The season of small fruits.

July 6.  

Rubus triflorus well ripe. 

The beach plums have everywhere the crescent-shaped mark made by the curculio, — the few that remain on.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 6, 1857

Rubus triflorus well ripe. See  June 30, 1854 ("Rubus triflorus berries, some time, — the earliest fruit of a rubus. The berries are very scarce, light red, semitransparent, showing the seed"); July 2, 1851 ("Some of the raspberries are ripe, the most innocent and simple of fruits");  July 11, 1857 ("I see more berries than usual of the Rubus triflorus in the open meadow near the southeast corner of the Hubbard meadow blueberry swamp.. . .They are dark shining red and, when ripe, of a very agreeable flavor and somewhat of the raspberry's spirit.") See also May 21, 1856 ("Rubus triflorus abundantly out at the Saw Mill Brook");  May 29, 1858 ("Rubus triflorus, well out, at Calla Swamp, how long?");  June 7, 1857 ("Rubus triflorus still in bloom");  and also  June 17, 1854 ("[T]he season of small fruits has arrived. ")  July 5, 1852 ("Nature offers fruits now as well as flowers"); July 6, 1851 ("Now grass is turning to hay, and flowers to fruits."); and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Raspberry

Children of the sun.

July 18

Methinks the asters and goldenrods begin, like the early ripening leaves, with midsummer heats.

July 18, 2014

Now look out for these children of the sun, when already the fall of some of the very earliest spring flowers has commenced.

The Island is now dry and shows few flowers. Where I looked for early spring flowers I do not look for midsummer ones. Such places are now parched and withering. 

Blue vervain, apparently a day; one circle is open a little below the top. 

As I go along the Joe Smith road, every bush and bramble bears its fruit; the sides of the road are a fruit garden; blackberries, huckleberries, thimble-berries, fresh and abundant, no signs of drought; all fruits in abundance; the earth teems.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 18, 1854

Methinks the asters and goldenrods begin, like the early ripening leaves, with midsummer heats. See July 15, 1854 ("The stems and leaves of various asters and golden-rods, which ere long will reign along the way, begin to be conspicuous."): July 19, 1851 ("Beyond the bridge there is a goldenrod partially blossomed. . . .Yesterday it was spring, and to-morrow it will be autumn."); July 26, 1853 ("I mark again, about this time when the first asters open. . . This the afternoon of the year."); July 28, 1852 ("Goldenrod and asters have fairly begun; there are several kinds of each out. "); August 30, 1853 ("Why so many asters and goldenrods now?")

Blue vervain, apparently a day; one circle is open a little below the top. See July 17, 1852 ("Verbena hastata, blue vervain. "); August 6, 1852 ("Blue vervain is now very attractive to me, and then there is that interesting progressive history in its rising ring of blossoms. It has a story. ");See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Blue Vervain

All fruits in abundance; the earth teems. See July 18, 1853 ("Now are the days to go a-berrying.")

July 18. See A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Midsummer's deepened shade and
A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 18

With midsummer heats

come asters and goldenrods  –

children of the sun.

A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Children of the sun

A Book of 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

tinyurl.com/hdt-540718b

Already the season of small fruits has arrived.

June 17.

June 17, 2019

A cold fog. 

These mornings those who walk in grass are thoroughly wetted above mid-leg. All the earth is dripping wet. I am surprised to feel how warm the water is, by contrast with the cold, foggy air.

From the Hill I am reminded of more youthful mornings, seeing the dark forms of the trees eastward in the low grounds, partly within and against the shining white fog, the sun just risen over it. The mist fast rolling away eastward from them, their tops at last streaking the mist and dividing it into vales. All beyond them a submerged and unknown country, as if they grew on the sea shore. 

See the sun reflected up from the Assabet to the hill top, through the dispersing fog, giving to the water a peculiarly rippled, pale-golden hue.

Another remarkably hazy day; our view is confined, the horizon near, no mountains; as you look off only four or five miles, you see a succession of dark wooded ridges and vales filled with mist. It is dry, hazy June weather. 

We are more of the earth, farther from heaven, these days.  We are getting deeper into the mists of earth.

