The summer culminates.

June 21. 

It is so hot I 

have to lift my hat to let 

the air cool my head.  

June 21, 1853

the summer culminates

June 21, 2023

4.30 A.M.––Up river for lilies

No dew even where I keep my boat. The driest night yet, threatening the sultriest day. Yet I see big crystalline drops at the tips or the bases of the pontederia leaves. 

The few lilies begin to open about 5.

The nest of a brown thrasher with three eggs, on some green-briar, perfectly concealed by a grape vine running over it; eggs greenish brown; nest of dry sticks, lined with fibres of grape bark and with roots. Bird  scolded me much.

Carpet weed out. 

I have got a pan full of lilies open.

We have not had rain, except a mere sprinkling in the night of the 17th, since the 26th of May. 

P.M. To Conantum. 

The warmest day yet. For the last two days I have worn nothing about my neck. This change or putting off of clothing is, methinks, as good an evidence of the increasing warmth of the weather as meteorological instruments. 

I thought it was hot weather perchance when a month ago, I slept with a window wide open and laid aside a comfortable, but by and by I found that I had got two windows open, and to-night two windows and the door are far from enough. 

Hypericum perforatum just out.

This year the time when the locust was first heard was the time to put on summer clothes.

Early on the morning of the 18th the river felt lukewarm to my fingers when my paddle dipped deeper than usual. 

The galium with three small white petals (G. trifidum) has been out some time, and I find that erectish, broad-leaved, three-nerved, green-flowered one, perhaps G. circazans at Corner Spring.  

Peltandra Virginica, perhaps a week, for many of its flowers are effete and curved downward .

The Hypericum ellipticum by the riverside.

The only violets I notice nowadays are a few white lanceolate ones in the meadows.

The river has got down quite low, and the muddy shores are covered here and there with a sort of dark brown paper, the dried filaments of confervæ which filled the water. Now is their fall.

The bright little flowers of the Ranunculus reptans var filiformis are seen peeping forth between its interstices. 

Calopogon out. I think it surpasses the pogonia, though the latter is sometimes high colored and is of a handsome form;  but it is inclined to be pale ,is sometimes even white. 

Now see many bright red amelanchier berries and some purple or dark-blue ones amid them. They are mostly injured by insects or apparently pecked and deformed by birds, but, from the few perfectly sound and ripe I have eaten to-day, I should pronounce them superior to either blueberries or huckleberries. Those of the Botryapium have a soft skin; of the shorter bush with a stiffer leaf, a tough skin.  This is a little before blueberries.  

The panicled cornel is the only one of the cornels or viburnums that now is noticed in flower , generally speaking.  The last of our cornels – the C. sericea I think it must be – is just beginning.

The farmers have commenced haying. With this the summer culminates. The most extended crop of all is ready for the harvesting.

Lint still comes off the leaves and shoots.

It is so hot I have to lift my hat to let the air cool my head. 

I notice that that low, rather rigid fern, about two feet high, on the Great Hubbard Meadow, which a month ago was yellow, but now is green and in fruit, and with a harsh-feeling fruit atop, is decidedly inclined to grow in hollow circles from one foot to six or eight feet in diameter.– often, it is true, imperfect on one side, or, if large, filled up in the middle. How to account for it? Can it have anything to do with the hummocks deposited on the meadow? Many small stems near together in circles i. e. not a single line. Is it the Osmunda spectabilis?

Now I hear the spotted (?) flies about my head,–- flies that settle and make themselves felt on the hand sometimes. 

The morning-glory still fresh at 3 P.M.  A fine, large, delicate bell with waved border, some pure white ,some reddened. The buds open perfectly in a vase I find them open when I wake at 4 A .M. Is not this one of the eras or culminating places in the flower season? Not this till the sultry mornings come.

Angelica,  perhaps a day or more. Elder just opening. 

The four leaved asclepias, probably some days, rather handsome flower, with the peculiar fragrance of the milkweeds. 

Observed three or four sweet-briar bushes with white flowers of the usual size, by the wall under Conantum Cliff,– very slightly tinted with red or rose. In the paucity and form of prickles at least I make them answer to the micrantha, but not else  Is it intermediate? Opened at home in a vase in the shade. They are more distinctly rose-tinted. Leaves and all together in the water, they have a strong spirituous or rummy scent. 

There are no flowers nor flower-buds on the bass this year, though it was so full last year.

Where the other day I saw a pigeon woodpecker tapping and enlarging a hole in the dead limb of an apple tree ,when as yet probably no egg was laid, to-day I see two well grown young woodpeckers about as big as the old looking out at the hole, showing their handsome spotted breasts and calling lustily for something to eat, or, it may be, suffering from the heat. Young birds in some situations must suffer greatly from heat these days, so closely packed in their nests and perhaps insufficiently shaded. It is a wonder they remain so long there patiently.

I saw a yellowbird's nest in the willows on the causeway this afternoon and three young birds nearly ready to fly, overflowing the nest ,all holding up their open bills and keeping them steadily open for a minute or more, on noise of my approach. 

Still see cherry-birds in flocks.

Dogsbane and Prinos verticillatus. 

