This is the first truly lively summer Sunday.

May 22. 

May 22, 2015

Sunday. 

To Nobscot with W. E. C. 

This is the third windy day following the two days’rain. A washing day, such as we always have at this season, methinks. 

The grass has sprung up as by magic since the rains. The birds are heard through the pleasant dashing wind, which enlivens everything. It is clear June, the first day of summer. 

The rye, which, when I last looked, was one foot high, is now three feet high and waving and tossing its heads in the wind. We ride by these bluish-green waving rye fields in the woods, as if an Indian juggler had made them spring up in a night. Why, the sickle and cradle will soon be taken up. Though I walk every day I am never prepared for this magical growth of the rye. I am advanced by whole months, as it were, into summer. 

Sorrel reddens the fields. Cows are preparing the milk for June butter. 

Already the falling apple blossoms fill the air and spot the roads and fields, and some are already turned dark with decay on the ground. 

With this warmth and wind the air is full of haze, such as we have not had before. 

The lilac is scented at every house. 

The wood pewee’s warm note is heard. 

We ride through warm, sandy shrub oak roads, where the Viola pedata blues the edge of the path, and the sand cherry and the choke-cherry whiten it. The crickets now first are generally heard. Houstonias whiten the fields and are now in their prime. The thorn bushes are full of bloom. 

Observed a large sassafras tree in bloom, – a rich lemon (?) yellow. 

Left our horse at the Howe tavern. The oldest date on the sign is “ D. H. 1716. ” An old woman, who had been a servant in the family and said she was ninety-one, said this was the first house built on the spot. 

Went on to Nobscot. Very warm in the woods, — and hear the hoarse note of the tanager and the sweet pe-a-wai, — but pleasantly breezy on the bare hilltops. Can’t see the mountains. 

Found an abundance of the Viola Muhlenbergii (debilis of Bigelow), a stalked violet, pale blue and bearded. 

The krigia out, a redder, more July, yellow than the dandelion; also a yellow Bethlehem-star and ribwort; and the mountain cranberry still here and there in blossom, though for the most part small berries formed. 

An abundance of saxifrage going to seed, and in their midst two or three looking densely white like the pearly everlasting — round dense white heads, apparently an abortion, an abnormal state, without stamens, etc., which I cannot find described. 

The pastures on this hill and its spurs are sprinkled profusely with thorny pyramidal apple scrubs, very thick and stubborn, first planted by the cows, then browsed by them and kept down stubborn and thorny for years, till, as they spread, their centre is protected and beyond reach and shoots up into a tree, giving a wine-glass form to the whole; and finally perchance the bottom disappears and cows come in to stand in the shade and rub against and redden the trunk. They must make fine dark shadows, these shrubs, when the sun is low; perfectly pyramidal, they are now, many of them. You see the cow-dung every where now with a hundred little trees springing up in it. Thus the cows create their own shade and food. 

This hill, Nobscot, is the summit of the island (?) or cape between the Assabet and Musketaquid — per haps the best point from which to view the Concord River valley. The Wayland hills bound it on the east; Berlin, Bolton, [and] Harvard hills on the west. The Sudbury meadows, seen here and there in distance, are of a peculiar bluish green. 

This is the first truly lively summer Sunday, what with lilacs, warm weather, waving rye, slight dusty sandy roads in some places, falling apple blossoms, etc., etc., and the wood pewee. 

The country people walk so quietly to church, and at five o’clock the farmer stands reading the newspaper while his cows go through the bars. 

I ought perhaps to have measured the great white oak by Howe’s. 

A remarkably thick white pine wood this side of Willis’s Pond ! !

...

Our quince blossomed yesterday. 

Saw many low blackberries in bloom to-day

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 22, 1853

The wood pewee’s warm note is heard. See May 22, 1854 ("I hear also pe-a-wee pe-a-wee, and then occasionally pee-yu, the first syllable in a different and higher key emphasized, — all very sweet and naive and innocent") See also May 17, 1853 ("I hear the wood pewee, — pe-a-wai. The heat of yesterday has brought him on."); May 17, 1854 ("Hear the wood pewee, the warm weather sound."). And see A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Wood-Pewee

Already the falling apple blossoms fill the air and spot the roads and fields. See May 17, 1853 ("The air filled with the sweetness of apple blossoms ( this is blossom week )"); May 20, 1854 ("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 25, 1852 (It is blossom week with the apples.”); May 27 1852 ("The road is white with the apple blossoms fallen off, as with snowflakes.”); June 1, 1855 ("A very windy day, . . . scattering the remaining apple blossoms.”)