The season of hope and promise is past; already the season of small fruits has arrived. We are a little saddened, because we begin to see the interval between our hopes and their fulfillment. The prospect of the heavens is taken away, and we are presented only with a few small berries. 

Before sundown I reach Fair Haven Hill and gather strawberries. I find beds of large and lusty strawberry plants in sprout-lands, but they appear to run to leaves and bear very little fruit, having spent themselves in leaves by the time the dry weather arrives. It is those still earlier and more stinted plants which grow on dry uplands that bear the early fruit, formed before the droughts. But the meadows produce both leaves and fruit.

The sun goes down red again, like a high-colored flower of summer. As the white and yellow flowers of spring are giving place to the rose, and will soon to the red lily, etc., so the yellow sun of spring has become a red sun of June drought, round and red like a midsummer flower, production of torrid heats.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 17, 1854

Another remarkably hazy day; our view is confined, the horizon near, no mountains.  See June 21, 1856 (”Very hot day, as was yesterday, -— 98° at 2 P. M., 99° at 3, and 128° in sun”); June 25, 1858 (“Hotter than yesterday and, like it, muggy or close. So hazy can see no mountains.");  Compare June 23, 1854 (“.The air is beautifully clear  . . It is a great relief to look into the horizon. There is more room under the heavens”); See Also June 23, 1852 (“ It is an agreeably cool and clear and breezy day, when all things appear as if washed bright and shine . . . You can see far into the horizon.”); June 26, 1853 (" Summer returns without its haze. We see infinitely further into the horizon on every side, and the boundaries of the world are enlarged.")

The season of hope and promise is past; already the season of small fruits has arrived. Compare
August 9, 1853 ("This is the season of small fruits. I trust, too, that I am maturing some small fruit as palatable in these months, which will communicate my flavor to my kind.");August 18, 1853 (“The season of flowers or of promise may be said to be over, and now is the season of fruits; but where is our fruit ? The night of the year is approaching. What have we done with our talent?”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: Strawberries

A red sun of June drought, round and red like a midsummer flower, production of torrid heats.See
May 5, 1859 ("The sun sets red (first time), followed by a very hot and hazy day ");June 5, 1854 ("The sun goes down red and shorn of his beams, a sign of hot weather,"); June 18, 1854 ("Another round red sun of dry and dusty weather to-night, – a red or red-purple helianthus.")

June 17. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 17

Note: Today there is more on Anthony Burns:

The judges and lawyers, and all men of expedience, consider not whether the Fugitive Slave Law is right, but whether it is what they call constitutional. They try the merits of the case by a very low and incompetent standard. Pray, is virtue constitutional, or vice? Is equity constitutional, or iniquity? It is as impertinent, in important moral and vital questions like this, to ask whether a law is constitutional or not, as to ask whether it is profitable or not. They persist in being the servants of man, and the worst of men, rather than the servants of God. Sir, the question is not whether you or your grandfather, seventy years ago, entered into an agreement to serve the devil, and that service is not accordingly now due; but whether you will not now, for once and at last, serve God . . . and obey that eternal and only just Constitution which he, and not any Jefferson or Adams, has written in your being . . . .

Some men act as if they believed that they could safely slide down-hill a little way, — or a good way, — and would surely come to a place, by and by, whence they could slide up again. This is expediency, or choosing that course which offers the fewest obstacles. But there is no such thing as accomplishing a moral reform by the use of expediency or policy. There is no such thing as sliding up-hill. In morals the only sliders are backsliders.

See May 29, 1854 , June 9, 1854, June 16, 1854 and ""Slavery in Massachusetts.

As white and yellow

flowers give place to the rose

and soon red lily

yellow sun of spring

becomes red sun of June heat –

midsummer flower.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Season of Small Fruits

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-540617

This is the season of small fruits

August 9.

The Hieracium Canadense is out and is abundant at Peter's well. I also find one or two heads of the liatris. Perhaps I should have seen it a few days earlier, if it had not been for the mower. It has the aspect of a Canada thistle at a little distance. 

How fatally the season is advanced toward the fall! I am not surprised now to see the small rough sunflower. There is much yellow beside now in the fields. 