My white lilies in the pan are mostly withering the first day, the weather is so warm.

At sunset to Island. 

The white anemone is withering with drought; else would probably have opened.  

Return while the sun is setting behind thunder clouds, which now shadow us.  Between the heavy masses of clouds, mouse colored, with dark blue bases, the patches of clear sky are a glorious cobalt blue, as Sophia calls it.  

How happens it that the sky never appears so intensely, brightly, memorably blue as when seen between clouds and, it may be, as now in the south at sunset?  This, too, is like the blue in snow. 

For the last two or three days it has taken me all the forenoon to wake up. 

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, June 21, 1853

4.30 A.M.––Up river for lilies . . .The few lilies begin to open about 5. See July 26, 1856 ("At five [A.M.] the lilies had not opened, but began about 5.15 and were abundantly out at six") and note to July 17, 1854 ("I go to observe the lilies. ")

The summer culminates.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Haymaking

Calopogon . . . surpasses the pogonia, See.June 23, 1853 ("Pogonias are now very abundant in the meadow-grass, and now and then a calopogon is mixed with them .The last is broader and of more singular form,  commonly with an unopened bud above on one side."); June 24, 1852 (""The calopogon is a more bluish purple than the pogonia.); July 5, 1852 (The calopogon, or grass-pink, now fully open, . . — its four or five open purple flowers — . . . makes a much greater show than the pogonia. It is of the same character with that and the arethusa. "); July 7, 1852 ("The Arethusa bulbosa, " crystalline purple;" Pogonia ophioglossoides, snake-mouthed arethusa, "pale purple;" and the Calopogon pulchellus, grass pink, "pink purple," make one family in my mind, — next to the purple orchis, or with it, — being flowers par excellence, all flower, all color, with inconspicuous leaves, naked flowers,")

Now see many bright red amelanchier berries and some purple or dark-blue ones amid them.  See June 25, 1853 (" An unusual quantity of amelanchier berries . . . I never saw nearly so many before. It is a very agreeable surprise") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Shad-bush,Juneberry, or Service-berry (Amelanchier canadensis)

How happens it that the sky never appears so intensely, brightly, memorably blue as when seen between clouds and, it may be, as now in the south at sunset? See December 14. 1851 ("There is a beautifully pure greenish-blue sky under the clouds now in the southwest just before sunset."); January 11, 1852 ("The glory of these afternoons, . . . is in the ineffably clear blue, or else pale greenish-yellow, patches of sky in the west just before sunset "); January 17, 1852 ("Those western vistas through clouds to the sky show the clearest heavens, clearer and more elysian than if the whole sky is comparatively free from clouds.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Western Sky

Concord Bank has suspended.

October 15. 

October 15, 2017

Rain at last, and end of the remarkable days. 

The springs and rivers have been very low. Millers have not water enough to grind their grists. 

There has been a great fall of leaves in the night on account of this moist and rainy weather; but hardly yet that touch that brings down the rock maple. The streets are thickly strewn with elm and buttonwood and other leaves, feuille-morte color. 

Some elms and butternuts are quite bare. Yet the sugar maples in our streets are now in their prime and show unexpectedly bright and delicate tints, while some white maples by the river are nearly bare. I see, too, that all locusts did not become crisp and fall before this without acquiring a bright color. In the churchyard they are unwithered, just turning a pale yellow. 

How many plants are either yellow or scarlet! Not only maples, but rose bushes, hazel bushes, etc., etc. Rue is a conspicuous pale yellow for a weed. 

I saw the other day a cricket standing on his head in a chocolate-colored (inside) fungus, only his tail-yards visible. He had sunk a well an inch deep, and was even then sinking it, perpendicularly, unconscious of what was going on above. 

The ten days — at least — before this were plainly Indian summer. They were remarkably pleasant and warm. The latter half I sat and slept with an open window, though the first part of the time I had a little fire in the morning. These succeeded to days when you had worn thick clothing and sat by fires for some time. 

Our staghorn sumach has just become a very rich scarlet. So, apparently, has the large one at Mrs. Simmonds's. They are later than the others; a yellower scarlet, almost orange. 

It is another example of the oddity of the Orientals that yellow “is in the east a regal color, more especially so in China, where it is exclusively royal.” (Field on Colors, 139.) Further west it was purple, regal and imperial. 

The river lower this morning than before this year.

Concord Bank has suspended.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 15, 1857

Rain at last, and end of the remarkable days. See October 11, 1857 ("This is the seventh day of glorious weather.")

A great fall of leaves in the night on account of this moist and rainy weather. See October 15, 1856 ("Large fleets of maple and other leaves. . .came down in a shower with yesterday morning's frost. “): October 15, 1853 (“[H]ow the leaves come down in showers after this touch of the frost!.”)

I sat and slept with an open window. See October 10, 1856 (“”These are the finest days in the year, Indian summer. . . . I lie with window wide open under a single sheet most of the night.”); October 31, 1854 ("Sat with open window for a week.”)

