all over the river and gyrate rapidly. For food I see them eating or sucking at the wings and bodies of dead devil's-needles which fall on the water, making them too gyrate in a singular manner. If one gets any such food, the others pursue him for it. 

There was a remarkable red aurora all over the sky last night. 

P. M. — To Easterbrooks Country. 

The vernonia is one of the most conspicuous flowers now where it grows, — a very rich color. It is some what past its prime; perhaps about with the red eupatorium. 

Botrychium lunarioides now shows its fertile frond above the shorn stubble in low grounds, but not shedding pollen. 

See the two-leaved Solomon's-seal berries, many of them ripe; also some ripe mitchella berries, contrasting with their very fresh green leaves. 

White cohush berries, apparently in prime, and the arum fruit. The now drier and browner (purplish- brown) looking rabbit's clover, whose heads collected would make a soft bed, is an important feature in the landscape; pussies some call them; more puffed up than before. 

The thorn bushes are most sere and yellowish-brown bushes now. 

I see more snakes of late, methinks, both striped and the small green. 

The slate-colored spots or eyes — fungi — on several kinds of goldenrods are common now. 

The knife-shaped fruit of the ash has strewn the paths of late.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 29, 1859

It is so cool a morning that for the first time I move into the entry to sit in the sun. See August 29, 1854 ("It is so cool that we are inclined to stand round the kitchen fire . . .I enjoy the warmth of the sun now that the air is cool") See also September 4, 1860 ("It is cooler these days and nights, and I move into an eastern chamber in the morning, that I may sit in the sun"); September 17, 1858 (“Cooler weather now for two or three days, so that I am glad to sit in the sun on the east side of the house mornings.”); September 18, 1852("In the forenoons I move into a chamber on the east side of the house, and so follow the sun round.”)

The very earliest ripe grapes begin to be scented in the cool nights. See August 29, 1853 ("Walking down the street in the evening, I detect my neighbor’s ripening grapes by the scent twenty rods off."); August 27, 1859 ("The first notice I have that grapes are ripening is by the rich scent at evening from my own native vine against the house");August 30, 1853 ("Grapes are already ripe; I smell them first.");

Man, too, ripens with the grapes and apples.See November 14, 1853. ("October answers to that period in the life of man when . . . all his experience ripens into wisdom, but every root, branch, leaf of him glows with maturity. What he has been and done in his spring and summer appears. He bears his fruit".)

I see more snakes of late, methinks, both striped and the small green. See September 3, 1858 ("See a small striped snake, some fifteen or eighteen inches long, swallowing a toad"); September 13, 1858 (""Saw a striped snake run into the wall, and just before it disappeared heard a loud sound like a hiss") October 18, 1857 (" Snakes lie out now on sunny banks, amid the dry leaves, now as in spring. They are chiefly striped ones.")

There was a remarkable red aurora all over the sky last night. .See also Wikipedia (Solar Cycle 10 beginning in December 1855 and the Solar storm ( Carrington Event.) of September 1–2, 1859) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Northern Lights

So cool a morning 

that for the first time I move 

to sit in the sun.

For some reason I now remember the autumn

May 10

This Monday the streets are full of cattle being driven up-country, — cows and calves and colts. 

The rain is making the grass grow apace. It appears to stand upright, — its blades, — and you can almost see it grow.

For some reason I now remember the autumn, — the succory and the goldenrod. We remember autumn to best advantage in the spring; the finest aroma of it reaches us then. 

Are those the young keys of sugar maples that I see? 

The Canada (?) (N. Brooks's) plum in bloom, and a cherry tree. 

How closely the flower follows upon, if it does not precede, the leaf! The leaves are but calyx and escort to the flower. 

Some beds of clover wave. 

Some look out only for the main chance, and do not regard appearances nor manners; others — others regard these mainly. It is an immense difference. I feel it frequently. It is a theme I must dwell upon. 