How beautiful now the early goldenrods (Solidago stricta), rising above the wiry grass of the Great Fields in front of Peter's where I sit ( which is not worth cutting), not solid yellow like the sunflower, but little pyramidal or sheaf like golden clouds or mists, supported by almost invisible leafy columns, which wave in the wind, like those elms which run up very tall and slender without a branch and fall over like a sheaf on every side! They give a very indefinite but rich, mellow, and golden aspect to the field.

I spend the forenoon in my chamber, writing or arranging my papers, and in the afternoon I walk forth into the fields and woods. I turn aside, perchance, into some withdrawn, untrodden swamp, and find these blueberries, large and fair, awaiting me in inexhaustible abundance, for I have no tame garden. They embody for me the essence and flavor of the swamp, — cool and refreshing, of various colors and flavors. Here they hang for many weeks unchanged, in dense clusters, half a dozen touching each other, — black, blue, and intermediate colors. I prefer the large blue, with a bloom on them, and slightly acid ones. 

I taste and am strengthened. This is the season of small fruits. I trust, too, that I am maturing some small fruit as palatable in these months, which will communicate my flavor to my kind.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 9, 1853

This is the season of small fruits. I trust, too, that I am maturing some small fruit as palatable in these months, which will communicate my flavor to my kind.  See August 9, 1854 ("Walden" published.”) Compare August 17, 1851 (“Ah! if I could so live that . . . when small fruits are ripe, my fruits might be ripe also! that I could match nature always with my moods ! that in each season when some part of nature especially flourishes, then a corresponding part of me may not fail to flourish!”); August 6, 1852 ("Methinks there are few new flowers of late. An abundance of small fruits takes their place. Summer gets to be an old story. Birds leave off singing, as flowers blossoming.");  August 18, 1853 (“The season of flowers or of promise may be said to be over, and now is the season of fruits; but where is our fruit ? The night of the year is approaching. What have we done with our talent?”); June 17, 1854 (“The season of hope and promise is past; already the season of small fruits has arrived. We are a little saddened, because we begin to see the interval between our hopes and their fulfillment. The prospect of the heavens is taken away, and we are presented only with a few small berries.”);

June, the month for grass and flowers, is now past.

July 6.

I walked by night last moon, and saw its disk reflected in Walden Pond, the broken disk, now here, now there, a pure and memorable flame unearthly bright. 

Ah! but that first faint tinge of moonlight . . . a silvery light from the east before day had departed in the west. What an immeasurable interval there is between the first tinge of moonlight which we detect, lighting with mysterious, silvery, poetic light the western slopes, like a paler grass, and the last wave of daylight on the eastern slopes! 

It is wonderful how our senses ever span so vast an interval, how from being aware of the one we become aware of the other.

It is now a free, flowing wind, with wet clouds in the sky. Though the sun shines, from time to time I hear a few drops of rain falling on the leaves, but feel none. All serious showers go round me and get out of my way.

June, the month for grass and flowers, is now past. The red clover heads are now turned black. It is but a short time that their rich bloom lasts.  

The white clover is black or withering also.  Blue-eyed grass is now rarely seen. The grass in the fields is dryer and riper and ready for the mowers. Now grass is turning to hay, and flowers to fruits. 

Already I gather ripe blueberries on the hills. 

The red-topped grass is in its prime, tingeing the fields with red.

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, July 6, 1851 

June, the month for grass and flowers, is now past. Now grass is turning to hay, and flowers to fruits. See July 2, 1854 ("The spring now seems far behind, yet I do not remember the interval. ") July 5, 1852 (" Nature offers fruits now as well as flowers"); July 7, 1852 ("And now that there is an interregnum in the blossoming of flowers, so is there in the singing of the birds."); July 13, 1860 ("The vernal freshness of June is passed."); August 6, 1852 ("Methinks there are few new flowers of late. An abundance of small fruits takes their place. Summer gets to be an old story. Birds leave off singing, as flowers blossoming.");

The red-topped grass is in its prime, tingeing the fields with red. See July 13, 1860 ("First we had the June grass reddish-brown, and the sorrel red, of June; now the red-top red of July.)