The river lower this morning than before this year. See October 15, 1856 (“River lower than for some months. ”)

Concord Bank has suspended. See October 14, 1857 ("Banks built of granite, after some Grecian or Roman style, with their porticoes and their safes of iron, are not so permanent, and cannot give me so good security for capital invested in them, as the heads of withered hardhack in the meadow."); See also Panic of 1857 - Wikipedia

October 15. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, October 15

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

 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

This has been the ninth of those wonderful days, and one of the warmest

October 13. 

October 13, 2017

P. M. – To Poplar Hill. 

Maple fires are burnt out generally, and they have fairly begun to fall and look smoky in the swamps. When my eyes were resting on those smoke-like bare trees, it did not at first occur to me why the landscape was not as brilliant as a few days ago. 

The outside trees in the swamps lose their leaves first. The brilliancy of young oaks, especially scarlet oaks, in sprout-lands is dulled. These red maples and young scarlet oaks, etc., have been the most conspicuous and important colors, or patches of color, in the landscape. 

Those most brilliant days, then, so far as the autumnal tints are concerned, are over; i. e., when we may be surprised at any turn by the sight of some incredibly bright and dazzling tree or grove of trees. 

I noticed the first large white oaks wholly changed to a salmon-color, but not brilliant like those sprout land fires. Are very large oaks never brilliant in their tints? [Yes.]

The hickories on Poplar Hill have not lost any of their brilliancy, generally speaking. Some are quite green even. I look down into a mocker-nut, whose recesses and greater part are pure yellow, and from this you pass through a ruddy orange in the more exposed leaves to a rich crispy brown in the leaves of the extreme twigs about the clusters of round green nuts.

The red of oaks, etc., is far more general now than three or four days ago, but it is also much duller, so that some maples that were a bright scarlet can now hardly be distinguished by their color from oaks, which have just turned red. 

The Great Fields from this hill are pale-brown, often hoary — there is not yellow enough for russet — pastures, with very large red or purple patches of black berry vines. 

You can only appreciate the effect of these by a strong and peculiar intention of the eye. We ordinarily do not see what is before us, but what our prejudices presume to be there. 

The pitch and white pines on the north of Sleepy Hollow, i. e. north side the hill, are at the height of their change and are falling. Maybe they are later than on the south side of hills. They are at the height of their change, generally, though many needles fallen, carpeting the ground. 

Pinweeds are brown; how long? Some of the large ash trees, both a black and white, are quite bare of leaves already. With the red maples, then. 

Looking from this hill, green begins to look as rare and interesting as any color, — you may say begins to be a color by itself, —and I distinguish green streaks and patches of grass on most hillsides. 

See a pretty large flock of tree sparrows, very lively and tame, drifting along and pursuing each other along a bushy fence and ditch like driving snow. Two pursuing each other would curve upward like a breaker in the air and drop into the hedge again. 

Some white willows are very fresh and green yet. This has been the ninth of those wonderful days, and one of the warmest. I am obliged to sit with my window wide open all the evening as well as all day. It is the earlier Indian summer. 

Our cherry trees have now turned to mostly a red orange color.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 13, 1857

Maple . . . look smoky in the swamps. See October 13, 1855 ("The maples now stand like smoke along the meadows."); October 13, 1852 ("Many maples have lost all their leaves and are shrunk all at once to handsome clean gray wisps on the edge of the meadows. Crowded together at a distance they look like smoke.")

Those most brilliant days, then, so far as the autumnal tints are concerned, are over..  See October 13,1852 ("The autumnal tints have already lost their brightness. It lasts but a day or two.")

We ordinarily do not see what is before us, but what our prejudices presume to be there. See note to July 2 1857 (“Many an object is not seen, though it falls within the range of our visual ray, because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray, i. e., we are not looking for it. So, in the largest sense, we find only the world we look for.”) Autumnal Tints  ("There is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate, - not a grain more. The actual objects which one man will see from a particular hilltop are just as different from those which another will see as the beholders are different . The scarlet oak must, in a sense, be in your eye when you go forth. ")

This has been the ninth of those wonderful days, and one of the warmest. See October 12, 1857 ("The eighth fine day, warmer than the last two."); October 11, 1857 ("This is the seventh day of glorious weather. Perhaps, these might be called Harvest Days."); October 10, 1857 ("The sixth day of glorious weather, which I am tempted to call the finest in the year , so bright and serene the air and such a sheen from the earth, so brilliant the foliage, so pleasantly warm . . . Certainly these are .the most brilliant days in the year, ushered in, perhaps, by a frosty morning, as this.") ... October 6, 1857 ("A beautiful bright afternoon, still warmer than yesterday."); October 5, 1857 (" A warm and bright October afternoon.[Begins now ten days of perfect Indian summer without rain; and the eleventh and twelfth days equally warm, though rainy.]")


October 13. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October 13

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

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

Here is the soft air, but not yet the bluebird.

FEBRUARY 18, 2017

February 18

Another remarkably warm and pleasant day. The nights of late nearly as warm as the day. 

When I step out into the yard I hear that earliest spring note from some bird, perhaps a pigeon woodpecker (or can it be a nuthatch, whose ordinary note I hear?), the rapid whar whar, whar whar, whar whar, which I have so often heard before any other note. 