Found an abundance of the Viola Muhlenbergii (debilis of Bigelow), a stalked violet, pale blue and bearded. See May 22, 1856 ("To Viola Muhlenbergii, which is abundantly out; how long? A small pale-blue flower growing in dense bunches, but in spots a little drier than the V. cucullata and blanda.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Violets

The pastures on this hill and its spurs are sprinkled profusely with thorny pyramidal apple scrubs, very thick and stubborn, first planted by the cows, then browsed by them and kept down stubborn and thorny for years, till, as they spread, their centre is protected and beyond reach and shoots up into a tree. See October 28, 1857 ("I see some shrubs which cattle have browsed for twenty years, keeping them down and compelling them to spread, until at last they are so broad they become their own fence and some interior shoot darts upward and bears its fruit. ")

Now is the time to observe the leaves

June 4.

Now is the time to observe the leaves, so fair in color and so perfect in form. I stand over a sprig of choke-cherry, with fair and perfect glossy green obovate and serrate leaves, in the woods this p.m., as if it were a rare flower.  Now various forms of oak leaves in sprout-lands, wet-glossy, as if newly painted green and varnished, attract me. 

June 4 2022

In the washing breeze the lighter undersides begin to show, and a new light is flashed upon the year, lighting up and enlivening the landscape.

The surface of the still water nowadays looking like dust at a little distance. Is it the down of the leaves blown off? I distinguish the different surfaces, — here broken into waves and sparkling with light, there, where covered with this linty dust or film, merely undulating without breaking, and there quite smooth and stagnant. I see in one place a sharp and distinct line, as if there were a cobweb on the water, between the clear and ruffled water and the stagnant filmy part, as if it were a slightly raised seam. 

These warm and dry days, which put spring far behind, the sound of the cricket at noon has a new value and significance, so serene and cool. It is the iced-cream of song. It is modulated shade.

I now notice froth on the pitch and white pines.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 4, 1854

Now is the time to observe the leaves, so fair in color and so perfect in form. See June 4, 1855 (“and now the crimson velvety leafets of the black oak, showing also a crimson edge on the downy under sides, are beautiful as a flower”); May 17, 1852 ("These young leaves have the beauty of flowers. “);May 17, 1853 (" Now is the time to admire the very young and tender leaves. ") See also June 4, 1860 ("You may say that now, the leafy season has fairly commenced.")

Now various forms of oak leaves in sprout-lands, wet-glossy, as if newly painted green and varnished, attract me. See June 4, 1855 ("And now the crimson velvety leafets of the black oak, showing also a crimson edge on the downy under sides, are beautiful as a flower, and the more salmon white oak. ")

The surface of the still water nowadays looking like dust at a little distance. Is it the down of the leaves blown off? See June 4, 1855 ("Lint comes off on to clothes from the tender leaves, but it is clean dirt and all gone when you get home "); June 4, 1857 ("Each under side of a leaf you strike leaves the mark of its lint on your clothes, but it is clean dirt and soon wears off."); June 6, 1855 (“You see . . . a dust-like tint on river, apparently from the young leaves and bud-scales, covering the waters, which begin to be smooth, and imparting a sense of depth.”. See also note to June 4, 1857 (“It is an agreeable phenomenon to me, as connected with the season and suggesting warm weather. I suppose it to be the down from the new leaves which so rapidly become smooth. . . . where the water slowly circles round in that great eddy, has the appearance of having been dusted over.”)

The sound of the cricket at noon has a new value and significance, so serene and cool. See June 4, 1857 ("One thing that chiefly distinguishes this season from three weeks ago is that fine serene undertone or earth-song . . . the creak of crickets, which affects our thoughts so favorably, imparting its own serenity.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cricket in Spring

June 4. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 4

Now is the time to

observe the leaves so perfect

in color and form. 

In the washing breeze

the undersides of leaves flash

new light on the year.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Now is the time to observe the leaves

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-540604

The birth of shadow

June 2

I look now from the yard to the waving and slightly glaucous-tinged June meadows, edged by the cool shade of shrubs and trees, — a waving shore of shady bays and promontories, — yet different from the August shades. The air has now begun to be filled with a bluish haze. 