July 6. Sunday. I walked by night last moon, and saw its disk reflected in Walden Pond, the broken disk, now here, now there, a pure and memorable flame .unearthly bright, like a cucullo 1 of a water-bug. Ah! but that first faint tinge of moonlight on the gap ! (seen some time ago), — a silvery light from the east before day had departed in the west. What an immeasurable interval there is between the first tinge of moonlight which we detect, lighting with mysterious, silvery, poetic light the western slopes, like a paler grass, and the last wave of daylight on the eastern slopes ! It is wonderful how our senses ever span so vast an interval, how from being aware of the one we become aware of the other. And now the night wind blows, . . The red clover heads are now turned black. They no longer impart that rosaceous tinge to the meadows and fertile fields. It is but a short time that their rich bloom lasts. The white is black or withering also. Whiteweed still looks white in the fields. Blue-eyed grass is now rarely seen.

 The grass in the fields and meadows is not so fresh and fair as it was a fortnight ago. It is dryer and riper and ready for the mowers. Now June is past. June is the month for grass and flowers. Now grass is turning to hay, and flowers to fruits. Already I gather ripe blueberries on the hills. 

The red-topped grass is in its prime, tingeing the fields with red. It is a free, flowing wind, with wet clouds in the sky, though the sun shines. The distant hills look unusually near in this atmosphere. Acton meeting-houses seen to stand on the side of some hills, Nagog or Nashoba, beyond, as never before. Nobscot looks like a high pasture in the sunlight not far off. From time to time I hear a few drops of rain falling on the leaves, but none is felt and the sun does not cease to shine. All serious showers go round me and get out of my way.

it is wonderful 

our senses ever span so 

vast an interval

that first faint tinge of

moonlight from the east before

day has departed

that grass is turning 

to hay and flowers to fruit

that now June is past

Summer fruits and berries

July 30

Am glad to press my way through Miles's Swamp. Thickets of choke-berry bushes higher than my head, with many of their lower leaves already red, alternating with young birches and raspberry, high blueberry andromeda (high and low), and great dense flat beds of Rubus sempervirens. Amid these, perhaps in cool openings, stands an island or two of great dark-green high blueberry bushes, with big cool blueberries, though bearing but sparingly this year.

 

In a frosty hollow in the woods west of this and of the blackberry field, find a thick patch of shad-bush, about a rod and a half long, the bushes about three feet high, and quite interesting now, in fruit. Firm dark-green leaves with short, broad, irregular racemes (cluster-like) of red and dark dull purplish berries intermixed, making considerable variety in the color. The ripest and largest dark-purple berries are just half an inch in diameter. The conspicuous red - for most are red - remind me a little of the wild holly, the berry so contrasts with the dark leaf. These berries are peculiar in that the red are nearly as pleasant-tasted as the more fully ripe dark-purple ones.

I am surprised and delighted to see this handsome profusion in hollows usually so barren and bushes commonly so fruitless.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 30, 1860

Thickets of choke-berry bushes higher than my head. See July 18, 1854 ("every bush and bramble bears its fruit; the sides of the road are a fruit garden; blackberries, huckleberries, thimble-berries, fresh and abundant, no signs of drought; all fruits in abundance; the earth teems."); July 18, 1852 ("The Cerasus Virginiana, or choke-cherry, is turning, nearly ripe."); August 5, 1856 ("Choke-cherries near . . . begin to be ripe, though still red. They are scarcely edible, but their beauty atones for it. See those handsome racemes of ten or twelve cherries each, dark glossy red, semi- transparent. You love them not the less because they are not quite palatable."); August 5, 1858 (" Choke-berries, fair to the eye but scarcely palatable, hang far above your head, weighing down the bushes."); August 26, 1860 ("I thread my way through the blueberry swamp in front of Martial Miles's. . . . And now a far greater show of choke-berries is here, rich to see.")

A thick patch of shad-bush. See June 25, 1853 ("Found in the Glade (?) Meadows an unusual quantity of amelanchier berries, – I think of the two common kinds,-one a taller bush, twice as high as my head, with thinner and lighter-colored leaves and larger, or at least somewhat softer, fruit, the other a shorter bush, with more rigid and darker leaves and dark-blue berries, with often a sort of woolliness on them. Both these are now in their prime.")

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

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