The snow is nearly all gone, and it is so warm and springlike that I walk over to the hill, listening for spring birds. 

The roads are beginning to be settled. I step excited over the moist mossy ground, dotted with the green stars of thistles, crowfoot, etc., the outsides of which are withered. 

Amid the pitch pines by the hemlocks I am surprised to find a great mildew on the ground, three or four feet long by two and a half wide and one fourth to one inch thick, investing the pine-needles and grass stubble and fallen hemlock twigs, like a thick cobweb or veil, through which the ground, etc., is seen dimly. It has a regular vegetable or lichen-like border, creeping out ward from a centre, and is more cottony and fibrous there. 

Like the ground generally thereabouts, it has an inspiring sweet, musty scent when I stoop close to it. I was surprised to find how sweet the whole ground smelled when I lay flat and applied my nose to it; more so than any cow; as it were the promise of the perfect man and new springs to eternity. 

The mildew apparently occupied the place where a mass of snow ice rested yesterday (it was not yet wholly gone on one side). It was the snow-bank's footprint, or rather its plantain. One of the first growths of the new year, surely. Further in the pines there was more of it whereever the snow had but just disappeared, a great many square rods of it all put together. 

But also there was, very similar to it, yet only a thin veil, the apparent gossamer of spring and fall, close to the edge of the melting snow, and I saw a spider or two. This had only the thickness of a cobweb and was covered with dew, yet was rather hard to distinguish from the mildew. Thin cobwebs were very widely dispersed in the meadows where the snow had just melted. [Vide Mar. 4, 1860.] 

I thought at one time that I heard a bluebird. 

Hear a fly buzz amid some willows. 

Thermometer at 1 p.m., 65. 

Sophia says that Mrs. Brooks's spiraeas have started considerably! 

I hear that geese went over Cambridge last night. 

I sit all this day and evening without a fire, and some even have windows open. 

P. M. — To Hubbard's Bath. 

The frost out of the ground and the ways settled in many places. 

I see much more of that gossamer (?) of the morning, — still regarding the large mildew as different. It abounds in all low grounds where there is a firm pasture sod, where a snow-bank has just melted or on the edge of one that is fast disappearing. I observe some remarkable ones on Hubbard's land just below the mountain sumachs. 

They are thin webs over the grass just laid bare close to the snow commonly and over the icy edge of the snow. They are not under the snow. I thought at first it had been formed on the surface of the snow and when it melted rested lightly on the stubble beneath, but I could detect none extending more than three or four inches over the icy edge of the snow, though every stubble half exposed amid the snow even was the source or point d'appui of some. 

Sometimes, to my surprise, it was an extremely thin, but close-woven (?), perhaps air-tight veil, of the same color but still thinner than the thinnest tissue paper or membrane, in patches one to three feet in diameter, resting lightly on the stubble, which supports it in the form of little tents. This is now dry and very brittle, yet I can get up pieces an inch across. 

It suggests even a scum on the edge of the melting snow, which has at last dried and hardened into a web. Here is one which, as commonly, springs from three or four inches within the melted snow, partly resting close and flat upon it, and extends thence several feet from its edge over the stubble. 

None of these have the thickness of mildew, and for cobwebs I see but two or three spiders about and cannot believe that they can have done all this in one night, nor do they make a close web. It lies lightly upon the stubble and the edge of the snow, as if it had settled in the night from the atmosphere. 

Can it be a scum formed on the melting snow, caught at last on the stubble like the pap of paper taken up in a sieve? 

Further off on every side I see the same now fretted away, like a coarse and worn-out sieve, where it was perfect perhaps yesterday. Thus it lasts all day, conspicuous many rods off. I think there must be a square mile of this, at least, in Concord. It is after a very warm, muggy, but fair night, the last snow going off and the thermometer at 50°. Thinnest, frailest, gossamer veils dropped from above on the stubble, as if the fairies had dropped their veils or handkerchiefs after a midnight revel, rejoicing at the melting of the snow. 

What can it be? 

Is it animal or vegetable? 

I suspect it is allied to mould; or is it a scum? or have the spiders anything to do with it? 

It suggests even a nebulous vegetable matter in the air, which, under these cir cumstances, in a muggy night, is condensed into this primitive vegetable form. 

Is it a sort of flowing of the earth, a waste fertility anticipating the more regular growths of spring?

Has not some slightly glutinous substance been deposited from the atmosphere on the snow, which is thus collected into a thin sort of paper, even like the brown-paper conferva? 

Is it a species of conferva? 

I am excited by this wonderful air and go listening for the note of the bluebird or other comer. The very grain of the air seems to have undergone a change and is ready to split into the form of the bluebird's warble. Methinks if it were visible, or I could cast up some fine dust which would betray it, it would take a corresponding shape. The bluebird does not come till the air consents and his wedge will enter easily. 

The air over these fields is a foundry full of moulds for casting bluebirds' warbles. Any sound uttered now would take that form, not of the harsh, vibrating, rending scream of the jay, but a softer, flowing, curling warble, like a purling stream or the lobes of flowing sand and clay. Here is the soft air and the moist expectant apple trees, but not yet the bluebird. They do not quite attain to song. 