June 2, 2018

These virgin shades of the year, when everything is tender, fresh and green, — how full of promise!  I would fain be present at the birth of shadow. It takes place with the first expansion of the leaves.

Are these not kingbird days, when, in clearer first June days full of light, this aerial, twittering bird flutters from willow to willow and swings on the twigs, showing his white-edged tail?

When we returned to our boat at 7 p. m., I noticed first, to my surprise, that the river was all alive with leaping fish, their heads seen continually darted above water, and they were large fish, too. Looking up I found that the whole atmosphere over the river was full of shad-flies. 

It was a great flight of ephemera. 

It was not so when I landed an hour and a half before. They extended as high as I could see. It was like a dense snow-storm, and all (with very few exceptions) flying as with one consent up the stream. Many coupled in the air, and many more with the bodies curved. They reached a mile or more from the stone-heaps to the mouth of the Assabet, but were densest where there were woods on both sides, whether they came out of them, or they made the air more still for them. Those I examined had three very long streamers behind, the two outside about an inch and a quarter. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 2, 1854

I would fain be present at the birth of shadow. See  May 17, 1852 ("The birch leaves are so small that you see the landscape through the tree, and they are like silvery and green spangles in the sun, fluttering about the tree.”); May 21, 1860 ("Noticed the shadows of apple trees yesterday”); May 24, 1860 (“I notice the first shadows of hickories, - not dense and dark shade, but open-latticed, a network of sun and shadow on the north sides of the trees.”); June 4, 1860  (" a grateful but thin shade, like a coarse sieve, so open that we see the fluttering of each leaf in its shadow.”); June 11, 1856 (“I observe and appreciate the shade, as it were the shadow of each particular leaf on the ground.”)

Are these not kingbird days, when, in clearer first June days full of light, this aerial, twittering bird flutters from willow to willow. See August 5, 1858 ("[Willows] resound still with the sprightly twitter of the kingbird, that aerial and spirited bird hovering over them, swallow-like, which loves best, methinks, to fly where the sky is reflected beneath him. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Kingbird

When we returned to our boat at 7 p. m . . .It was a great flight of ephemera. See June 8, 1856 (“my boat being by chance at the same place where it was in ’54, I noticed a great flight of ephemera”); June 9, 1854 ("7 p. m. — Up Assabet. . . .[T]here is an incessant sound made by the fishes leaping for their evening meal, dimpling the river like large drops as far as I can see . ..”); June 9, 1856 ("Again, about seven, the ephemera came out, in numbers as many as last night, ...; and the fishes leap as before. . . . “); June 15,1850(“I observe to-night, June 15th, the air over the river by the Leaning Hemlocks filled with myriads of newly fledged insects drifting and falling as it were like snow-flakes from the maples, only not so white. Now they drift up the stream, now down, while the river below is dimpled with the fishes rising to swallow the innumerable insects which have fallen [into] it and are struggling with it.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Insect Hatches in Spring (millers, perla, shad-flies or ephemera)

June 2. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 2

These virgin shades of

the year when everything is

tender fresh and green . . .

How full of promise!

I would fain be present at

the birth of shadow.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau. These virgin shades of the year 

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 © 2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-540602

Old Election Day

May 31

May 24, 2024

Old Election. Cold weather. Many go a-fishing to-day in earnest, and one gets forty pouts in river.

P. M. — To Miles Meadow by boat. A cold southeast wind. Blue-eyed grass, apparently in pretty good season.  

See a greater telltale, and this is the only one I have seen probably; distinguished by its size. It is very watchful, but not timid, allowing me to come quite near, while it stands on the lookout at the water's edge. It keeps nodding its head with an awkward jerk, and wades in the water to the middle of its yellow legs; goes off with a loud and sharp phe phe phe phe. It acts the part of the telltale, though there are no birds here, as if it were with a flock. Remarkable as a sentinel for other birds.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 31, 1854

Greater telltale. See September 14, 1854 ("A flock of thirteen tell tales, great yellow-legs, start up with their shrill whistle from the midst of the great Sudbury meadow, and away they sail in a flock..."). But see JJ Audubon ("It is true that the Tell-tale is quite loquacious enough; nay, you, reader, and I, may admit that it is a cunning and watchful bird, ever willing to admonish you or me, or any other person whom it may observe advancing towards it with no good intent, that it has all along watched us. But then, when one has observed the habits of this bird for a considerable time, in different situations, and when no other feathered creatures are in sight, he will be convinced that the Tell-tale merely intends by its cries to preserve itself, and not generously to warn others of their danger.")