There is an aurora borealis to-night, and I hear a snoring, praying sound from frogs in the river, baser and less ringing and sonorous than the dreamers.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 10, 1852

The streets are full of cattle being driven up-country, See April 30, 1860 ("Cattle begin to go up-country."); May 4, 1853 ("Cattle are going up country."); May 6, 1855 ("Road full of cattle going up country.”); May 7, 1856 ("For a week the road has been full of cattle going up country. "); May 8, 1854 ("I hear the voices of farmers driving their cows past to their up-country pastures now.");

We remember autumn to best advantage in the spring; the finest aroma of it reaches us then. See May 7, 1852 ("How full of reminiscence is any fragrance!"). Compare July 1, 1856 ("The air filled with a decaying musty scent and the z-ing of small locusts, I hear the distant sound of a flail, and thoughts of autumn occupy my mind, and the memory of past years.") July 19, 1851 ("Yesterday it was spring, and to-morrow it will be autumn. Where is the summer then?"); October 26, 1853 ("It is surprising how any reminiscence of a different season of the year affects us."); 

Are those the young keys of sugar maples that I see? See May 1, 1860 ("The sugar maple keys (or buds?) hang down one inch, quite."); May 29, 1854 (“The white maple keys have begun to fall and float down the stream like the wings of great insects.”)

The Canada (?) (N. Brooks's) plum in bloom, and a cherry tree. See May 10, 1855 ("Canada plum opens petals to-day and leafs. Domestic plum only leafs.”) and note to May 10, 1856 ("Mr. Prichard’s Canada plum will open as soon as it is fair weather. "); May 10, 1857 ("Cultivated cherry out. "); May 10, 1858 ("The northern wild red cherry by Everett's, apparently to-morrow.")

How closely the flower follows upon, if it does not precede, the leaf! See April 28, 1852 ("The spring flowers wait not to perfect their leaves before they expand their blossoms. The blossom in so many cases precedes the leaf; so with poetry? They flash out.") 

I hear a snoring, praying sound from frogs in the river, baser and less ringing and sonorous than the dreamers. See May 25, 1851 (“Now, at 8.30 o'clock P.M., I hear the dreaming of the frogs.”); June 13, 1851 ("The different frogs mark the seasons pretty well,- the peeping hyla, the dreaming frog, and the bullfrog." Also April 3, 1858 (“Sometimes the meadow will be almost still; then they will begin in earnest, and plainly excite one an other into a general snoring or eructation over a quarter of a mile of meadow.”); April 11, 1854 (“Hear a slight snoring of frogs on the bared meadows. Is it not the R. palustris? ”); April 15, 1855 ("That general tut tut tut tut, or snoring, of frogs on the shallow meadow heard first slightly the 5th.."); May 8, 1857 ("It is an evening for the soft-snoring, purring frogs (which I suspect to be Rana palustris)."); May 6, 1858 ("About 9 P. M. I went to the edge of the river to hear the frogs. It was a warm and moist, rather foggy evening, and the air full of the ring of the toad, the peep of the hylodes, and the low growling croak or stertoration of the Rana palustris. . . . There was a universal snoring of the R. palustris all up and down the river on each side, . . . It is a hard, dry, unmusical, fine watchman’s-rattle-like stertoration, swelling to a speedy conclusion.”)

May 10.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 10

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 ©  2009-2021

A rumor of geese.

January 28. 

White pine. Red pine.
January 28, 2018

Minott has a sharp ear for the note of any migrating bird. Though confined to his dooryard by the rheumatism, he commonly hears them sooner than the widest rambler. Maybe he listens all day for them, or they come and sing over his house, — report themselves to him and receive their season ticket. He is never at fault. If he says he heard such a bird, though sitting by his chimney-side, you may depend on it. He can swear through glass. He has not spoiled his ears by attending lectures and caucuses, etc. 

The other day the rumor went that a flock of geese had been seen flying north over Concord, midwinter as it was, by the almanac. I traced it to Minott, and yet I was compelled to doubt. I had it directly that he had heard them within a week. I saw him, – I made haste to him. His reputation was at stake. He said that he stood in his shed, – it was one of the late warm, muggy, April-like mornings, – when he heard one short but distinct honk of a goose. He went into the house, he took his cane, he exerted himself, or that sound imparted strength to him. Lame as he was, he went up on to the hill, – he had not done it for a year, — that he might hear all around. He saw nothing, but he heard the note again. It came from over the brook. It was a wild goose, he was sure of it. 

And hence the rumor spread and grew. He thought that the back of the winter was broken, — if it had any this year, — but he feared such a winter would kill him too. 

I was silent; I reflected; I drew into my mind all its members, like the tortoise; I abandoned myself to unseen guides. Suddenly the truth flashed on me, and I remembered that within a week I had heard of a box at the tavern, which had come by railroad express, containing three wild geese and directed to his neighbor over the brook. The-April-like morning had excited one so that he honked; and Minott's reputation acquired new lustre. 