What a poem is this of spring, so often repeated! I am thrilled when I hear it spoken of, — as the spring of such a year, that fytte of the glorious epic. 

Picked up a mouse-nest in the stubble at Hubbard's mountain sumachs, left bare by the melting snow. It is about five inches wide and three or four high, with one, if not two, small round indistinct entrances on the side, not very obvious till you thrust your finger through them and press aside the fine grass that closes them, ready to yield to the pressure of the mouse's body. It is made very firmly and round, far more so than an oven-bird's nest, of the rye and grass stubble which was at hand under the snow, gnawed off to convenient lengths. A very snug and warm nest, where several might have lain very cosily under the snow in the hardest winter. 

Near by were collected many large green droppings of the usual form, as if for cleanliness, several feet off. Many galleries were visible close to the ground, in the withered grass under the snow. Is it not the nest of a different mouse from the Mus leucopus of the woods? 

Mr. Prichard says that when he first came to Concord wood was $2.50 per cord. Father says that good wood was $3.00 per cord, and he can remember the longest; white pine, $2.00; maple, sixteen shillings.

When I approached the bank of a ditch this after noon, I saw a frog diving to the bottom. The warmer water had already awaked him, and perhaps he had been sitting on the bank. 

The above-described gossamer often has small roundish spots on it, two or three inches in diameter, which are whiter and much thicker, even like the silvery scales under which some kinds of insects lurk, somewhat. I see none of this over sand or in the road, as I suppose would be the case if it were a mere scum on the snow, or a deposition from the atmosphere. 

Must it not be of the nature of mildew? It is as if it were a thin and tender membrane that envelops the infant earth in earliest spring, at once rent and dissipated.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 18, 1857

Thermometer at 1 p.m., 65°. See February 1, 1857 ("Thermometer at 42°."); February 7, 1857 ("Another warm day, . . . The thermometer was at 52° when I came out at 3 p.m.") ; February 12, 1857 ("The caterpillar, which I placed last night on the snow beneath the thermometer, is frozen stiff again, this time not being curled up, the temperature being -6° now."); February 14, 1857 ("Numerous caterpillars are now crawling about on the ice and snow, the thermometer in the shade north of house standing 42°"); February 16, 1857 (“A wonderfully warm day (the third one); about 2 p.m., thermometer in shade 58.”); February 24, 1857 ("By noon is between 50° and 60°); February 25, 1857 ("The thermometer is at 65° at noon.")

I hear that earliest spring note from some bird. . . the rapid whar whar, whar whar, whar whar, which I have so often heard before any other note. See February 17, 1855 (The jays are uttering their unusual notes, and this makes me think of a woodpecker. It reminds me of the pine warbler, vetter vetter vetter vetter vet, except that it is much louder, and I should say has the sound of l rather than t, — veller, etc., perhaps. Can it be a jay? or a pigeon woodpecker? Is it not the earliest springward note of a bird? In the damp misty air.”); March 18, 1857 ("I hear the faint fine notes of apparent nuthatches coursing up the pitch pines. . .Then, at a distance, that whar-whar whar-whar-whar-whar, which after all I suspect may be the note of the nuthatch and not a woodpecker."); March 5, 1859 ("Going down-town this forenoon, I heard a white-bellied nuthatch on an elm within twenty feet, uttering peculiar notes and more like a song than I remember to have heard from it.. . .It was something like to-what what what what what, rapidly repeated, and not the usual gnah gnah; and this instant it occurs to me that this may be that earliest spring note which I hear, and have referred to a woodpecker! . . .It is the spring note of the nuthatch"). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Pigeon Woodpecker (flicker)

I am excited by this wonderful air and go listening for the note of the bluebird . . . See February 9, 1854 ("It is such a warm, moist, or softened, sunlit air as we are wont to hear the first bluebird's warble in"); February 18, 1855 ("Now for the first time decidedly there is something spring-suggesting in the air and light. . . .I listen ever for something springlike in the notes of birds, some peculiar tinkling notes.”); February 22, 1855 ("Remarkably warm and pleasant weather, perfect spring. I even listen for the first bluebird.”); February 23,, 1859 (“[In Worcester] I first hear and then see eight or ten bluebirds going over. Perhaps they have not reached Concord yet. One boy tells me that he saw a bluebird in Concord on Sunday, the 20th.”); February 27, 1861 ("It occurs to me that I have just heard a bluebird"); March 7, 1854 ("Heard the first bluebird"); March 10, 1852 ("I see flocks of a dozen bluebirds together"); March 19, 1855 (“ I hear my first bluebird”).

. . the harsh, vibrating, rending scream of the jay, See February 2, 1854 ("The scream of the jay is a true winter sound. It is wholly without sentiment, and in harmony with winter."); February 12, 1854 ("the unrelenting steel-cold scream of a jay, unmelted, that never flows into a song, a sort of wintry trumpet, screaming cold; hard, tense, frozen music, like the winter sky itself; in the blue livery of winter's band. It is like a flourish of trumpets to the winter sky.”)