Old Election Day. By the Provincial Charter and later the Constitution  of Massachusetts, General Election Day occurred on the last Wednesday of May. This was one of the traditional and principal holidays in Massachusetts. Election day changed in 1832 to the first Wednesday in January; after the change, Annual Training Day and Muster took place on old election day in May. Other festivities of election week continued as Anniversary Week.   See Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Volume 13  and Journal, May 27, 1857:

I hear the sound of fife and drum the other side of the village, and am reminded that it is May Training. Some thirty young men are marching in the streets in two straight sections, with each a very heavy and warm cap for the season on his head and a bright red stripe down the legs of his pantaloons, and at their head march two with white stripes down their pants, one beating a drum, the other blowing a fife...Thus they march and strut the better part of the day, going into the tavern two or three times, to abandon themselves to unconstrained positions out of sight, and at night they may be seen going home singly with swelling breasts.

~ Zphx



May 31. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 31

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

Early summer in Hubbard's Close

May 30

I see now green high blueberries, and gooseberries in Hubbard's Close, as well as shad-bush berries and strawberries.

May 30, 2016

In this dark, cellar-like maple swamp are scattered at pretty regular intervals tufts of green ferns, Osmunda cinnamomea,  above the dead brown leaves, broad, tapering fronds, curving over on every side from a compact centre, now three or four feet high. 

Wood frogs skipping over the dead leaves, whose color they resemble.

Arethusa bulbosa (Dragon's mouth)

I am surprised to find arethusas abundantly out in Hubbard's Close, maybe two or three days, though not yet at Arethusa Meadow, probably on account of the recent freshet. It is so leafless that it shoots up unexpectedly. It is all color, a little hook of purple flame projecting from the meadow into the air. Some are comparatively pale. This high-colored plant shoots up suddenly, all flower, in meadows where it is wet walking. A superb flower.

The pink is certainly one of the finest of our flowers and deserves the place it holds in my memory . It is now in its prime on the south side of the Heywood Peak , where it grows luxuriantly in dense rounded tufts or hemispheres , raying out on every side and presenting an even and regular surface of expanded flowers . I count in one such tuft , of an oval form twelve inches by eight , some three hundred fully open more than a and about three times as many buds , thousand in all . Some tufts consist wholly of white ones with a very faint tinge of pink . This flower is as ele- gant in form as in color , though it is not fragrant . It is associated in my mind with the first heats of sum- mer , or [ those ] which announce its near approach . Few plants are so worthy of cultivation . The shrub oak pin- cushion ( ? ) galls are larger , whiter , and less compact than those of the white oak . 

I find the linnæa, and budded, in Stow's Wood by Deep Cut. 

Sweet flag. Waxwork tomorrow.[June 1st]

I see my umbrella toadstool on the hillside has already pierced the ground . 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 30, 1854

Tufts of green ferns, Osmunda cinnamomea, See May 26, 1855 ("Cinnamon fern to-day"); May 28, 1858 ("The earliest cinnamon fern, apparently not long. "); May 31, 1857 (" Also the cinnamon fern grows in circles"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cinnamon Fern

Wood frog ~ See May 27, 1852 ("Catch a wood frog (Rana sylvatica), the color of a dead leaf. He croaks as I hold him, perfectly frog-like.”); September 12, 1857 ("I brought it close to my eye and examined it. It was very beautiful seen thus nearly, not the dull dead-leaf color which I had imagined, but its back was like burnished bronze . . . and reddish-orange soles to its delicate feet. There was a conspicuous dark-brown patch along the side of the head,"); October 16, 1857 ("I see a delicate pale brown-bronze wood frog. I think I can always take them up in my hand. They, too, vary in color,")   See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The  Wood Frog (Rana sylvatica)