He has a propensity to tell stories which you have no ears to hear, which you cut short and return unfinished upon him. 

I notice much cotton-like down attached to the long curled-up seed-vessels of the Epilobium angustifolium, such as I think I have seen used in some birds' nests. 

It has been spitting a little snow to-day, and we were uncertain whether it would increase or turn to rain. Coming through the village at 11 P.M., the sky is completely overcast, and the (perhaps thin) clouds are very distinctly pink or reddish, somewhat as if reflecting a distant fire, but this phenomenon is universal all round and overhead. I suspect there is a red aurora borealis behind.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 28, 1858

Minott has a sharp ear for the note of any migrating bird. See September 2, 1856 ("Minott, whose mind runs on them [pigeons] so much, but whose age and infirmities confine him to his wood-shed on the hillside, saw a small flock a fortnight ago.. . . One man's mind running on pigeons, will sit thus in the midst of a village, many of whose inhabitants never see nor dream of a pigeon except in the pot, and where even naturalists do not observe, and he, looking out with expectation and faith from morning till night, will surely see them.")

The other day the rumor went that a flock of geese had been seen flying north over Concord, See February 21, 1855 ("Can it be true, as is said, that geese have gone over Boston, probably yesterday? It is in the newspapers")

He thought that the back of the winter was broken, but he feared such a winter would kill him too. See  March 5, 1854 ("Channing, talking with Minott the other day about his health, said, " I suppose you 'd like to die now." "No," said Minott, "I 've toughed it through the winter, and I want to stay and hear the bluebirds once more.");  January 8, 1857 ("Minott says he has lived where he now does as much as sixty years. He has not been up in town for three years, on account of his rheumatism ");  February 20, 1857 ("Minott always sits in the corner behind the door, close to the stove, with commonly the cat by his side, often in his lap. Often he sits with his hat on"); September 30, 1857 ("Minott says he is seventy-five years old."); and note to October 4, 1851 ("Minott is, perhaps, the most poetical farmer — who most realizes to me the poetry of the farmer's life — that I know . . . He loves to walk in a swamp in windy weather and hear the wind groan through the pines.");

To the Assabet. Still no rain.

July 12.

July 12,  2012

I observed this morning a row of several dozen swallows perched on the telegraph-wire by the bridge, and ever and anon a part of them would launch forth as with one consent, circle a few moments over the water or meadow, and return to the wire again.

 2 p. m. — To the Assabet. Still no rain.

 The clouds, cumuli, lie in high piles along the southern horizon, glowing, downy, or cream-colored, broken into irregular summits in the form of bears erect, or demigods, or rocking stones, infant Herculeses; and still we think that from their darker bases a thunder-shower may issue.

The mower, perchance, cuts some plants which I have never seen in flower. 

I hear the toads still at night, together with bullfrogs, but not so universally nor loud as formerly. I go to walk at twilight, — at the same time that toads go to their walks, and are seen hopping about the sidewalks or the pump.

Now, a quarter after nine, as I walk along the river-bank, long after starlight, and perhaps an hour or more after sunset, I see some of those high-pillared clouds of the day, in the southwest, still reflecting a downy light from the regions of day, they are so high. It is a pleasing reminiscence of the day in the midst of the deepening shadows of the night.

As I sit on the river-bank beyond the ash tree there is an aurora, a low arc of a circle, in the north. The twilight ends to-night apparently about a quarter before ten. There is no moon.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 12, 1852

I hear the toads still at night, together with bullfrogs, but not so universally nor loud as formerly. See July 12, 1859 (“In the evening, the moon being about full, I paddle up the river to see the moonlight and hear the bullfrogs. The toads and the pebbly dont dont are most common.”) See also July 8, 1855 (“I am surprised at the number of large light-colored toads everywhere hopping over these dry and sandy fields. ”); June 15, 1860 (“ For some time I have not heard toads by day, and the hylodes appear to have done."); July 16, 1856 (“See several bullfrogs lying fully out on pads at 5 p. m. They trump well these nights.”);  July 17, 1852 (“As I walked by the river last evening, I heard no toads.”); July 17, 1856 (“I see many young toads hopping about on that bared ground amid the thin weeds, not more than five eighths to three quarters of an inch long.”);  July 17, 1860 ("Clean and handsome bullfrogs. . .sit imperturbable out on the stones all around the pond.”)

July 12. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, July 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 © 2009-2021