What a poem is this of spring, so often repeated! I am thrilled when I hear it spoken of, — as the spring of such a year, that fytte of the glorious epic. See December 7, 1856 ("That grand old poem called Winter is round again without any connivance of mine. . . .As fast as snowflakes, Summer was, now Winter is. Nature loves this rhyme.”)

Spring. What a poem

oft repeated. Fytte of the

glorious epic. 

These are the finest days in the year

October 10.

October 10, 2016

These are the finest days in the year, Indian summer. 

This afternoon it is 80°, between three and four, and at 6.30 this evening my chamber is oppressively sultry, and the thermometer on the north side of the house is at 64°. I lie with window wide open under a single sheet most of the night. But I anticipate. 

The phebe note of the chickadee is now often heard in the yards, and the very Indian summer itself is a similar renewal of the year, with the faint warbling of birds and second blossoming of flowers. 

Going to E. Hosmer's by boat, see quite a flock of wild ducks in front of his house, close by the bridge. 

While moving the fence to-day, dug up a large reddish, mummy-like chrysalid or nymph of the sphinx moth.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 10, 1856


These are the finest days in the year,. . . . See October 10, 1857 ("The sixth day of glorious weather, which I am tempted to call the finest in the year"). See also July 22, 1851 ("These are our fairest days, which are born in a fog."); May 5, 1852 ("Every part of the world is beautiful today."); May 18, 1852 (The world can never be more beautiful than now”); August 19, 1853 (“A glorious and ever-memorable day.”); December 10, 1853”These are among the finest days in the year”); May 21, 1854 (“the finest days of the year, days long enough and fair enough for the worthiest deeds.”); December 21, 1854 (“We are tempted to call these the finest days of the year.”);  September 18, 1860 ("If you are not happy to-day you will hardly be so to-morrow.").

A renewal of the year, with the faint warbling of birds and second blossoming of flowers.  See October 10, 1851 ("There are many things to indicate the renewing of spring at this season");  October 10, 1853 ("The faint suppressed warbling of the robins sounds like a reminiscence of the spring."); See also September 10, 1857 ("I see lambkill ready to bloom a second time.”); September 16, 1852 (“Some birds, like some flowers, begin to sing again in the fall.”); September 26, 1859 ("So it is with flowers, birds, and frogs a renewal of spring."); October 3, 1858 ("Hear a hylodes peeping on shore."); October 22, 1859 (" I see perfectly fresh and fair Viola pedata flowers, as in the spring, though but few together. No flower by its second blooming more perfectly brings back the spring to us.");  October 23, 1853 ("Many phenomena re mind me that now is to some extent a second spring, — not only the new-springing and blossoming of flowers, but the peeping of the hylodes for some time, and the faint warbling of their spring notes by many birds. . . ."); November 9, 1850 ("I found many fresh violets (Viola pedata) to-day (November 9th) in the woods.").

I lie with window wide open . . . See November 8, 1855 ("I can sit with my window open and no fire.”); October 31, 1854 ("[W]e have had remarkably warm and pleasant Indian summer, with frequent frosts in the morning. Sat with open window for a week.")

A little chilly

August 20

Rain all night and to-day, making it a little chilly. Though I sit with open window, I should think it uncomfortably cool with it closed. Some must have a little fire.

August 20, 2026 7:58 PM

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 20, 1856

Rain all night and to-day, making it a little chilly . . . Some must have a little fire. See August 20, 1858 ("It is still cool weather with a northwest wind. This weather is a preface to autumn"); August 20, 1853  ("This day, too, has that autumnal character. "); See also  August 23, 1858 ("Cooler than ever. Some must have fires, and I close my window."); August 27, 1860 ("The nights have been cooler of late, but the heat of the sun by day has been more local and palpable."); August 29, 1854 ("It is so cool that we are inclined to stand round the kitchen fire a little while these mornings, though we sit and sleep with open windows still.“); August 29, 1859 ("It is so cool a morning that for the first time I move into the entry to sit in the sun.") Compare  October 31, 1854 ("Sat with open window for a week.”); November 8, 1855 ("I can sit with my window open and no fire.”); February 18, 1857 ("I sit all this day and evening without a fire, and some even have windows open.”)

August 20. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 20

Though chilly to-day

 I sit with open window –

some must have a fire.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A little chilly 

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 © 2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560820

Much warmer than this time last year.

November 8

November 8, 2025

A quite warm and foggy morning. I can sit with my window open and no fire. Much warmer than this time last year. 

Though there is quite a fog over the river and doubtful weather behind, the reflection of the wool-grass, etc., is quite distinct, the reflection from the fog or mist making the water light for a background.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 8, 1855

I can sit with my window open and no fire. Much warmer than this time last year. See October 26, 1854 ("As warm as summer. Cannot wear a thick coat. Sit with windows open."); October 31, 1854 ("W]e have had remarkably warm and pleasant Indian summer, with frequent frosts in the morning. Sat with open window for a week."); October 21, 1855 ("I sit with an open window, it is so warm."); October 10, 1856 ("This afternoon it is 80°,. . . I lie with window wide open under a single sheet most of the night").

The scarlet oak is very bright and conspicuous.

October 21

It began to rain about 10 o’clock last evening after a cloudy day, and it still rains, gently but steadily, this morning. 