Arethusas abundantly out in Hubbard's Close. See May 30, 1852 ("The bulbous arethusa, the most splendid, rich, and high-colored flower thus far, methinks, all flower and color, almost without leaves, and looking much larger than it is, and more conspicuous on account of its intense color. A flower of mark. It appeared two or three times as large as reality when it flashed upon me from the meadow."); See also May 28, 1853 ("The bulbous arethusa out a day or two — probably yesterday. Though in a measure prepared for it, still its beauty surprised me; it is by far the highest and richest color yet. Its intense color in the midst of the green meadow made it look twice as large as reality; it looks very foreign in the midst of our plants - its richly speckled, curled, and bearded lip."); May 29, 1856 (" Two Arethusa bulbosa at Hubbard’s Close apparently a day or two.”);.June 1, 1855 (“Arethusa out at Hubbard’s Close; say two or three days at a venture, there being considerable.“) 

Arethusa Meadow and  Hubbard's Close. See Ray Angelo, Thoreau Place Namess, "Arethusa Meadow" ("This is a meadow near the Sudbury River that Thoreau names after the Arethusa orchid (Arethusa bulbosa) that was not uncommon in Thoreau’s time but now has disappeared from Concord and most of southern New Englan. . .  From the Journal references . . .we know that there was a Viburnum hedge on the west side of the meadow, that it was not far too far from the Sudbury River, Hubbard’s Bathing Place, and from a brook (almost certainly Hubbard’s Brook), that it was large enough to have been subject to ditching by the owners, and that it was an open, wet, sphagnous (peaty) area -- habitat suitable for the orchid.") and "Hubbard's Close" ("This close -- a small piece of enclosed land -- refers to an area just east of Walden Street surrounded by elevated land on all but two narrow sides. It is within the current Town Forest and in Thoreau’s time was known as Fairyland. Thoreau’s reference to Cotton-grass (Eriophorum sp.), the Grass-pink orchid (Calopogon tuberosus) and Arethusa orchid (Arethusa bulbosa) in the Close indicates that it had an open, sphagnous area. Apparently there was a pool in the Close according to his Journal entry of April 7, 1855.. . .This land and much of the surrounding woods (“Ebby Hubbard’s Woods”) was owned by the farmer Ebenezer Hubbard (1782 - 1871) after whom Thoreau named this close. Thoreau refers to Brister’s Meadow only in 1852 twice. He began to use the name Hubbard’s Close in 1853. He associated the very uncommon wildflower Polygala cruciata with both these place names. These circumstances establish the equivalence of these two names.")

May 30. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 30 

The arethusa

shoots up unexpectedly –

it is all color.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The arethusa shoots up unexpectedly

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-540530

The season of grass, now everywhere green and luxuriant, vibrating with motion and light.

May 26

May 26, 2017

Rye four feet high. The luxuriant and rapid growth of this hardy and valuable grass is always surprising.  How genial must nature be to it! It makes the revolution of the seasons seem a rapid whirl. How quickly and densely it clothes the earth! 

Thus early it suggests the harvest and fall. At sight of this deep and dense field all vibrating with motion and light, looking into the mass of its pale-green culms, winter recedes many degrees in my memory. 

This the early queen of grasses with us. It always impresses us at this season with a sense of genialness and bountifulness. 

Grasses universally shoot up like grain now. Pastures look as if they were mowing-land. The season of grass, now everywhere green and luxuriant. 

The leaves have now grown so much that it is difficult to see the small birds in the tree-tops, and it is too late now to survey in woods conveniently. 

Some young red oaks have already grown eighteen inches, i. e. within a fortnight, before their leaves have two-thirds expanded. They have accomplished more than half their year's growth, as if, being held back by winter, their vegetative force had accumulated and now burst forth like a stream which has been dammed. They are properly called shoots.

Why is the downy Populus grandidentata so much later than the other ? The lint now begins to come off the young leaves. 

The annular eclipse of the sun this afternoon is invisible on account of the clouds. Yet it seems to have created a strong wind by lowering the temperature? 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 26, 1854

Rye four feet high. The luxuriant and rapid growth of this hardy and valuable grass is always surprising. May 14, 1853 ("The dark bluish-green of that rye, already beginning to wave,"); May 15, 1860 ("The springing sorrel, the expanding leafets, the already waving rye tell of June.");  May 22, 1853 ("The rye, which, when I last looked, was one foot high, is now three feet high and waving and tossing its heads in the wind . . .I am never prepared for this magical growth of the rye. I am advanced by whole months, as it were, into summer. . . . This is the first truly lively summer Sunday, what with lilacs, warm weather, waving rye, . . . falling apple blossoms, . . .and the wood pewee.")