The wind must be east, for I hear the church bell very plainly; yet I sit with an open window, it is so warm. 

Looking into the yard, I see the currant bushes all bare of leaves, as they have been some time; but the gooseberries at the end of their row are covered with reddened leaves. This gradualness in the changing and falling of the leaves produces agreeable effects and contrasts. 

The currant row is bare, but the gooseberries at the end are full of scarlet leaves still.

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

A damp cloudy day only, after all, and scarcely any rain; a good day for all hunters to be out, especially on the water. 

The yellowish leaves of the black oak incline soon to a decayed and brown look. The red oak is more red. 

But the scarlet is very bright and conspicuous. How finely its leaves are out against the sky with sharp points, especially near the top of the tree! They look somewhat like double or treble crosses.

Almost all wild apples are handsome. Some are knurly and peppered all over or on the stem side with fine crimson spots on a yellowish-white ground; others have crimson blotches or eyes, more or less confluent and fiery when wet, for apples, like shells and pebbles, are handsomest in a wet day. Taken from under the tree on the damp sward, they shrivel and fade. Some have these spots beneath a reddened surface with obscure rays. Others have hundreds of fine blood-red rays, running regularly, though broken, from the stem dimple to the blossom, like meridian lines, on a straw-colored ground, perfect spheres. Others are a deep, dark red, with very obscure yet darker rays; others a uniform clear, bright red, approaching to scarlet.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 21, 1855

The wind must be east, for I hear the church bell very plainly. See May 3, 1852 ("The clock strikes distinctly, showing the wind is easterly."); April 18, 1852 ("An east wind. I hear the clock strike plainly ten or eleven P.M.") and An East Wind.

The scarlet is very bright and conspicuous. How finely its leaves are out against the sky with sharp points.   See October 15, 1858 ("If you stand fronting a hillside covered with a variety of young oaks, the brightest scarlet ones, uniformly deep, dark scarlet, will be the scarlet oaks"); October 24, 1858 ("The scarlet oak. . . is now completely scarlet and apparently has been so a few days. This alone of our indigenous deciduous trees . . .is now in its glory."); October 26, 1858 ("The scarlet oak generally is not in prime till now, or even later"); October 30, 1855 ("Going to the new cemetery, I see that the scarlet oak leaves have still some brightness; perhaps the latest of the oaks."); October 30, 1858 ("The scarlet oak . . . retains some brightness to the middle of November. "); November 1, 1858 ("If you wish to count the scarlet oaks. do it now. Stand on a hilltop in the woods, when the sun is an hour high and the sky is clear, and every one within range of your vision will be revealed."); November 4, 1858 ("The scarlet oak must, in a sense, be in your eye when you go forth.")

October 21.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October 21

An open window,

I hear the church bell plainly –

 the wind must be east.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The scarlet oak  is very bright and conspicuous.

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-551021

A season for nests and eggs. Critchicrotches in prime.

May 25

A rather warm night the last; window slightly open. Hear buzz of flies in the sultryish morning air on awaking.

May 25, 2025

8 A. M. - To Hill. 

Late rose shoots, two inches, say a fortnight since. 

Salix nigra pollen, a day at least. 

Wood pewee. 

Apparently yellowbirds’ nests just completed —one by stone bridge causeway, another on birch by mud turtle meadow. 

Veronica peregrina in Mackay’s strawberries, how long? 

Most of the robins’ nests I have examined this year had three eggs, clear bluish green. 

A chip-bird’s nest on a balm-of-Gilead, eight feet high, between the main stem and a twig or two, with four very pale blue-green eggs with a sort of circle of brown-black spots about larger end. 

Red-wing’s nest with four eggs — white, very faintly tinged with (perhaps) green and curiously and neatly marked with brown-black spots and lines on the large end. Red-wings now generally beginning to lay. 

Fever-root one foot high and more, say a fortnight or three weeks. 

Scared a screech owl out of an apple tree on hill; flew swiftly off at first like a pigeon woodpecker and lit near by facing me; was instantly visited and spied at by a brown thrasher; then flew into a hole high in a hickory near by, the thrasher following close to the tree. It was reddish or ferruginous. 

Choke cherry pollen on island, apparently two or three days. 

Hemlock pollen, probably to-morrow; some in house to-day; say to-day; not yet leafing. 

Aralia nudicaulis, perhaps two days pollen. 

Cornus florida, no bloom. Was there year before last? Does it not flower every other year? Its leaf, say, just after C. sericea. 

Tupelo leaf before button-bush; maybe a week now. 

Red oak pollen, say a day or two before black. Swamp white oak pollen. 

River at summer level, four inches below long stone. Grass patches conspicuous, and flags and Equisetum limosum and pontederia (eight inches high), and white lily pads now (after yellow) red above, and purplish polygonum leaves in beds above water. For some days the handsome phalanxes of the Equisetum limosum have attracted me.

The button-bush hardly yet generally begun to leaf. 

Critchicrotches in prime. 

Heard the first regular bullfrog’s trump on the 18th; none since. Juniper, plucked yesterday, sheds pollen in house to-day, and probably in field. Is our white willow Gray’s var. 2d, coerulea? 

The golden robin keeps whistling something like Eat it, Potter, eat it! 

Cares exilis river-shore opposite Wheeler’s gate, six inches high, but the culm smooth —some time. 

Is that sweet-scented vernal grass just begun to bloom at celtis shore? Fir balsam begun to leaf —with flower. Cottony aphides on white pines. 

Hear a quail and the summer spray frog, amid the ring of toads.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 25, 1855

Late rose shoots, two inches, say a fortnight since. See  July 23, 1860  ("The late rose is now in prime along the river, a pale rose-color but very delicate, keeping up the memory of roses.") See also 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Rose

Wood pewee. 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 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Arrival of the Eastern Wood Pewee

Apparently yellowbirds’ nests just completed. See May 28, 1855 ("Examined my two yellowbirds’ nests of the 25th. Both are destroyed, —pulled down and torn to pieces probably by some bird, — though they but just begun to lay. ); June 2, 1855 ("Three yellowbirds’ nests, which I have marked since the 25th of May, the only ones which I have actually inspected, have now all been torn to pieces, though they were in places (two of them, at least) where no boy is at all likely to have found them") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Summer Yellowbird

Scared a screech owl . . .instantly visited and spied at by a brown thrasher; then flew into a hole high in a hickory near by, the thrasher following close to the tree.  See  May 26, 1855 ("At the screech owl's nest I now find two young slumbering, almost uniformly gray above, about five inches long  with little dark-grayish tufts for incipient horns (?)."); April 23, 1859 ("A large hickory by the wall on the north side (or northeast side) of the hill apparently just blown down, the one I saw the screech owl go into two or three years ago.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Screech Owl; A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  The Brown Thrasher

Cornus florida, no bloom . . . Does it not flower every other year? See May 22, 1856 ("The Cornus florida does not bloom this year.")

Critchicrotches in prime. See May 23, 1860 ("Critchicrotches now tender to eat."); May 27, 1852 ("The fruit of the sweet flag is now just fit to eat, and reminds me of childhood, — the critchicrotches. They would help sustain a famished traveller. The inmost tender leaf, also, near the base, is quite palatable, as children know. I love it as well as muskrats (?)."); May 29 1854 (Critchicrotches have been edible some time in some places."); and note to June 12, 1852 ("The critchicrotches are going to seed. I love the sweet-flag as well as the muskrat (?). Its tender inmost leaf is very palatable below.")

Heard the first regular bullfrog’s trump on the 18th; none since.  See May 25, 1852 ("I hear the first troonk of a bullfrog.”) See also A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, The Bullfrog in Spring

The golden robin keeps whistling. See May 13, 1855 ("The gold robin, just come, is heard in all parts of the village. I see both male and female."); May 14, 1856 ("Air full of golden robins. Their loud clear note betrays them as soon as they arrive.") See also A Book of the Seasons   by Henry Thoreau, The Golden Robin

Is that sweet-scented vernal grass just begun to bloom at celtis shore? See May 14, 1858 ("See what I call vernal grass in bloom in many places."); May 14, 1859 ("Vernal grass quite common at Willis Spring now."); May 23, 1860 ("Say the sweet-scented vernal grass is in its prime."); May 27, 1857 ("I perceived that rare meadow fragrance on the 25th. Is it not the sweet-scented vernal grass? I see what I have called such, now very common.")

Hear a quail and the summer spray frog, amid the ring of toads. See May 25, 1851 (“Now, at 8.30 o'clock P.M., I hear the dreaming of the frogs.  So it seems to me, and so significantly passes my life away. It is like the dreaming of frogs in a summer evening."); May 25, 1859 ("Hear within a day or two what I call the sprayey note of the toad, different and later than its early ring."); May 25, 1860 ("5 P.M. the toads ring loud and numerously, as if invigorated by this little moisture and coolness.”) See also May 13, 1860 ("It is so warm that I hear the peculiar sprayey note of the toad generally at night."); May 16, 1853 ("Nature appears to have passed a crisis . . . The sprayey dream of the toad has a new sound");  May 20, 1858 ("Hear a quail whistle."); June 1, 1856 (" Heard a quail whistle May 30th."); June 1, 1860 ("Farmer has heard the quail a fortnight. Channing yesterday."); June 3, 1859 ("Quail heard."); June 12, 1855 (“I hear the toad, which I have called “spray frog” falsely, still . . . A peculiarly rich, sprayey dreamer, now at 2 P. M.! . . . This rich, sprayey note possesses all the shore. It diffuses itself far and wide over the water and enters into every crevice of the noon, and you cannot tell whence it proceeds”)  And also  June 13, 1851 ("The different frogs mark the seasons pretty well,- the peeping hyla, the dreaming frog, and the bullfrog.") and A Book of the Seasons  by Henry Thoreau, The Ring of Toads

May 25.  See A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, May 25

Cornus florida,

no bloom – Does it not flower 

every other year? 

The golden robin 

keeps whistling something like Eat 

it, Potter, eat it!

Is that sweet-scented 

vernal grass, just begun to

bloom at celtis shore?

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A season for nests and eggs.

                                     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-550525