They have accomplished more than half their year's growth, . . . They are properly called shoots. See May 15, 1859 ("I see an oak shoot (or sprout) already grown ten inches, when the buds of oaks and of most trees are but just burst generally. . . . Very properly these are called shoots."); May 25, 1853 ("Many do most of their growing for the year in a week or two at this season. They shoot - they spring - and the rest of the Year they harden and mature,")

May 26. See  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 26

Winter recedes in 

memory by  many degrees 

this season of grass

luxuriant growth  

vibrating motion and light

now everywhere green

such bountifulness

suggests the harvest and fall –

seasons' rapid whirl.

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The season of grass

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

tinyurl.com/hdt-540526

Remembering damp and early spring.

June 6. 

4.30 A. M. 

To Linnæa Woods. 

Famous place for tanagers. 

Considerable fog on river. Few sights more exhilarating than one of these banks of fog lying along a stream. 

The linnæa just out.

 

The aspect of the dry rocky hills already indicates the rapid revolution of the seasons. The spring, that early age of the world, following hard on the reign of water and the barren rocks yet dripping with it, is past. 

There is a growth confined to the damp and early spring.  How many plants have already dried - lichens and algae, which we can still remember, as if belonging to a former epoch, saxifrage, crowfoot, anemone, columbine, etc.

It is Lee's Cliff I am on. How dry and crisp the turf feels there now, not moist with melted snows, remembering, as it were, when it was the bottom of the sea.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 6, 1853

The linnæa just out. See note to June 9, 1851 ("Gathered the Linnæa borealis.")

The spring, that early age of the world, following hard on the reign of water and the barren rocks yet dripping with it, is past. See April 28, 1852 ("This may, perhaps, be nearly the order of the world's creation. Such were the first localities afforded for plants, water-bottoms, bare rocks, and scantily clad lands, and land recently bared of water. Thus we have in the spring of the year the spring of the world represented.")

To Mason's pasture.

The world now full of verdure and fragrance and the air comparatively clear (not yet the constant haze of the dog-days), through which the distant fields are seen, reddened with sorrel, and the meadows wet green, full of fresh grass, and the trees in their first beautiful, bright, untarnished and unspotted green.

May is the bursting into leaf and early flowering, with much coolness and wet and a few decidedly warm days, ushering in summer; June, verdure and growth with not intolerable, but agreeable, heat.

The fresh light green shoots of  the hemlocks have now grown half an inch or an inch, spotting the trees, contrasting with the dark green of last year's foliage. 

The young pitch pines in Mason's pasture are a glorious sight, now most of the shoots grown six inches, so soft and blue-green, nearly as wide as high. It is nature's front yard.

Nature is fair in proportion as the youth is pure. The heavens and the earth are one flower. The earth is the calyx, the heavens the corolla.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 5, 1853

The fresh light green shoots of the hemlocks. See June 11, 1859 ("Hemlocks are about at height of their beauty, with their fresh growth."); June 26, 1860 ("The hemlocks are too much grown now and are too dark a green to show the handsomest bead-work by contrast..")

The heavens and the earth are one flower. See August 6, 1852 ("We live, as it were, within the calyx of a flower."); May 16, 1854 ("The earth is all fragrant as one flower.”); May 16, 1852 ("The whole earth is fragrant as a bouquet held to your nose.")

Leafy June

May 27.

Cleared up last night after two and a half days' rain. This, with the two days' rain the 18th and 19th, makes our May rain -- and more rain either of the two than at any other time this spring. Coming out into the sun after this rain, with my thick clothes, I find it unexpectedly and oppressively warm. Yet the heat seems tempered by a certain moisture still lingering in the air. 

A new season has commenced - summer - leafy June. The elms begin to droop and are heavy with shade. The buttercups in the church-yard and on some hillsides are now looking more glossy and bright than ever after the rain. The vireo, too, is heard more than ever on the elms; his note begins to prevail.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 27, 1853

A new season has commenced - summer - leafy June. . . . See June 6, 1857 ("This is June, the month of grass and leaves.”) and note to May 27, 1855 (“The fields now begin to wear the aspect of June, their grass just beginning to wave.”)

The buttercups in the church-yard and on some hillsides are now looking more glossy and bright than ever after the rain. See May 30, 1857 ("Buttercups thickly spot the churchyard.");  June 2, 1852 (“Buttercups now spot the churchyard.”)

The vireo, too, is heard more than ever . . .See note to May 27, 1854 ("The red-eye is an indefatigable singer.”)

The coolness of the morning';the earth-song of the cricket.

June 17.

Thursday. 4 a. m. — To Cliffs.

No fog this morning.

At early dawn, the windows being open, I hear a steady, breathing, cricket-like sound from the chip-bird (?), ushering in the day. Perhaps these mornings are the most memorable in the year, — after a sultry night and before a sultry day, — when, especially, the morning is the most glorious season of the day, when its coolness is most refreshing and you enjoy the glory of the summer gilded or silvered with dews, without the torrid summer's sun or the obscuring haze.

The sound of the crickets at dawn after these first sultry nights seems like the dreaming of the earth still continued into the daylight. I love that early twilight hour when the crickets still creak right on with such dewy faith and promise, as if it were still night, — expressing the innocence of morning, — when the creak of the cricket is fresh and bedewed. While the creak of the cricket has that ambrosial sound, no crime can be committed. It buries Greece and Rome past resurrection.

The earth-song of the cricket ! Before Christianity was, it is. Health! health! health! is the burden of its song.

It is, of course, that man, refreshed with sleep, is thus innocent and healthy and hopeful. When we hear that sound of the crickets in the sod, the world is not so much with us.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 17, 1852

No fog this morning. Compare June 17, 1854 ("A cold fog."); June 17, 1860 ("Quite a fog this morning.")

Perhaps these mornings are the most memorable in the year . . . when, especially, the morning is the most glorious season of the day. See Walden (“The morning is the most memorable season of the day, the awakening hour. ”)

The earth-song of the cricket! See June 13, 1851 ("I listen to the ancient, familiar, immortal, dear cricket sound under all others, and as these cease I become aware of the general earth-song.”); July 14, 1851 (“It is a sound from within, not without.You cannot dispose of it by listening to it. In proportion as I am stilled I hear it. It reminds me that I am a denizen of the earth.”); and note to June 4, 1857 ("One thing that chiefly distinguishes this season from three weeks ago is that fine serene undertone or earth-song as we go by sunny banks and hillsides, the creak of crickets, which affects our thoughts so favorably, imparting its own serenity.")

First devil's-needles

June 6 

First devil's-needles in the air, and some smaller, bright-green ones on flowers.  

The earliest blueberries are now forming as greenberries. 

The wind already injures the just-expanded leaves, tearing them and making there turn black. I see the effects of recent frosts on the young oaks in hollows in the woods. The leaves are turned dry, black, and crisp. 

The side-flowering sandwort, an inconspicuous white flower like a chickweed.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 6, 1852 

First devil's-needles .See June 6, 1857 ("I see many great devil's-needles in an open wood — and for a day or two, — stationary on twigs, etc.,. . . They were evidently just escaped from the slough.”) See also June 8, 1855 (“A great many devil’s-needles in woods within a day or two."); June 11, 1860 (“See many small blue devil's-needles, but no mates with them.”); June 13, 1854 (“. . . my sail so idle that I count ten devil's-needles resting along it at once.”); June 19, 1860("The devil's-needles now abound in wood-paths and about the Ripple Lakes. “); June 23, 1853 (“Here are thousands of devil's-needles of all sizes hovering over the surface of this shallow pond in the woods”); July 16, 1854 (“Methinks there were most devil's-needles a month ago.”) and also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau.the Devil's-needle

The earliest blueberries are now forming as greenberries. See  June 7, 1854 (“I am surprised at the size of green berries, -- shad-bush, low blueberries, choke-cherries, etc., etc. It is but a step from flowers to fruit.”)

The side-flowering sandwort, an inconspicuous white flower. See June 3, 1859 ("Arenaria lateriflora well out, how long?"); June 5, 1855 ("Side-flowering sandwort apparently three days out in Clamshell flat meadow."); June 10, 1856 ("Side-flowering sandwort abundantly out this side of Dugan Spring."); June 13, 1858 ("Arenaria lateriflora, how long?") 

June 6.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 6.

First devil's-needles 

in the air and smaller ones

bright-green on flowers.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, First devil's-needles

 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 ©  2009-2025

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